California Coast 03: Dana Point Harbor Mist

Image Commentary

Dana Point Harbor in Southern California, is an entirely man-made structure, built in 1971 by the US Corps of Engineers using stone quarried in the San Gabriel Mountains. There are over 2500 small craft berthed in the harbor today. The harbor is built in the cove made famous by Richard Henry Dana who in 1840 wrote the now famous book: "Two Years Before the Mast". It was in this cove that Henry Dana's "Pilgrim" dropped anchor to conduct trade in tallow and hides from steers raised and ranged in the hill country surrounding the Franciscan mission at San Juan Capistrano. Tallow and hides were transported aboard the Pilgrim, south to Cape Horn and then north to the Eastern Seaboard of the US where the hides were used in the creation of leather products. The entire journey out and back took two years.

Geologically, the sea-cliffs at Dana Point are spectacular. During the construction of the harbor, the cliffs were cut back about twenty feet, exposing a fresh-cut face that enabled close and accurate study. It turns out that the sandstones in the sea cliff are time equivalents of many of the oil and gas reservoir rocks that lie deep beneath Los Angeles. They are also analogous to many other reservoir rocks and as a result have been studied extensively by a variety of oil companies.

On this particular winter morning the entire sea cliffs were shrouded in a thin mist that barely masked the strong early morning sunlight. In order to capture the image I combined a neutral density filter (to cut back the harshly bright light) and a soft focus filter to enhance the dreaminess of the mood I sensed when I was setting up the photograph.