Castle Strong

Willie and I have been exploring some different beaches along the San Francisco Bay Area coastline. Typically we've always explored the Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz coastline. The beaches here are beautiful, with wonderful sea stacks, interesting textures and nice water motion. But it also requires an hour or more of driving and it's been photographed a ton. The first time Willie and I photographed this particular beach we had a stunning sunset. It was a low tide and we were able to walk out on the beach to get close to some of the sea stacks. We came away with several portfolio photos that night. We went back a second time but the tide was higher and had to stay above on the cliffs, looking at the action down lower. I told Willie that we never needed to go back. But of course, one Tuesday afternoon with a slightly risky forecast, we found ourselves heading back to the same beach. Since it was a fairly short drive, the risk was low. We could always bail and drive to a different area if it was going to be too foggy. This evening had an even lower tide than our first night. That meant a different area of the beach was accessible, which had been underwater on our previous visits. From this different angle the sea stacks looked completely different. I was drawn to this one, which looked like a castle with all the spikes sticking out of it. The sky didn't completely burn like we hoped, but it did get dramatic enough to find a rock to get some slow motion wave action. Nikon D850 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 15mm, f/20, 1/6 sec, ISO 64

Mt. Mussel

It's handy to have a photography location that's easy to get to. If the forecast looks fairly risky, then we don't lose much if we go out to shoot and it turns out to be a dud. Despite having photographed this beach more than I'd care to, it's one of the shortest drives to get to a beach, and we found ourselves back at the beach. The forecast was calling for a nice sunset, *if* the fog would stay away. Willie had been watching the fog all afternoon. It would come in, then back off, come in, then back off. So when it backed off about an hour and a half before sunset, we decided to risk it. Things would be less risky if we went further south but we didn't want to do the longer drive since there was a chance it would be too foggy down there too. We arrived to find there was a paragliding party going on. There must have been a hundred people in the sky and more taking off as we walked down to the beach! The fog looked like it might back off as we got closer to sunset. At times the light snuck through and was absolutely gorgeous, with its golden glow. A very low tide meant we could get down to a beach that had been underwater on all our previous visits. I found a neat sea stack to photograph for a while and was about to pack up when Willie showed me this little spot. A low patch of clouds on the horizon started to light up with color, which you can see in between the sea stacks, and we thought the sky might explode. I grabbed the camera and stood in the middle of the waves so I could capture the waves sucking the eye into the sea-stack mountains. The sky never truly erupted but it was still a nice sunset. Nikon D850 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/14, 1.3 sec, ISO 64