Life’s a Beach Vol. 2

I love photographing glass blowers. It’s difficult to make someone look cool when they’re painting or sculpting because the physical process tends to be subtle.

But glass blowers, they’re kinetic. They wield blow torches, long rods, clamps and sand that’s hot enough to melt your face. It’s difficult to not make that look cool.

I visited the Orange Beach Art Center on the Alabama Gulf Coast and got to watch visiting artist Sam Cornman work.

 And what could make this moment of artistic creation more photogenic? How about adding an adorable child or four?

I also went on a dolphin-watching cruise. Captain Bill Mitchell of Cetacean Cruises promises you will see dolphins on his tours. He can do this because the bottlenose dolphins of Wolf Bay are homebodies and will live most of their lives in a 10-mile area.

Granted, just because you see a dolphin (and we saw a lot) doesn’t mean you’ll snap a good photo of them.

Captain Bill is also a repository of useful dolphin facts. For example, male dolphins don’t help raise the babies. But females will have another female that acts as a “nanny.” She helps with every aspect of the child rearing, even lactating so the child can also feed from it.

Final thought: King Neptune’s is an unassuming shrimp shack that borders a Domino’s Pizza, but it has the best gumbo I’ve ever eaten in my life. It also has some stellar Royal Red shrimp…

and a dangerously delicious fried cheesecake.

Yeah, fried cheesecake.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Today is the 50th anniversary for two of the journalists with me on this press trip.

Happy anniversary Susan and Marshall. Keep shinin’, you crazy diamonds.