I'm leaving a large gap in my gallery which I need to fill in. I'm posting a bunch of my (at the time almost-)PADs from October along with today's shot, and will deal with the rest later. November / December wasn't a period where the photo a day model was followed particularly well, but I do still have some to put up from that time.

But to today's shot. I seem to have developed a bit of psoriasis, which has spread to my legs. Psoriasis is one of the world's great idiopathic maladies, though stress is a known contributor.

How I love my job.

But anyway, salt water is supposed to alleviate the condition somewhat. Since I now live between 5 and 15 minutes' drive from any number of beaches, it would be remiss of me not to try it out. Also, a long walk for a few km in wet sand can hardly be bad for an excess of body weight due to some over-consumption of antioxidants derived from the cocoa bean. Mmmmm, chooooocolattteee...

So for the last few days I've sought out the longest stretch of continuous beach I could find (the Austinmer - Thirroul stretch has worked so far but I may see if I can find a longer one) and walked the beach. In the water, to ensure that the aforementioned psoriasis gets a saline blasting. While it's not the full body workout that actual swimming is, the combination of water resistance and yielding sand under one's feet makes it a tad more demanding than a stroll in the park.

As I was walking this morning, a strong southerly wind kicked in, whipping up the sand as you can (perhaps only vaguely) see here. The Olympus may not have been the camera to capture this with but the 40D is still hampered by only having the backup 28-135 lens which I don't find to be very good. Aside from which, the Olympus is much easier to keep above water on the occasions that Neptune decides to try to kill you by sending a large wave to make the water that was previously sloshing around your knees rise up to your armpits, as he likes to do on occasion just to amuse himself.

In any case, I spied the mini-sandstorm on the beach and emerged from the water, and got down low to try to capture the sandstorm at its own level using the line of seaweed to lead into it. (I figured that if I tried to shoot it standing up it would simply get lost amongst the background of the rest of the sand.) I'd be lying if I said that it came out as clearly as it was in real life, but you can still make it out based on the fuzziness over the dry part of the sand.

Hmm, and now my legs are itching again. Well, at least these walks have opened my eyes to enough potential PADs to keep me in business on non-working days for the rest of summer. Maybe a few more dips will do it.