While summer is beautiful along the northern and central California coast – at least when everything isn’t fogged in! – my favorite time is the winter season. While I photograph the coast near the San Francisco Bay Area all year long, all too often summer here alternates between heavy coastal fog and (boring!) perfect sunshine.
Winter conditions are far more varied and interesting for photography. If fog is your thing, you get several types of fog here during the winter months. You can encounter the usual ocean fog, though it is not as frequent as during the summer months. But we also have ground-hugging tule fog, which is caused by relatively warm moisture on the ground (often following rainfall) forming low fog during cool conditions. While this is more common inland, it can affect areas near the coast as well. One of my favorite fog effects is one I’ve only seen during the winter; it is caused when huge pacific waves break on the coast in just the right conditions, forming a low lying mist right near the shoreline and sometimes paired with brilliantly sunny skies overhead.
The ocean itself is also more compelling during the winter. When the northern Pacific Ocean becomes stormy – even when the storms are a long way off – huge swells roll into the California coastline. (It is for this reason that the famous Mavericks surf contest is held in winter off the coast below San Francisco.) These waves are often 20 feet tall and sometimes much higher. Combine them with some very spectular coastline (I’ll mention a few places below) and stunning photography is possible.
In addition, as Pacific weather fronts come through, and especially as they pass inland and begin to clear, really wonderful cloud conditions occur along the coast. If you want to go for the obvious, pick a day of high surf as a Pacific front is clearing late in the day and – go for it! – shoot at sunset.
I’m fortunate to live a bit more than an hour from the Monterey Peninsula, so I head down that way if it looks like I’ll have good conditions on a give day. Point Lobos – where I photographed last weekend during high surf – is a common destination, but I’ll head south a bit further into the upper Big Sur area if I have time. Even closer, the coastline between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay provides outstanding, though sometimes less obvious, locations. Heading north, there are many options, but the Point Reyes area is often best photographed this time of year.
If you follow this blog, you know that I was at Point Lobos last week – I’ve posted several photographs from that visit already and there are a few more in the pipeline.