Scripps Pier

Author's Comments

The pier does not belong to the public and that is part of why it works. You cannot walk it. You can only stand beneath it, on the sand, looking up through the forest of concrete pilings as they march out into the Pacific. The geometry is severe and almost industrial, and at the right hour it stops feeling like infrastructure and starts feeling like a cathedral. Winter is when I come. The summer crowds at La Jolla Shores have thinned, the light goes lower and warmer earlier in the day, and the Pacific takes on that particular cold blue that the long lens loves. Walk north from the Shores along the sand. The pier appears slowly and then all at once, and the closer you get the more the pilings begin to compress against each other and create the leading lines that make this place worth the trouble. The classic shot is sunset through the pilings, looking west. It is classic for a reason. But I would argue for the ten minutes after the sun has dropped, when the sky still holds color and the wet sand under the pier becomes a mirror, and a long exposure turns the surf into something closer to fog. Bring a tripod. Bring a neutral density filter if you have one. The exposure I keep returning to is somewhere around fifteen seconds, just long enough to soften the water without losing the texture entirely. It is a quiet place, mostly. The researchers come and go above you and you are alone with the pilings and the tide.

Gallery