“Duncansby Stacks” — Sea Stacks at John O’Groats on Scotland’s North Sea Coast.
Our big loop through northwest Scotland began at Inverness, went to Skye, then headed north with stops at Ullapool and Altnaharra. From there we crossed the northern coast to John O’Groats. Why John O’Groats? it feels like one of the more remote places in Scotland – it is on the North Sea and beyond there are only the Orkney Islands. I also recall running into a cyclist on our previous visit to Scotland who was riding from the furthest south point in England to John O’Groats, and that piqued my interest.
“Big Sur Coast Near Hurricane Point” — Late spring morning on the Big Sur Coast.
This is a bit of an odd post for this site. While updating older photographs and posts I was unable to locate this one. So I’m sort of semi/maybe/kind of reposting it. The photograph comes from almost two decades ago on one of my many visits to the Big Sur Coastline of California. This visit was on a late-spring day when fog was clearing from coastal bluffs and the surf was active.
“Rugged Big Sur Coast”” — Big Sur Coast’Sea stacks and surf along the rugged Big Sur coastline.
I intentionally framed this view to exclude everything except the rocky coastline and the wild Pacific Ocean surf. The Pacific Coast Highway (US1) runs along the coastal bluffs just above those far formations, but below these bluffs the ocean and the land do constant battle, with the ocean inevitably winning as it erodes and washes away the land.
When I look at sea stacks like these I am reminded that the water’s edge was once further west, and what are now off-shore outcroppings were once part of the mainland. These peninsulas and sea stacks were left standing far out in the water as the land around them disappeared.
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“Sea Stacks and Surf, Big Sur” — Rough surf and rugged sea stacks along the Big Sur coastline.
California’s coast is quite varied — in places you can find classic wide beaches, but there are impossibly rugged, inaccessible areas, too. (One section in far-northern California is so rugged that engineers were forced to divert the route of Highway 1 far inland.) This photograph comes from a section of the upper Big Sur coast that combines that ruggedness with a degree of accessibility.
I visited on the late-June morning because friends and fellow photographers were visiting the area — so it was a chance both to photograph and to meet up with them. We arrived very early, before the tourist crowds, and photographed soon after the sun cleared the coastal hills and light arrived on the rugged, rocky shoreline and surf.
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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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