Photographical Musings, Thoughts, and Stories
Last week I called up my friend and fellow photographer Jim Patterson to see if he felt like going shooting. I didn’t have whatfor in mind, so Jim suggested a place called Pebble Beach near Pescadero. We cruised up the coast, being buffeted by high winds the whole way. We got to the beach, and hopped out of the truck to scope out conditions, and that’s when we began doin’ the Panther Beach shuffle.
Boy, I must be a glutton for punishment for tonight I shot at Hole in the Wall Beach at high tide. The last time I did that, I had a serious accident. So how the heck did I find myself there again under similar conditions? Well . . .
A passing storm brought the promise of drama to our sunny shores here in Santa Cruz for the first time in about a week. The clear skies, along with the fact the my car has been in the shop, kept me from shooting for the longest time in a while: going on 9 days. NINE!! Yikes!
Anyway, got my car back from the shop and saw a whole world of intriguing clouds out over the ocean; nothing was going to keep me inside tonight. I checked the tide levels and saw that they were fairly high, which more or less ruled out Hole in the Wall Beach, aka my favorite place in the whole area. But somehow I still found myself pulling into the parking lot if only to “check it out.”
I tromped on down to the beach and saw that there was quite a lot of sand piled up since my last visit, which made the arch much easier to pass through. It was still a race against the waves back up around the side of the cliffs but a fair bit of sprinting, hooting, and hollering kept me ahead of the salt water.
I wasn’t sure where the best conditions for sunset would be so I clambered up onto the rocks at the south end of the beach where there are a million and one things to shoot. And boy did I have a frikkin’ field day out there.
The lighting conditions were constantly changing and I shot composition after composition. I almost filled up my memory card, which is something I never do any more. Towards the end of the evening I was shooting a massive storm cell ruddily illuminated by the sun’s last rays when a sneaker wave ricocheted off of a rock 40 feet in front of me and somehow flew backwards through the air to land entirely on my chest.
Ahh, sigh. It isn’t a night at Hole in the Wall if you don’t come home soaking wet.
Should be lots of sweet shots to share here over the next few days. Thanks for looking!
~Josh
Early April was an incredibly rainy time here in Santa Cruz. April 2nd was one of those days so rainy I didn’t even bother to check the conditions for sunset because of the steady downpour. Around 6:45 pm though, I heard something: Silence. All of a sudden it was too quiet! I looked outside and sure enough, the rain had stopped. And what’s more, the clouds were breaking up and some glow was beginning. So I really quickly threw my camera gear in my bag, hopped in the car, and jetted down to Natural Bridges, arriving just as the setting sun threw some lovely pastel colors out onto the tail end of the storm clouds.
So far since moving to Santa Cruz I’ve been avoiding Natural Bridges simply because it is such a highly-photographed beach. But lately I’ve been wanting to add a Natural Bridges shot to my portfolio and this night ended up being a perfect opportunity since NB is the beach closest to my house and I didn’t have time to get anywhere else. When I got down to the beach, I found a mid-level tide which kept me pretty far from the classic arch. But that ended up being just fine since backing way off was the only way I could get the arch and the sky color in the same shot. I loved the way the arch looked against the long exposure waves and I think I might have an infatuation brewing with that. Now I just need another night with a nice sunset and a bit of a lower tide. Can’t wait!
~Josh
The silver lining to an otherwise crummy day
I spent the past weekend at an outdoor art show in Pacific Grove, CA. Well, that’s not really true; I spent last Saturday at the show. Sunday was unofficially canceled due to intense downpours and fierce winds. But even Saturday was not without weather problems. Cloudy, cold, and gusty: those were the conditions, and they did not make for a terribly enjoyable show. Attendance was low and sales were slow. Some vendors even lost money because their merchandise blew over and broke. Around four in the afternoon the promoter came by and said that an emergency storm warning had been issued and that Pacific Grove could expect 40-50 mph winds overnight. 40 to 50 mph?!?! Goodbye canopy! That’s when I decided to pack it in and not worry about coming back the next day.
But all that disappointment did come with a silver lining: got to meet up with a friend of mine and go out to dinner. After food we cruised down to Asilomar Beach for a very quick shoot as the setting sun just barely sent some light peeking over the incoming storm.
After previously complaining about how hard I found composing in Asilomar, I’m happy to say that this composition jumped right out at me as soon as we hit the beach. And how nice it was to be shooting light-colored rocks, rather than the dark-as-night stuff we have in Santa Cruz. Made the exposure a bit easier to manage.
Anyway, I was pretty happy with the result and the silver lining it brought to an otherwise disappointing day.
~Josh
Many people might assume that photographers are extremely lucky because somehow we’re always in the right place at the right time. But the truth is that luck rarely has anything to do with. Rather, great photographs are often forged out of planning, understanding, patience, and diligence. Such was the case for a recent shot I took near Santa Cruz:
There’s this fantastic shelf just north of Four Mile Beach in Santa Cruz, and on this shelf is this cool, pseudo-seastack. And when the tide is right the waves come in, crash against the rocks and send jets of foamy wash around the pseudo-stack to cascade back into the ocean. It’s pretty excellent to watch.
I’ve been trying to get a good shot of this phenomenon for awhile now – ever since I found this shelf in the first place. But the conditions have to be just right in order for the photo to happen: the tide has to be higher than 3 feet, otherwise the water doesn’t come up high enough to go around the stack. At the same time, the tide has to be lower than about 4 feet, otherwise the ledge you stand on to see the waterfall from gets doused repeatedly by the waves. And you also need some nice sunset color to the southeast.
With the limits imposed by the tides, there’s only a window of a few days about every two weeks when you can attempt this shot. And if the sunset doesn’t cooperate during that window, well then you’re out of luck and have to try again later. I visited this shelf no fewer than five times before the conditions finally all came together for me and I was able to capture this image.
So you can see it wasn’t luck that led to this photo, but rather an understanding of the necessary conditions, and the patience and diligence required to return to this spot over and over until I got the result I wanted.
~Josh
Poseidon, the god of the sea, has a pretty sweet 100,000-inch movie screen with a trillion watt projector which plays all your favorite hits. He’s got a pretty sweet sound system too and man, when the bass is booming you can feel it throughout your whole body. Last night he invited me over to watch a classic sunset, which was nice of him because that’s one of my all time favorite pieces of entertainment. We both forgot the snacks though, so I went home hungry, but I didn’t really mind since the light show was so good.
The beauty of Big Sur is phenomenal. Towering cliffs, wave-dashed rocks, and graceful bridges span the coast from Carmel south to San Simeon. One of the most iconic features of Big Sur is located in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park: McWay Falls, a graceful, 80-foot cascade that at high tide falls directly into the ocean. When this land was granted to California as a state park, it was under the condition that the cove which shelters McWay Falls would be made off-limits to the general public so that the breathtaking view could be enjoyed by all but trampled by none.
God, if there is a God, is surely a practical joker.
It’s easy to come to this conclusion when you are a photographer because there is never any shortage of funny, annoying, and exasperating things that happen to you when in pursuit of an image.
Spent the afternoon as usual: peering out the window to check on conditions down out the coast. Since I had missed the fantastic sunset on Friday, I was especially antsy to get some shooting in, so when I saw some clouds building on the horizon, I hopped in the car and zoomed away down to the beach!
After some close calls at Four Mile and Laguna Creek where I almost stopped to shoot, I ended up at my old standby: Panther / Hole in the Wall Beach
Down at the shore I was immediately impressed by the massive waves, which were bigger than I’d ever seen them at this beach. (And if that doesn’t foreshadow the events to come this evening, I don’t know what would.)
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So you’re sitting at home, looking out on a 100%, completely overcast day, and thinking:
“Great, I’m glad it’s cloudy because I need to get some work done. Got my first art show of the year coming up in a couple of weeks and there’s a huge amount of prep to be done.”
And then a little voice in your head says: “Hey, want to go out shooting at Four Mile Beach?”
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