Crystal Cove State Park - Rocky Bight

Author's Comments

Rocky Bight is one of those places where the geology does most of the work. The outcroppings angle into the water at exactly the right pitch for a long exposure, and at low tide the pools between them hold the sky in fragments. I tend to shoot here in the last forty minutes before sunset, when the rocks go from gray to a kind of warm umber and the cottages behind me catch the last of the light against their white clapboard. The historic district matters to the picture even when it is not in the frame. There is something about knowing those cottages have been standing since the thirties, watching this same coastline through the same weather, that slows me down when I am working. I shoot less. I wait longer between frames. Winter is underrated here. The light comes in lower and harder, the crowds drop off, and the tidepools get more interesting as the storms reshape what is exposed. Check the tide chart before you drive down. A minus tide will give you twice the foreground, and the leading lines through the rocks toward the horizon are the photograph worth waiting for. A ten-stop filter and a tripod let the water go silk while the rock stays sharp. That contrast is the whole image.

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