ABT UNK: August 2026

Monday, August 24, 2026

Happy Birthday, My Love

Mark Gresham would have turned 85 today. This photo is from 50 years ago - taken sometime in or before November 1976, the processing date on the color slide it is from. All of the slides on the roll were taken at a beach in the Corpus Christi area, probably on Padre Island or Mustang Island.

Monday, August 17, 2026

August 17, 1983: "The day before the hurricane"

Mark sent me the mounted and matted photograph pictured below in December 2003, when I was living in Edmonds, Washington.

Below the photograph, he wrote,

The day before the hurricane

Corpus Christi, Tex. 1983

and signed it with his first initial and last name. The same information is written on the back of the photograph. He also included the following note:

The black-and-white photo underlying the image was shot on Ilford 35 millimeter film at McGee Beach on Corpus Christi Bay. Here is another print from the same negative:

Mark used Marshall's Photo Pencil Set to color the photograph. Two books in his collection that he might have used for advice were Handcoloring Photographs by James McKinnis, and The official Marshall's handcoloring guide & gallery: The tools & techniques of handcoloring using Marshall's materials by Grace & George Schaub. Below is a photo of Mark's handcoloring supplies, which I still have. They include a set of Marshall's Photo Oils, which were mixed in the palette pictured, and applied with a variety of tools like retouching brushes, Q-tips, and toothpicks and skewers wrapped with cotton from cotton balls.

I sent Mark a Christmas card after receiving this, and in the letter I enclosed (he saved the card, letter, AND envelope), I asked if it was "from Hurricane Alicia...? I know that hit in Galveston around August 18. Or was it Barry that hit south of Brownsville 10 days later?"

I didn't get an answer, then or later, but I'm pretty sure it was Alicia, meaning the photograph was probably taken on August 17. Below is a photograph taken from the VISSR instrument onboard the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) GOES-5 satellite of Hurricane Alicia on August 17, 1983, at 6:30pm CDT (Central Daylight Time). At the time this image was captured, Alicia was a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained wind speeds of 110 mph. The lower left part of its outer bands are over the Corpus Christi area, accounting for the clouds in Mark's photograph, which was shot looking towards the northeast - where the hurricane was strengthening.

Hurricane Alicia on August 17, 1983, at 6:30pm CDT [cropped] / The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Alicia was the first hurricane to make landfall on the United States since Hurricane Allen struck South Texas in August 1980. Allen did a lot of damage in Corpus Christi, and Mark spent a lot of time dealing with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) afterwards. So the city was pretty nervous about Alicia, as it developed rapidly from a tropical depression in the western Gulf of Mexico on August 15. Originally it was heading due west, straight at Corpus Christi. On August 16 at 11am CDT, a gale warning and hurricane watch was issued from Corpus Christi to Grand Isle, Louisiana.

By 8pm CDT that same day, Alicia had become a Category 1 hurricane, and a hurricane warning was issued from Corpus Christi to Morgan City, Louisiana. By this point, it had turned more clearly to the northwest towards Galveston. The eye of the storm, by then a Category 3, crossed Galveston Island about 25 miles southwest of the city at 2am CDT on August 18.

The hurricane warning for Corpus Christi was lifted at 11am that same day. Effects of the storm were minimal there (not so in Galveston, Houston, and surrounding areas). Highest sustained winds were measured at 16 mph on August 17 at 4:50pm CDT, with no peak gust recorded. No rain or flooding or tornadoes, no beach erosion, tides 1-2 feet on Gulf of Mexico beaches, "maybe one foot in the inland bays." In fact, the Corpus Christi Prelimenary [sic] and Final Report on Hurricane Alicia from the National Weather Service further stated that "on the 18th the circulation from Alicia brought in southwesterly winds and we had the hottest day in 5 years in Corpus Christi. It was 101 degrees." Corpus Christi did okay, compared to the report from the Galveston National Weather Service office.

It's possible Mark took this photograph with the approach of Hurricane Barry on August 28 - but I think that is unlikely. A gale warning and hurricane watch was issued for the coast between Brownsville and Port O'Connor (north of Corpus Christi), but a hurricane warning was not issued for the area north of Port Mansfield (which is south of Corpus Christi). The storm track stayed south, and a satellite image from the storm's peak intensity (Category 1) while making landfall in Northern Mexico on August 28 shows little cloud cover in the Corpus Christi area.

Mark's son Drew also has a handcolored copy of this image framed and hanging in his home.

Thursday, August 6, 2026

August 6-10, 2003: Mark's Oregon Photo Trip

Above: Oregon Sand Dunes, August 2003 / © Mark Gresham

I've been sorting through some of Mark's files and looking at his negatives and contact sheets lately, and I found more information about the photograph above.

In his files were details about the workshop Mark attended where he took this photograph (and the others in this post). It was conducted by nature photographer Charles Campbell, who was apparently living in Eugene, Oregon, at the time. The workshop was called "Magnificent Seascapes" and was held twice that summer of 2003 on the central Oregon coast. Mark registered for the session running August 6-10, a Wednesday through Sunday. The workshop cost $675 and only six students could enroll. From the online description:

"Highlights: Photograph star fish, sea stacks, sea lions, sand dunes and coastal seascapes on the Central Oregon coast. This photo-rich field expedition includes Cape Arago, Shore Acres Park, Bandon Beach Sea Stacks, Heceta Head, Cape Blanco and the Umpqua Sand Dunes. We'll also shoot some fabulous waterfalls at Golden and Silver Falls State Park."

Campbell sent out nine pages of information in advance, most about recommended equipment and other supplies. Attendees were responsible for their own hotels and meals. Campbell recommended spending the first two nights at Capt. John's Motel in Charleston on Coos Bay. The Shooting Star Motel in Bandon, further south on the Oregon coast on US Hwy 101, was recommended for the final two nights.

Sometime in 2004, Mark sent me a mounted and matted print from this workshop. (He cut his own mats with a Logan 40” Intermediate Mat Cutter Model 401 that I still have.) The matted image Mark sent me was (I am pretty sure) from the Umpqua Sand Dunes. As you can see from his mat of the image below, he simply titled it "Oregon Sand Dunes 2003" and signed with his first initial and last name. If there was a note accompanying this photo, unfortunately, I did not keep it.

Above: "Oregon Sand Dunes 2003" matted / © Mark Gresham

Below: Detail on the back of the print of "Oregon Sand Dunes"

On the back of the print, Mark wrote the information above. "Exp" is short for exposure. My daughter Diane now has the Bronica camera and its lenses and other accessories (more about that camera in a future post).

Mark primarily used his Bronica SQ-Ai large format camera on this trip, which he'd just purchased (used) on June 24. These pictures were shot with Fuji NPC-160 color negative film (discontinued the following year, 2004) and Agfa Optima 200 color negative film (discontinued in 2005). He also took some of the same shots with two black-and-white negative films for the same camera (in separate film backs): Kodak 125PX (Plus-X - discontinued in 2011) and Ilford SFX 3748 (commonly known as Ilford SFX 200, commonly known as Ilford SFX 200, still available).. He may have processed the black-and-white film himself, at his darkroom at home. He had at least one other camera with him with color slide film (recommended for the class).

His slides, contact sheets, and negatives show images of Golden Falls and Silver Falls (albeit with low flows, since it was August), the Bandon Beach sea stacks, the Cape Blanco Lighthouse, tide pools and beach scenes, and what I think are the Umpqua Dunes area. There are also images on the same films of Wizard Island at Crater Lake National Park (which he must have visited on his own, perhaps driving to and from his then-home in California, or to/from an airport closer to the workshop, or perhaps even a visit to his sister Ann near Husum, Washington, just north of Oregon across the Columbia River).

Here are some of the other photos he took on this trip, scanned from the original negatives except for the Wizard Island image, which was scanned from the original contact sheet (because I couldn't get the color right from the negative).