Even the middle of the day on the Pacific Coast Highway is breathtaking. The marine layer has rolled off the water and into the mountains, capping them with a low smoky halo. The views are breathtaking, and I want to pull off around each new bend, and especially when we get to the Bixby Canyon Bridge, which is but a speck in this panorama. (A closer shot is included below.) The Bixby Canyon Bridge has inspired many artists, songwriters, etc. At one point it was the tallest and longest span bridge in the state of California, and the engineering feats taken to build it were monumental.
This photograph, one of the rare colored ones that I prefer to the monochrome, has always looked more like a painting to me than a photo. I have gotten closer to where I plan and pose photos with an artistic mind over the course of the last few years, and as such my ratio of purely documentary (read “bad”) photographs to “keepers” has begun to increase significantly. In many photographs, I am fortunate that I am living in an era of post-processing software. In the photograph I posted yesterday of the silhouette of a woman, herself taking a picture of the waves, I did not notice her at first when I took the photograph. She was a happy coincidence, and I focused on her more and more, but I could not capture the essence of the candid photo. Dumb luck has proven to make some great photographs, at least in my brief career.
For this one, I actually used a tripod – a rarity in my California photos – because I first have to lug it on the plane, and then lug it on my hikes and set it up any time I want to use it. With an impatient four year old (at the time) this was quite a “do” as Anna’s British cousins would say. But I had planned the shot for months. I wanted to capture it from down the coast from the first moment I realized what I was looking at. These days, I am taking the time to enjoy the artistic act, and not just snapping the shutter and hoping I capture something amazing. I like the process.
ST. AMAND PHOTOGRAPHY 