A Wave of Enthusiasm
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- Written by Kris Legates
For skimboarding fans and participants, Dewey Beach is the place to be
By Lynn R. Parks
Photograph by Dan Cook
From the August 2021 issue
Sydney Pizza has one particular skimboarding move of which she is especially proud, and which she likes to perform during competitions. To start the “front-side, rail-grab bash,” she’s “goofy-footed,” Pizza explains, which means that she’s standing on her skimboard with her left foot behind her right.
“The front of my body is toward the ocean,” she continues, hence the “front-side” in the maneuver’s name. Bending over, “I grab the rail [or edge of the board] and turn and put all my energy into an oncoming wave. I kind of bash it. My goal is to take the momentum from hitting the wave and come back onto the beach. And when I do that, I want to be standing upright on the board, with a huge spray of water behind me.”
Pizza, who lives near Rehoboth Beach, has been skimboarding since she was 6 years old. She started competing 10 years ago at the age of 8, at the Zap Pro/Am World Championships of Skimboarding, the final event of the Skim USA Tour held in August in Dewey Beach. Back then, because there were no women’s classes in her age group, she had to compete against the boys. “I think I was eliminated in the first round,” she says.
Coastal Creativity
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- Written by Kris Legates
Form meets function in the gifted hands of local artisans
By Bill Newcott
Photograph by Carolyn Watson
From the July 2021 issue
Rob Fullerton owns every guitar he’s ever made, which is to say he owns seven guitars, ranging from a little parlor model made of Nicaraguan rosewood to a big, impressively resonant mahogany masterpiece that would look (and sound) at home in the arms of dreadnought aficionado Neil Young.
“There they are,” he says, gazing with obvious pride on his wasp-waisted children, arranged neatly on stands against a wall of his basement.
An awkward silence follows, because we both know I’m about to ask him what he’s going to do next, and we also both know what the answer is going to be: “Build another guitar.”
There have always been those fortunate few among us who seem capable of taking a few sticks of wood, or a pile of cloth, or a pen and paper and creating from those elements not just serviceable objects, but actual works of functional art. Such folks personify the difference between a craftsperson and an artisan, and while there’s no reason why coastal Delaware should have more than its fair share of the latter, the evidence seems to suggest that yes, yes we do.
And we’re not making any apologies.
Photography Tips
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- Written by Kris Legates
Making, not just taking, winning photographs
By Terry Plowman
From the October 2007 issue
Successful photographers follow the advice of legendary nature photographer Ansel Adams that "You don't take a photograph, you make it."
The judges in the first Delaware Beach Life photo contest (winners of which are featured on the previous pages) noticed that many entries had promise, but for one reason or another, fell a little short of prizewinner status.
So, here — with comments from the judges and permission from the photographers who let us use their entries as examples — we offer some tips on how to make a great photograph. (See the images on the following pages for more exampes.)