Bigsur
47 creative works found
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Taken at Pebble Beach, California. October, 2007.
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While you don’t see the pink ones everywhere, you find poppies in every single place where they feel like popping up. They are literally everywhere in Big Sur. I’d never seen darker (pink) once before so it was a treat to find a new variety of California’s State Flower – a weed that grows everywhere all the time just like the weed that it is. LOL!
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This unidentified fungus poked its head thru hard and dry dirt. It was all that fragile but it was significantly less hard than the ground it broke up to see the sunlight. One of the really cool things about this shroom is that light came through its pores and glowed a weird yellowish colour that you can see a bit in this shot. (I had the computer verify the colour so if it’s incorrect, please send all your complaints to Toshiba’s laptop division. :-D) As usual, I am always loathe to ‘pick’ the fruit of a mushroom; fungi seem more animal fauna than flora to me for some reason. But I was able to distinguish a few of the features of this toughie: its veil is still mostly in place but where it was parting, the hint of a fluted surface peeked thru; I couldn’t get the camera far enough under it to see what the underside showed but there wasn’t any ridging I could see with my head in the dirt, and; there is the slightest hint of a veil from the stem to the cap. Being in major heat, completely unsheltered by anything at all, on the bitter edge of a 300 foot drop, this little wonder of nature stood completely alone but who knows what other chunks of dirt were being lifted close by as the fungus’s other blooms fought their way to the surface?
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One of the most beautiful sights I visited in Big Sur was McWay Cove. The sea was two colours and just active enough to make the sandy beach foamy. The falls was full and cascading down onto sand without making so much as a puddle to mark it’s arrival. And Saddle Rock was showing why it is so named. If not for the fact that the beach is inaccessible to all but kayakers, it would have been my favourite location. With the sand that saturated from the falls, would be become ‘quick’ enough to try to grab me or would I be able to walk under a falls? A question for only dreams to answer.
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A completely irrelevant, completely useless title to an image of a bird landing on the goo of a beach. Did the bird mind the goo? Nope. Did I mind the goo? Well, sorta. Did it stop me from taking this shot of a bird flying a few inches off the ground while looking for the best place to land in the goo? Nope. Go figure. :-)
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What more can be said for the beauty of Big Sur’s beaches and ocean’s waves? The horizon may seen unleveled but it’s actually perfectly level. What’s slanted is the fog bank; that makes the waves and shoreline seem to add to an off-kilter photograph. After reading some contest reviews, I thought I’d better make sure I cleared that one up in advance. :-D
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This time, I think I got a better shot and edit of the very famous arch at Big Sur’s Pfeiffer Beach, where the sunlight explodes thru for about two weeks a year. With the tide coming in, it creates a huge fan of water when emptying out on this side.
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The Rocky Creek Bridge near Carmel, California, is one of several arch bridges that comprise the scenic California Highway 1.
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The spectacular Northern California coastline of Big Sur. Steinbeck country. Awesome scenery to behold and great hiking to be had. Locate this place and learn more at Trailspotting.com
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Taken at the ‘Super Secret Sunset Site’, this is a touch of one of the less spectacular Big Sur sunsets. The sun didn’t set on the true horizon; it set on a fog bank well offshore that was so thick it acted as solid as mountain. Obviously, fog isn’t flat so instead of getting a relatively level horizon, I got a weird blend of level and humpy, solid and semi-transparent. But the thrill was in the chase… This location is one of the most photographed sites in Big Sur, tho not as easily recognizable in this framing. The beach is pristine, the rock formations stunning and dramatic, and the sunsets… Well, for a few weeks of the year, the sun sets in a way that creates an extremely artistic vision that one MUST see to truly appreciate. The trick is to know when and how to find this place. It’s clearly unmarked. LOL! For it being as fantastic as it is and not to have even the hint of a sign telling you where it is has to be indicative of very protective residents and a tourist industry that doesn’t need this site’s exact location well known. And the season for seeing the visual miracle is short and rare on a foggy coastline. If you get it all to come together just once tho, you will know exactly what Henry Miller meant when he commented that this was what God intended for a coastline to be. About the shot – There were numerous photographer in this spot because they all knew what was possibly coming and not the sound of a casual tourist to be found. (My guide knew; I didn’t). The area closes at sunset so your window of opportunity is a bit slim to say the least. So getting set up for one of four events is the hard part and getting set up for ALL four possible events is a challenge for the serious photographers only. You need to be able to aim four ways in seconds, know the timing of the waves, know how to get your camera’s ISO adjusted to catch what you want four different ways, deal with sand so thick that the vital tripod will ruin your composition so subtly you won’t know it was lost, and juggle noise reduction (on the digital cameras). In other words, catching all four events is a task for a Master Photographer because luck won’t cut it. I gave up after about 30 minutes of flicking back and forth between shots, copying what the experts did who were standing next to me but hopelessly outgunned with gear and technique. I was missing the two shots I had a chance for and fouling up the timing on the third. The forth wasn’t gonna happen and the pros knew that but didn’t let on. The sunset was the only “easy” shot and it required ISO changes, shutter speed changes, and a great eye for colour. I knew how to do the first with the D80, I bracketed exposures for the second, and I had my guide for the third so I got the sunset and waves fairly well a number of times. The tide rushing in over the huge rocks and thru the tunnels and caves took timing I couldn’t figure out so I just shot a couple hundred shots and hoped for the best, using changes in shutter speed to capture the waves or blend them into cream. Unfortunately, the slower the shot, the brighter it gets so one must work with aperture quickly or get burned out shots between completely black ones as you over-adjust both ways since bracketing doesn’t give enough options. If you’re a professional photographer, this is your location. If you’re an amature wanting to try your hand at the really hard stuff, this is your location. If you love seeing God’s Glory exploding at you in three directions at once, enough to make you gasp from sensory overload, this is your location. If you’re a guy like me who wants it all, this location is where you will see what you’ve got to capture what the REAL MASTER laid out before you. Let it be a challenge to you.
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Well, I’ll be. They come in purple too? Actually, roses seem to be one of the most mutated plants on the planet, being made into so many varieties that I bet they can’t even talk to each other at night when we’re not listening. Imagine the confusion when 1000 different languages are all being whispered at once and nobody’s answering…
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Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park: This is an 80-foot waterfall that drops from Big Sur’s granite cliffs into the sand, as seen from the Overlook Trail. The beach is accessible by water only, tho many dummies have tried to get there from the trail. To be honest, assess from the trail COULD be made possible if the park service ever deems it OK. But the land immediately under the trail is inhabited by condors as well as delicate native plants. I still need to see my images more closely but between Cathy and I, I think we got some shots of one of the condors. Getting the shot I wanted was quite the challenge. To get the waterfall ‘frozen’ was easy with multiple camera settings. But to get it with the beautiful ‘flowing texture’ of slower shutter speeds either cause flare from the sunlit portions of the beach or excessive digital noise when aiming directly at the water. The air SEEMED clear but there was enough mist in it to make many shots look excessively hazy at slower shutter speeds. I looked at the official photograph of the falls from the Big Sur website and that photographer didn’t even try, preferring to just wait for good overhead light and blow out most of the image from the heavy white surf. I finally settled for three distinct shots of the waterfall, the first being the one seen here with the water basically frozen in its fall. The second was the entire Saddle Rock Beach area showing the coastline. The third was the tighter telephoto shot of as little more than the falls as I could get so I could control camera speed and aperture with some vague sense of knowing what I was doing. LOL! There were people all along the trail with both disposable cameras and compact digitals who were trying to get pictures of this waterfall, none of which had as much trouble as I had; none of which came close to what a DSLR can capture either. But next time I’ll have a better filter setup to make the shot as close to perfect as possible.
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No, this isn’‘t what The Who were singing about and they’d probably be a bit annoyed for my referencing their awesome tune to a dilapidated ‘woody’ converted into a cafe. But what the heck. If got your attention, right? LOL! Yes, there’s a tiny cafe in this authentic bus and the wooden structure behind it is the only way an employee could get behind the counter; a doorway is cut out of the back side of the bus. The tires are rubber but only on the front side. The hubcaps are until you get close enough to see they are basically tin plates painted the right colour. The the bus’s original pedals and gear shift are still inside, and wood paneling is beautiful, and most of the glass is obviously older than dirt. Inside is a delightful array of “absolutely nothing you need and a lot of what you want only after you see it here” except the ice cream. NOBODY fails to looks for ice cream in strange places. The surf board may be old too but I’m sure it won’t be stolen to ride the life-threatening waves I saw in Bug Sur. If there was a good wave, there were beautifully sculptured jagged rocks awaiting your return to shore. I didn’t see JAWS but we ALL know he’s out there somewhere. And with an audience of hundreds of sea gulls to squawk out a deafening chorus of bird laughter, one might think twice about doing a wipeout for their comic amusement. Besides, you bite it hard and die, they will be the first to “liberate” some of that fat you’ve been trying to lose for ages but didn’t even consider donating to some water rats’ gullets. G-r-o-s-s! Anyway, the bus is hella cool and right off Highway 1 in the heart of Big Sur, California.
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I did see signs of life so I didn’t just leave him there not knowing. :-)
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A fire roared thru a section of Big Sur, here on the way to the unforgiving Stellar Jay. As new life took hold to reclaim the open land, HUGE clover took over most of the semi-sunny places. Clover 6 – 7 inches tall is NOT the stuff dad used to carefully cut in the front yard a half century ago; this stuff is barely recognizable unless you take the time to really look at it (which I didn’t and the guide had to point out). It created some stunning views, all of them marked off as protected so they would get a chance to grow because they were easily just as fragile as the 2-inch variety. I’ve seen many, many acres of land burned by fire and I’ve seen many of the flora that returns first. Never have I seen clover in acres of open space between burnt out husks of giant redwoods. If you believe in fairies, you’re apt to find them here. :-) PS This was another test shot for demonstrating depth of field for my guide who was using the Nikon D60 for this trip. When I saw how beautiful the scene was, I regretted having just bent down and snapped off one single shot to display on the D80’s display.
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Yet another shot that went to hell and became am abstract. LOL!
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This time, a black and white of some of the more dramatic fog formations as they meet the coastal hills and crash there, unable to rise over them because of their coldness.
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Because of the massive fires in California, this is what Sacramento’s sun looks like. The smoke in the city is more intense & thicker than winter fog and overcast. People are dropping like flies from respiratory illnesses, making the hospitals’ staffs work like crazy to keep up. We’ve been asked not to barbecue or burn anything at all until the air clears but as of now, it looks like it might take a week of choking on this unhealthy particulate matter. Today, the radio warned people to make sure their windows and fresh air intakes were closed on their cars because that was a way to get a much higher dose of smoke faster. Then to top it off for me, my apartment air conditioner make a nasty set of sparks and completely fried itself while I was turning it on Tuesday. I’d have opened it up and tried to fix what’s probably no more serious than a short in the ancient ‘on’ switch but this guy is running on 220 watts – that’s nothing I choose to mess with. I don’t mind getting zapped a few times with 110 – 120 watts and rarely turn off the power when dealing with them. (I sorta like seeing if I can do something from beginning to end without experiencing the slightest tingle. Hehehe!). Oh well, the smoke has dropped the daytime temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit so I need it less for heat than filtered smoke. LOL!
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Another image of the beautiful Big Sur coastline. This photograph is a bit unusual tho as there are many more craggy cliffs than sandy beaches the far south of Monterey. The odd stratification of the sky is apparently natural. I’m not sure how it was created, maybe just a touch of fog, but I could see it with my eyes on all the raw shots straight from the camera.
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Big Sur, CA ~ one of the rock formations that will survive the firestorms as it has survived all firestorms in the past. Some things are timeless
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Another shot from the Big Sur area and another wooden structure we can only pray is still intact.
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Oil on Linen / I posted this earlier but this is the first actual full view of the painting and a far better photograph of same. / Rick Gregory is a local boy, granite sculptor who works in huge monolithic pieces some with waterfalls, bit of a wild man. On the winning America’s Cup team years ago. They landed in Brazil, and as he recalled, absolutely owned the country. At one of a zillion celebratory parties he met and then married a Miss Brazil, travels between there and California. Gallery in Big Sur, work all over the globe. / I thought him Apollo like, and painted him that way, fist full of blueprints. He does work large.
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The feat of engineering that is Bixby Bridge, gateway to the coastline and redwood forests of Big Sur. Locate this place and learn more at Trailspotting.com
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