Cruising The California Coast
/The year was 1992. The season was late winter. The place was the central California coast, around Monterey Bay.
I had ventured there on business for the software development firm I was working for at the time. This was my first trip to California and I was looking forward to exploring the coast.
No stranger to flying, I remember my flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles being long and boring. The commuter flight from Los Angeles to Monterey could not have been more different. Hugging the coastline all the way to Monterey, the views of the coast in late afternoon light were thrilling.
Arriving at the Monterey airport, I rented a convertible, put the top down, and drove down into Monterey before checking into the hotel. What awaited me in Monterey completely captured me. I was greeted immediately by landscapes, seascapes, wildlife, and colorful historical cityscapes.
Of course, I packed a camera and some lenses. This was 1992, though, so 35mm film still ruled. The camera I brought… It was a Canon T90, Canon’s flagship SLR at the time. The lenses I paired with the Canon T90, on this trip, were Canon FD lenses, including the 50mm f1.4, the 35-70mm f4, and the 70-200mm f4.
The film I was shooting was Kodachrome 64 and Kodachrome 200, both slide films. Years later, the slides were scanned and, recently, processed in Adobe Lightroom. All the images were cropped and enhanced for white balance, exposure, and contrast. A couple of images were converted to monotone.
The images presented here are but a small selection of the images I captured from Monterey to Big Sur. This sampling, hopefully, gives you a sense of what the California coast held for me that winter in 1992. Images as feelings… Feelings in the moment… The California coast, truly, is a magical location that offers unique vistas and the most wonderful colors and light.
Enjoy!!
