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You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – California beach moods

On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – California beach moods

by WaterGirl|  September 11, 20205:00 am| 27 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

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Beautiful beaches and water scenes this morning.  Something for everyone, the black & white peeps and the color peeps.  First and last photos are my favorites.  :-)  What a surprise that these would make someone named WaterGirl happy!  Thank you, Steve.

Steve from Mendocino

Water Girl has indicated that she is one of the many who don’t particularly respond to black and white, and I suspect she finds my subject matter a bit academic as well. I’ve tried to make this post as dynamic as possible with a mix of techniques, styles, dates, and emotional content as much as possible within the peculiar mindset that drives my bumbling path through life. This one’s for you, Water Girl.

Starting as a newborn and through my teens I went with my family to my grandfather’s beach house for the majority of each summer plus occasional visits on major holidays like Easter week. We’d poke around tide pools looking at the countless strange creatures that live there. I learned rafting then body surfing and eventually checked surf reports regularly to plan my daily activities. The Pacific Ocean became part of my soul. I specifically selected the location of my retirement home to be within 30 minutes of the ocean.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 7

This picture of MacKerricher beach was taken in October of 2015. I’d finally made friends with digital photography and gotten myself a decent rig. The tremor in my hands is bad enough now that all hope of hand held photography is long past. Everything is on a tripod, and I use the camera’s timer to trip the shutter after a 10 second delay which allows me to get my hands off the equipment and step back. It works well in most cases, but makes the timing of photos of dynamic subjects like surf and birds a matter of guess work and luck.

It was just before 9:00 in the morning on a clear day in late October. I was pretty much alone with my thoughts and the beauty of my surroundings.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 6

A couple of years ago (probably a bit more) Alain was soliciting photos for OTR. I didn’t really have a sense of what he wanted so I turned him loose on my web site and told him to download whatever he wanted. He chose this one.

It was taken in the early 70’s at a beach that I stumbled upon along the coast below San Luis Obispo. Generally, I find it more difficult to get exciting shots with mid-day sun, but the spectral highlights off the water made this pop.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 5

A stormy winter morning shot looking out over Balboa Island in Newport Beach, probably in 1976. Back then, the community got real quiet during the winter in a way that the place felt like my own private amusement park. Today those green hills are totally built out and the bay is busy all year around. At the time of the photo there was one of the largest bison herds in the country up there.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 4

Another old picture of Newport Beach in winter. Low tide at the docks. Again, alone with my thoughts.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 3

For fashion assignments at art school, photo students would request a model who was just starting out at Nina Blanchard Agency. The model would work for free in exchange for free photos for their portfolio. These beginning models were frequently clumsy, but that contributed to the educational value of the shoot. This image was one of the more successful pictures I got from that collaboration, taken on a generic beach in the South Bay, likely Redondo, in the late afternoon.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 2

One of my class mates went on to become a staff photographer at Surfer Magazine for a couple of decades. His surf photos were undeniably better than mine, but I still took a bunch because it was something fun to do when I wasn’t actually in the water, and it provided cool images of fun times I had. This was taken at the annual world championship event at Huntington Beach, probably in fall of 1969.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods 1

The Northern California coast is dotted with little communities that have a feeling of being out of time and isolated from the intensity of the “real world”. Mendocino in winter is definitely a place like that. This photo looking south across the bay was taken on a misty mid-October morning in 2015.

On The Road - Steve from Mendocino - California beach moods

Early February 2016, 9:00 in the morning. The sun was weirdly intense and the swell was fairly high. The green/cyan cast of the foam against the ragged red/magenta rocks got my attention for this shot.

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Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    Mary G

    September 11, 2020 at 5:20 am

    Wow, that picture from Balboa and Newport takes me right back to my childhood in the OC. I am another lover of the Pacific ocean and all of these capture its myriad appearances. I am so privileged to live so close to it still.

    The picture Alain picked is also my favorite just as art.

  2. 2.

    Van Buren

    September 11, 2020 at 5:25 am

    Great shots. Thanks for sharing.

  3. 3.

    Ken

    September 11, 2020 at 5:43 am

    Would it be possible to take black and whites right now in n Cali or you need color to do the sky justice?  Pictures are amazing.

  4. 4.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 6:03 am

    We moved to Whittier in 57 and Huntington and Newport were our go-to beaches. We were at Huntington couple of years ago and I talked to one of the old timers at a surf shop and he said “when you were a kid there was nothing but butter beans from the highway inland!

  5. 5.

    Raven

    September 11, 2020 at 6:12 am

    And RAFT surfing!!! They were great but you had to wear a tshirt or your nipples got chafed big time!

  6. 6.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 6:15 am

    I assume we’re talking about mat surfing??

  7. 7.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 6:21 am

    Summer’s almost here, and it’s time to head to the beach! The 1957 L.A. Examiner photo, above, reminds us why what’s now Bolsa Chica State Beach was once called Tin Can Beach (or sometimes Beer Can Beach) by almost everyone. At that time, as much as 30 tons of cans, bottles, and other refuse were left on this stretch of sand each year. Today, it often ranks as one of Southern California’s cleanest beaches.

  8. 8.

    satby

    September 11, 2020 at 6:40 am

    I love B&W photography! Yours is excellent.

  9. 9.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 6:43 am

    Check out “The Wedge” at Newport.

  10. 10.

    Albatrossity

    September 11, 2020 at 7:26 am

    Beautiful shots in a very photogenic part of the world. But yeah, winters on that northern California coast are nothing at all like what one thinks of when hearing the word “California”. While in grad school I spent a few days in December at Sea Ranch, where the parents of one of my grad school classmates had a place. Beautiful, lonely, and cold, especially when that wind came off the ocean!

    Thanks for the memories!

  11. 11.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    September 11, 2020 at 7:28 am

    What beautiful pictures

  12. 12.

    frosty

    September 11, 2020 at 8:24 am

    @raven: You’re taking me back. I lived in SoCal for most of the 70s. I remember calling Bolsa Chica “Tin Can Beach” but it never looked that bad to me. Now I see why!

    Re: development. I lived in HB for a year in ‘76, a block from the water. NOTHING is left from my time, not even the pier. All the bungalows on 9th Street where I lived: gone. Jack’s Surfboards and Main Street: rebuilt. No more DQ. The power plant is even getting torn down.
    I remember on the drive to San Diego there was nothing between San Clemente and Del Mar. By the time I left, the only undeveloped area was Camp Pendleton.

  13. 13.

    Scott

    September 11, 2020 at 9:04 am

    Spent a week last summer in Point Arenas and my wife and I just wandered up and down the coast. Didn’t seem too crowded then. I can just imagine the winters. Highlight was 4th of July in the town of Mendocino itself. Great old fashioned goofy parade where you just sit and cheer and clap and drink your beverage.

  14. 14.

    Denali

    September 11, 2020 at 9:21 am

    Love the photos.  We lived in Escondido, not far from San Diego, in the early 80’s. Fires were a problem, but still were small. Development was starting; no one wanted San Diego to turn into Los Angeles. Traffic was still manageable. We loved it, but even then could not afford the housing. Wonderful memories.

  15. 15.

    laura

    September 11, 2020 at 9:37 am

    Beautiful, lonely and cold is what I love about the coast. The last trip “in the before times” spouse and I went to Fort Bragg in November and a day trip to the swankier Mendocino. Alone with our thoughts just watching the waves crashing, the salt spray on your face and in your hair. These photos are each really lovely, but for me- as Albatrosity stated beautiful, lonely and cold warms my soul.

  16. 16.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 10:04 am

    @frosty:  Remember the “greeter” in Laguna?

  17. 17.

    frosty

    September 11, 2020 at 10:23 am

    @raven: I didn’t get to Laguna often, but yes, I think I remember him from one trip to the Sawdust Festival. (?)

  18. 18.

    Sandia Blanca

    September 11, 2020 at 10:38 am

    Another OC old-timer here, loving these photos so reminiscent of places long gone.  We used to go to Huntington Beach and spend the whole day burning our pale skins. So ignorant!

    Some relatives had a beach house at Newport, and we could ride their tandem bike, then play in the sand and the water before taking refuge inside for showers and lunch.

    In junior high, we had an oceanography club that would go to Balboa for field trips. So many wonderful memories.

  19. 19.

    Steve from Mendocino

    September 11, 2020 at 11:04 am

    @Ken: Black and white is always possible and lovely, but I just enjoy the interactions of colors.  I took all that black and white for three reasons.  It was necessary for school because the color facilities were limited and assignments were focused that way.  I favored the longer dynamic curve over color options.  I loved working in the darkroom, and color darkroom work was extremely restrictive.  Digital has changed all of that.  I’ve done a bit of black and white digital editing for a friend who wanted the look of black and white, but for my own work it’s almost exclusively color.

  20. 20.

    Steve from Mendocino

    September 11, 2020 at 11:08 am

    @raven: The rafts were an inflatable rubber bladder with canvas exterior.  They were tough and about 4 inches thick.  Sore nipples were never an issue, possibly because we did it so much that our skin accommodated.  <shrug>  I LOVED the Wedge, but the waves were so massive and the water so shallow that I was mostly a spectator.  I saw a body surfer there emerge from the water and collapse with a broken neck.  For my own body surfing I liked 40th street before the groin and later Brooks street in Laguna where I once caught a ride with a belly board at the outer reef and rode that wave all the way to Oak street before dropping out.  Fun times.

  21. 21.

    opiejeanne

    September 11, 2020 at 11:31 am

    @raven: There was an alligator farm on the road  we took to Huntington Beach from Baldwin Park in the 50s and 60s. I think it was on Turnbull Canyon Road. The sign for it was in front of an old white wood-frame house, with eucalyptus trees along the road. We never stopped there

  22. 22.

    opiejeanne

    September 11, 2020 at 11:39 am

    @raven: I remember him, and didn’t he usually stand at the corner where that big pottery place was in the 70s? I think it was called The Pottery Barn.

  23. 23.

    J R in WV

    September 11, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    The picture of the little yellow Mendicino cottage with the old remains of a picket fence looks like a combination of pastel and watercolor art, more than a photograph. Wonderful feeling to that image!

    They are all pretty swell, though.

  24. 24.

    WaterGirl

    September 11, 2020 at 1:07 pm

    @J R in WV: I had the same exact thought when I first looked at these photos!

  25. 25.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 1:38 pm

    @opiejeanne: YES!

  26. 26.

    raven

    September 11, 2020 at 1:40 pm

    @Steve from Mendocino: I became more of a South Bay guy when my family moved to Hawthorne and the Manhattan Beach Pier as my go-to beach. I remember when they went from mat to boogie board rental there.

  27. 27.

    BigJimSlade

    September 11, 2020 at 9:06 pm

    What a great and varied set – thanks Steve from Mendocino!

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