Monterey Bay and Point Lobos, May 2009

Great trip, great photographs.

 

There were five of us that decided to commit to driveing 300 miles for a chance at some great photography

The drive up started out to be clear and ideal for photographing anything and everything.

On the way up, partly cloudy with splotches of sun at various stages of brightness gave us an itchy shooting finger. That feeling of bliss quickly went down the tubes though as we got closer to Monterey. The clouds soon turned dark and foggy and our itchy finger was replaced with the feeling that we just ran into a brick wall.

Although some of the opportunities we thought we were going to have the first day went away, like any good photographer, we quickly adapted and went out to see what we could find while considering the environment we had to shoot in. Since we ate up most of the day traveling, the plan for the first day was to just get some night shots on the pier and call it a day. Since we began our trip on a Monday, there were only a few people on the pier to contend with and the few that were there added to the pictures we took.

As the evening progressed, it became damp and, what I would call, sprinklely, not quite rain, just very humid and muggy. Just enough to wet our cameras and fog our lenses. At that point we called it quits and shut it down for the night.

The next day we attacked the Monterey Aquarium for a few hours, then headed down the nearby coast to get some "wave breaking against the rock" kind of shots. It ended up foggy in the morning and clearing up around 11am. We were getting all kinds of weather to shoot in which added to the variety of pictures we could capture.

Lots of seals and otters on just about every beach we visited, although, if it was a popular beach, the animals stayed clear and could just be seen from a distance. While climbing through the rocks I ran across a sick otter. Not much I could do though. Once it saw me, it limped back into the water. Once in the water, he kept rubbing his face. Not sure what was wrong but after looking at my pictures, it looked like his nose was cut off and infected. Most likely something like a propeller or something whacked it off. Sometimes they are a little too curious for their own good.

I also ran across a dead seal pup. It looked like it had just died. There was another seal nearby yelling at me to get the hell out of there, so I would say that was probably the mother. The pup had, what looked like, a stab wound in his side. Other than that, he was in great condition, but dead. Too bad but with the amount of seals in the area, I guess you're bound to run across things like this all the time.

 

At this point, we began to spread out and go our individual way. Places we visited were the Cannery Row, Monterey Aquarium, Municipal Wharf, Fisherman's Wharf, coastline, Pebble Beach, Lone Cypress Tree and Carmel Mission. More than enough to keep everyone busy.

Although the original plan was to rent some kayaks for a few hours and get some pictures of the animals in the sea, that was aborted for various reasons.

The trip home was good as we traveled back US 1 and stopped various places to capture the coast line.

I came back with way too many pictures for my own good, but more than happy with what I got.

Now, what the hell do I do with them all?