Saturday, December 01, 2007

Maximizing the Light

Getting up at 4:00 am to take photographs is for crazy people. And that describes Nancy and me. We crawled out from warm blankets and made our way into the cold morning air wa-a-ay before daybreak. When the eastern sky warmed with first light we were perched on top of the rounded mounds that make up the landscape of Point Reyes Seashore. As the sun touched Tomales Bay far below us, herd of Tule elk wandered both sides of the road as we carefully crept along with cameras pointed out of the car windows and the heater on full blast.

It was freezing as we parked the car and made our way down to McClure's beach carrying backpacks and tripods. Needless to say, we had the place to ourselves. Several hours later (and hundreds of shutter clicks) the sun finally made it's way over the cliff and lit the waves crashing on black rocks. I was in heaven.

Climbing down the path was much easier than going back up, and we collapsed into the car and dumped all our gear in the back seat. We drove slowly slowly through the park stopping and snapping photos of anything that caught our eye. Lunched in Olema, visited the local creamery and bought fresh cheese, and then gathered our strength for photographing the redwoods on the way back to Berkeley. At least I thought we were headed home. We changed drivers and Nancy headed straight to downtown San Francisco where we drove up and down streets taking photos out the car window, ending up in Chinatown for a little walkaround. Then we headed home.

We downloaded photos to our laptops, complained about all the bad shots we took, and vowed to do it all again! What a day.

2 comments:

CMC said...

ha ha....sounds like some great day.....McClure's beach you say. Can't get away from those McClures..........

Walker said...

Yea - isn't that funny -- I thought of you of course!