So Yesterday, Yet Still Here Today

According to the Lonely Planet travel guide, Hermosa Beach is the beach volleyball capital of Los Angeles County. Hermosa means "beautiful" in Spanish, and the place has no shortage of buff and bronzed beach bunnies. There's also plenty of plastic, despite Hermosa's ranking among the loveliest of Los Angeles's beaches. The image you see here -- a gleaming shrine to man's indelible presence in nature -- was captured on Hermosa Beach in 2005. It's a cigarette lighter: an accessory that for a California hardbody is totally yesterday. How fitting that Andy Hughes chose it as one of his subjects for Dominant Wave Theory, a collection of still-life images of plastic that appear as sad relics of our throwaway culture, washed up and forgotten on quiet beaches around the world.