road trip — california central coast

(don’t forget to check out part 2. There is a slideshow of all of the images from the trip here also)

So a couple of weeks ago, I went down to SoCal to visit family and spend a few days at the old homestead. I arranged things so that I could take a couple of days on the way back and go a bit of a road trip and relax and do some photography.

I’m trying to turn these trips into challenges, to use them to stretch my photography and to explore new areas or new techniques (or preferably both). One thing I’ve realized is that I’m very comfortable (and pretty good) at shooting the type of work I normally shoot but really uncomfortable away from those specific styles. Not a huge surprise, most folks are like that — but I feel that to really take my photography to the next level, I need to widen the types of photography I do and become capable and comfortable in a much more diverse set of photography formats. Push myself way out of my comfort zone, and then get comfortable there. (at the SAME time, honestly, photography is still one of those things I do to relax and recharge the batteries, and so there’s a tension here between never relaxing and never growing. These days, with everything that’s been going on, the needle is pointing further towards relaxing, but I need to change that up a bit).

I purposefully didn’t plan the photo trip until I got to SoCal, because I wanted to spend some time researching options and deciding what to do on the fly. With only two or three nights in a hotel, the options were somewhat restricted (no Bryce or Zion, for instance, because I’d spend too much time traveling and too little time on site). Part of the exercise here was to treat this as a photo assignment and do the research, choose the venues and the shooting plan — and then do it and see how the plan and the results match out and how well I adapt the plan to the conditions. It’s an attempt to simulate getting an assignment and then being able to understand how to carry it out.

I ended up having to decide on two ideas. One was to work up the 395 along the eastern Sierra and explore the Bishop to Bodie region (tioga pass, mammoth, bodie, etc). The other was to head up the coast and do some coastal shooting.

I ended up opting to stay on the coast for two reasons; first, I felt that a couple of nights in the eastern sierra was just too short for what I wanted to cover and I reducing the scope to fit the time available just made no sense. Since it’s been decades since I’ve been in that area, I’d need time to explore and scout as well as shoot, and I just felt I was trying to cram too much in (instead, I’m hoping I can take a trip out there for a few days after labor day. maybe. we’ll see. If not, it’s on the short list. But then, a birding trip to Salton Sea has been on my short list since 2006 and I still haven’t gotten there…)

I didn’t, however, want it to turn into another trip to the same places in Morro Bay, I knew there was a place in Pismo I wanted to go back and shoot, so I decided to overnight further south on the coast and then spend a full day shooting from the starting point into Morro bay, and then a second day in Morro and then take highway 1 home and stop in Point Lobos for a few hours of shooting.

One complication — a feature — is that along the coast, this time of year, it’s often foggy, grey and misty. In all, potentially a challenging shooting environment. That sealed the deal, let’s go find new stuff and go shoot it in the fog!

I ended up holing up for the night in Santa Maria, which was far enough north to minimize the travel needed before I started shooting, but far enough out that I was able to cover a fair amount of ground I’d never explored before hitting Morro Bay and more familiar territories. I chose two locations to explore: Guadalupe Dunes park for the possibility of some interesting dune formations, and Oso Flaco lake, because it’s a fairly well known birding site and I could accomplish a couple of things at the same time (perhaps). Adding in Pismo, that gave me two areas I’d researched but never visited, a third I knew about but had only visited for a short time a few years ago, and whatever caught my attention in the meantime.

I arrived near dinner time in Santa Maria and checked in and grabbed food — Santa Maria isn’t the most diverse culinary city in the universe, so I ended up at a Red Lobster (perfectly acceptable) followed by the starbucks for a coffee for dessert. And then went on a scouting drive. I drove about 40 miles E up the 166 towards the central valley looking for interesting stuff. One project I’ve been thinking of kicking off is a series on the california oak, looking for especially interesting trees and the remains of the fallen warriors. I’ve done a little shooting towards this, but haven’t really dedicated a lot of time to it. the trees on the 166, to my eye, were younger and just not very grizzled and not really all that interesting. One or two possible candidates but nothing I’ll prioritize going back for soon. Perhaps the 95 degree weather affected my judgement (it being a major heatwave in the state at the time….). Still, it was an interesting drive and exercise to explore for a purpose. But I really need to start keeping a formal scouting journal and a list of candidate locations for variious projects and potential shots…

Next morning I got up really early and got on the road and drove into Guadalupe and off to the dunes. I arrived — to fog.

Expected, but heavier than I had hoped. Guadalupe dunes looks like a fascinating place, but at 7 in the morning in the fog, it was me, a ranger, some really insane surfers and the sand. I spent some time trying various things, but ultimately, I wasn’t really happy with the results. the fog was heavy enough that the surf was effectively invisible (did I mention the surfers were insane?), and shooting birds in the fog just makes them look grey and uninteresting, at least with fog that heavy. I spent most of my time looking for interesting shooting options with the dunes, but just not finding many.

The sand just didn’t have much in the way of interesting textures for close up work, and the wide angle stuff in the fog was just — boring.

I do feel like I continue to struggle with this type of shot in general; there are a couple of things I need to focus on here. My lens setup doesn’t go wide enough for my tastes (I’ve talked about that previously here) but rather than blame it on “not the right gear”, I’m trying to push myself to figure out how to take interesting shots with what I have before succumbing to the “new toys” syndrome, because I really see this as a lack of technique and what I need to do is force myself to practice and work on this; if I did buy a wider lens or two, what I’d end up with are boring pictures set at 10mm instead of 28mm.

After that, I drove up highway 1 to Pismo, where things got better.

Laurie and I discovered Margo Dodd park in Pismo a few years ago when we were looking for a place to take a break during a drive back from visiting my family. It’s right on the water, a small grassy area with a few picnic tables — but it overlooks a wonderful rocky area, tidepools and some interesting vistas. I’ve always meant to go back and photograph there. it’s next to a rock where gulls and cormorants nest (and it turns out pigeon guillemots!) and I thought there were going to be some interesting opportunities. I also knew I’d run into brown pelicans, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, I can watch (and photograph) pelicans forever…

So I did. The fog was much lighter. it was late enough that the cormorants were fledged, but a few were still feeding young. I found a couple of fairly young gull chicks, but very little in the way of active nesting, it was all later than that. And pelicans flying everywhere in formation…

But that location was more than birds. Instead of closing off photography, the fog here gave me opportunities to create some interesting images. I especially like this one. If the fog were lighter, I think it would have been boring, it gave the tree just that right tough of mystery. If there were more fog, well, it just turns into a grey blog. This was what I was looking for when I decided to go up the coast and shoot in the fog.

Oh… astute readers will realize that I haven’t talked about Oso Flaco at all. When I arrived there, I realized that the location left my car a bit too exposed for my comfort level; with it fully packed and full of “stuff” and gear, I really wasn’t hot to let the car out of my sight to go hiking, so I aborted and filed it away for another trip, later. Especially given how foggy it was there…

So onwards towards Morro. And I’ll talk about Morro and the rest of the trip in the next posting.

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