Monterey Bay, California

Monterey Bay—the setting for the colorful and vibrant stories of John Steinbeck—is our location for a week of creating colorful and vibrant images of wildlife, landscapes and Steinbeck’s infamous Cannery Row. Fringed with miles of sheltered beaches and rocky coastline, the Monterey Bay area is home to verdant redwood forests, lively scenic towns like Carmel and Santa Cruz, and one of the country's largest marine sanctuaries.

These photogenic environs of coastal California support a great diversity of marine wildlife due to the upwelling of nutrient-rich cold water from the offshore depths of Monterey Canyon. Here, significant conservation efforts to protect this scenic coastline—and America’s largest kelp forest—keep marine species abundant and vistas unspoiled.

Amidst these huge, sheltering kelp beds dwell one of the most entertaining of photo subjects—southern sea otters! Hunted to near extinction during the 18th and 19th centuries for their luxuriant pelts, the southern sea otter has been on the endangered species list since 1977. Along the central California coast, their current numbers are estimated to be approximately 2,000. From our privately-chartered boat we photograph them up close, capturing the otters lolling in the kelp, rafting, grooming, foraging and—with luck—with pups.

The renovated waterfront street called Cannery Row is the modern-day place marker for the sardine fishery and fish canneries that made Monterey the “Sardine Capital of the World” during World War II. The site of a former canning factory is now the world-class Monterey Bay Aquarium with photographically stunning displays of sharks, spectacular jellyfish, and an immense three-story living kelp forest tank brimming with fish.

Famous Fisherman’s Wharf is the departure point for our half-day whale watch excursion by “head boat” into the outer bay. We cruise by California sea lions resting on the breakwater and have a good chance of seeing harbor seals hauled out on rocks along with the occasional small grouping of sea otters. Gray whales, orcas, common dolphins, Pacific white-sided dolphins, Risso’s dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, Dall’s porpoise and harbor porpoise are all commonly spotted at this time of year in the deep waters off Monterey Bay.

On land, we photograph the wild shores of Big Sur, where the cliffs rise so abruptly from the sea. Rugged headlands and redwoods, Weston Beach—named, of course, for the stretch of coastline immortalized by Edward Weston—and the imposing Moorish façade of the Carmel Mission offer a vast variety of shooting locations.

Steinbeck described Cannery Row as “a quality of light, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream”—in our exploration of Monterey Bay we should discover all of that and more. From quiet tide pools to crashing waves on rocky shores, verdant forests to an isolated waterfall cascading 80 feet into the sea, from the watery world of sea otters and gray whales to the picturesque scenics of small towns, here we create images of a uniquely American coastline where land meets sea.