Moonlight State Beach

Author's Comments

Late September is when I trust this beach most. The summer crowds have thinned, the marine layer burns off earlier in the day, and the sun drops at an angle that does specific work on the bluffs to the south. Moonlight faces west in the most generous way a Southern California beach can face west, which is to say the sun goes down into the Pacific without obstruction, and on the right evening the whole beach turns the color of warm sandstone for about twelve minutes. The lifeguard towers are the gift. They are simple shapes against a complicated sky, and at golden hour they read almost as silhouettes if you expose for the water behind them. I have made the same composition a dozen times and it still works - tower, surfer paddling out, sun low enough to flare gently along the rail. Walk south at low tide. The rock formations down toward Swami's are where the beach stops being a town beach and starts being something older and quieter. What I have learned is to arrive an hour before the sun actually sets. The light before golden hour is when the surfers are still out and the bluffs are still lit from the front, and that is often the photograph rather than the postcard sunset everyone waits for. The postcard comes too, if you stay. But the hour before is the one I keep returning for.

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