Good morning and greetings, autumn lovers. Our salute to Open Studios 2008 continues today as we journey back to last winter and a January day that remains etch a sketched in my mind. The date was January 22 and the place was Its Beach. As you can see from photo #1, this is was what four out of five oceanographers would refer to as an extreme low tide. On this glorious afternoon I was able to walk around the front of the arch, a situation, much like sleeping beyond 6 am, occurs only two or three times a year.

The first sign that good & plenty things were to come was when a snowy egret flew thru the arch. Unfortunately, I missed this shot as I was explaining to a fellow beachgoer my feelings about how great it would be to someday have a vice president who has as much foreign policy experience as my 14 year-old-son. Sarah Palin is probably a good politician and a Roseanne Barr type inspiration to many women in the U.S. but I think her selection by John McCain is an insult to the voters of the United States. In the words of Woody Allen, from the movie classic “Bananas, “It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”

Johnny McCain stated on Sunday that the difference between him and Barack Obama is that although they both want to bring the troops home from Iraq he wants to win the war first. Unbelievable! This golden oldie who wants to continue the Bush policies should be voted off the island. Here’s my favorite McCain line of the week, courtesy of Conan O’Brien. “Sarah Palin’s been spending the last couple of days being briefed by advisers on what she needs to know to be John McCain’s vice president. That’s true. Yeah. Apparently, the first thing they taught her was CPR.”

Okay, back to the low tide experience. Although I did not get the shot of the snowiest of egrets shooting thru the arch, I did catch her soft landing on the other side which I will show you in the next couple of weeks when we do our photo segment on the birds of Open Studios. The low tide had exposed dozens of sea stars and anenomes on rocks that were normally hidden underwater. It was a menagerie of shapes and colors, something similar to Jesse Jackson’s rainbow coalition. A gentlemen then walked over to me and said, “Do you see that rainbow thru the arch (photo #3.) I looked up from my anenome quest and started shooting away like Ansel Adams on methamphetamine because this was one shot I did not want to miss. It was a great Its Beach moment that I will one day text message my grandchildren about.

While all this was going on the clouds were lining up (photo #4) like Lehman Brother employees waiting for the early bird special. You could sense there was going to be some color in the sky this night and the sunset gods did not disappoint. I shot the last two photos from Its Beach and Lighthouse Point. I call the last shot “Color City” because “Mona Lisa” was already taken. A fantabulous, fantastic night on the cliff and one that I will remember till Denis Leary’s “Rescue Me” crew returns to FX.

So that’s our show for today. Coming up on Friday we’ll feature the sunset from the following day, January 23. This is one, Chinese food lovers, that you won’t want to miss. So enjoy the lowest of tides, enjoy the fall and most importantly, enjoy the new TV season that began this week. In the words of Dick Vitale, “It’s TiVo city, baby.” We’ll catch on a crossing pattern. Aloha, Yankee Stadium fans.