Wet Red Stone Stony Ocean Shore

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Bean Hollow State Beach, San Mateo County
late morning June 27, 1997, slide 97A_19-23
Olympus OM-4T, 24mm Zuiko, Benbo Trekker
Drum scanned 35mm Kodachrome 64 to 100mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature top right

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At Bean Hollow State Beach in San Mateo County are some rocky shore areas of Cretaceous Period conglomerate sandstone, which erodes out as small polished stones. This geological period was the age of dinosaurs between 70 and 135 million years ago. Late one morning as a high tide rose, I played chicken with waves to the amusement of several sunbathers and caught this red oval agate centered among other interesting little jewels. And a wave later it was gone. This is a quite sharp image for 35mm. Tiny six sided star reflections of the sun sparkle on all the rocks. As trains of waves wash up on the shore one continually hears above the larger lower frequency sound of waves crashing out beyond the kelp, the higher pitched sound of the little stones sliding on each other. And it is that endless sliding and jostling of stones over other stones and sand that slowly polishes these little seashores jewels. We are blessed here on Earth to have a uniquely giant moon for such a small planet that causes daily tides much invigorating sea life and shores.

The game of moving my tripoded camera back and forth towards the waves on the seashore is a game I have played many times and this is easily the most interesting shot I've captured. Of course there is a real danger of getting caught by a wave and ruining ones camera with rusting salt water. Two other difficulties doing this are the shore is often breezy which makes tripod stability an issue, and the shore air has quite a lot of tiny droplets of salty water and foam continually coating ones lens so the camera lens cover needs to be left on as much as possible. One can easily beach comb such an area as this and pick many quite interesting stones and seashore objects then toss them down on the shore to photograph.

One could in short time easily accumulate a much more interesting collection of stones than I have here. For my own photographic work I always choose to just let nature play its own music of chance and let my digitally processed film speak on its own without computer enhancements.

Now I'll point out just a few of the more interesting stones. Just to the right of the center red stone and up slightly is a small stone white on its left side with brown lines on the right. It isn't a stone but rather a common eroded piece of a seashell or maybe a crab claw. A bit further right is a bright white stone. A bit to its right sandwiched between a small round dark gray stone and a green stone is a sliver of dark reddish brown seaweed. A bit below the bright white stone is a small whitish clear translucent stone and another a bit lower with a nice sun star on it. There are several of those in the frame and they are common opal. Directly above the red stone and mid way to the top of the frame is a beautiful green stone with interesting mottled elements. A bit left of the red stone just beyond a larger dark green stone with black lines is a beautiful shaped white oval of probably quartz but possibly opal. If you visit this interesting shore, bring along a common magnifier, lie down on the stony beach and take a good look at all their beauty. I can only imagine a young Native American girl visiting this very beach centuries ago laying down on its warm clean pebbles, smiling gleefully at the wonder of glistening little stones.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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