Mobile, Alabama

Just when I thought I didn’t have a favorite photo for the year to enter in the PhotoFriday competition, I managed to shoot this one — the last sunset of 2004 over Mobile Bay. I’ll be heading back to Tuscaloosa tomorrow, and I have to admit that I am looking forward to returning.

I have shot 417 photographs since I arrived Dec. 23, and I suspect I will shoot close to 100 more at sunrise tomorrow if I manage to wake up in time. It’s nice to be back on the water again. Tuscaloosa has the Black Warrior River and Lake Tuscaloosa, along with a number of other small lakes and rivers, but there’s nothing like the bay. There are so many things that are so uniquely Mobile — the sea gulls that gather in shopping center parking lots on stormy days, the flannel-shirted men selling fresh oysters and shrimp from their truck beds, the endless views of infinity where the water meets the sky and fades into nothingness.

As a photographer, I have had the opportunity to experience my hometown in a way that I never did when I lived here, and for that I am grateful. This has been a rough year, filled with tumult and unrest. There have been illnesses and injuries, accidents and disappointments. It seems only fitting that the year should close on such a peaceful note. Here’s hoping that next year will go a little more smoothly.

Music of the day: Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding