I Left My Heart in San Simeon...

I was trying out a scanner last week and scanned in a number of 35mm slides. This image which I just processed yesterday, reminded me of how much I love the California Central Coast. Call me weird but I absolutely love gloomy overcast weather, the salty ocean breeze, and cool temperatures. It is inevitable that I will move to Morro Bay or the coastal Bay Area again sooner or later.

Picture: Spring Wildflowers and Storm Clouds Along William Randolph Hearst Memorial State Beach with Pier in Background, San Simeon, California

When I lived in San Francisco, people would always remark how depressing it was to live west of the Golden Gate Bridge due to the fog. I loved it. Well aside from the fact that it was impossible to keep my car clean, but that is a different story. For full disclosure purposes however I must admit that I lived on the backside of the ridge where the coastal mountains started in Pacifica, so I wasn't getting blasted by the cold air 24/7. That would have been a little too much to handle.

For this photo which was taken at William Randolph Hearst Memorial State Beach, I used a Cokin Graduated Grey 2 filter because the sky was gray but had also cloud definition, so I knew that the Cokin would help accentuate the clouds by balacing out my exposure. Normally I wouldn’t recommend a Cokin for sunsets or anything other than a gray sky because it can cause an unnatural color cast, but for overcast conditions it does serve a purpose. For more typical landscape shooting situations where you need to control contrast however, I’d recommend Singh-Ray Galen Rowell graduated neutral-density filters as those have no color cast. There are cheaper GND filters that other photographers use made by Lee and Hi-Tech but I have no experience with those so I can’t personally recommend those.

I shot this photo five years ago on Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. I only shot maybe three or four frames in this area because the cost of film, which is a shame. I only shot maybe two or three rolls per outing at most. Not very prolific compared to the digital age nowadays where a photographer can easily shoot several hundred images and really work a scene while not feel any shame about it. That is one of the reasons why I plan on re-photographing many of the places that I have visited over the years.

California Central Coast places of interest include:

Hearst Castle
Elephant Seals at Point Piedras Blancas
Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural History
Morro Rock
Morro Bay Waterfront
Oceano Dunes
Montana de Oro State Park
Mission La Purisima
Solvang
17 Mile Drive
Point Lobos SR
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Big Sur
Elkhorn Slough NERR
The National Steinbeck Center
Andersen's Split Pea Soup Restaurant
Carmel
Carmel Mission