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Morning Joggers and Walkers on Carmel Beach
Very peaceful at this time of day. By noon....a bit of a zoo. I had the day well planned, I thought, but I didn’t account for the ‘casual’ approach of the photographic galleries. More about this later. Still, the morning went well with a trip down the coast to Point Lobos and then to Big Sur.
After my healthy and filling breakfast at the B&B I drove a few miles south to Point Lobos State Park. Why Point Lobos you might wonder. In addition to being a most spectacular place to walk there are ocean scenes that are in some ways iconic while in other ways unique. Several photographic icons of the early 20th century made some of their best known images there.
Point Lobos is truly beautiful and inspiring in an artistic way - for painters or photographers. Edward Weston spent an inordinate amount of time there and made many artful images over time.
Like so many of these well know places, a photographer should live nearby for at least a year so they can visit regularly in many different conditions provided by the changing light and the fog that is prevalent during the summer months. Dropping in for a couple of hours as I did limits what is possible,
Carmel Beach - Street View
This is a view out from one of the residential streets in Carmel. Lots of dogs get their exercise on the Carmel Beach. unless one gets very lucky. At any rate, I loved my visit and hung around taking in the sights and sounds of the park for about three hours. I talked to one of the guides about ‘Weston Beach’ named after Edward Weston. She told me that Ansel Adams and Edward Weston used to come to Point Lobos and give in situ seminars on photography. What a treat that much have been.
You can see from some of my humble images that the place is spectacular and if I ever go to Carmel again I will be sure to spend more time at Point Lobos.
On the walk to Bird Island at Point Lobos (an island covered with nesting Brandt's cormorants) I walked high on a cliff overlooking a quiet inlet called China Cove. I was attracted by the blue-green colour of the very clear water, but then I noticed several seals lounging about in the water. Looking more carefully I could see small, black seal pups swimming about with their mothers. One in particular was feeding underwater. Periodically the pup would come to the surface and nuzzle the mothers face. When the pup did that the mothers milk
kept coming for a time leaving a white murky trail behind the two of them. I stood and watched this for some time and was taken with the gentleness of that mother as well as others that were lounging with their pups on the sandy beach nearby. I found out later that this is the calving time of the year and these pups might only be a week or two old. I will not forget that time at Point Lobos.
After Point Lobos I continued further south on the coastal highway 1 and visited Big Sur, Henry Miller’s Museum, and Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. I turned back to Carmel at 2 pm in order to take in the photographic galleries I wanted to see. My primary reason for coming specifically Carmel was to see these galleries.
The manager at the B&B had told me that the galleries were rather fickle with their hours and I learned that to be only too true.
The galleries I had planned on visiting were: The Weston Gallery, Photography West Gallery, Robert Knight Gallery, and the Center for Photographic Arts. (You can do a search on these names and have a
look at what was shown.) Two of them I missed because they didn’t open when their store sign said they would, but the other two, Weston and Robert Knight galleries were very worthwhile to visit. It is amazing to see what master photographers can do when you see their artful prints first hand. I think I learned something by studying their work, but I won’t know until I get back home and get to work on some of my new and old images. Whether or not I come up with some improvements to my images, the experience at Carmel was fun.
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