Granite and Sea

The Big Sur coast is both eternal and ever-changing. Having built his own home from the rocks along the shore of Carmel Point, few have had a more intimate realization of this than the poet Robinson Jeffers. He described the rock as “…the bones of the old mother (Earth) … held molten in hot darkness against the heart … This is the primitive rock, here in the wet Quarry under the shadow of waves.” Noting their action to continually shape this rock, he described the ocean waves as “… drunken quarrymen / Climbing the cliff, hewing out more stones for me … the surf cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum.” Inspired by Jeffers’ words, these images focus upon the action of the sea upon coastal rock along the California Big Sur. From violent to tranquil, the continuous action of the waves are variously captured using shutter speeds ranging from short (milliseconds) to long (multiple minutes).