When we would travel down to San Diego every couple of years, we would take our daughters to the San Diego Zoo, mostly to see the Pandas. My oldest is especially nuts about them. Show the girl a Panda TikTok and she immediately gets those Puss in Boots endearing eyes.

Shooting in black and white forces you to look for different subjects and aspects to shoot. When looking for a black and white photo, you look for textures, contrasting light and shapes. It was the latter that I was on the hunt for that day. I wanted to make the perfect silhouette against the dramatic sky.

I had my student setup her tripod a few feet behind where we stood so that she could get a better view of the water, bridge and surrounding rocks. As she stepped away, I noticed a group of geese in the water. And as the sun was setting, a large sunspot appeared on the surface of the water just a few feet away from the geese.

As we approached this tree I thought to myself that it might make a nice photo. I had to have the usual wrestling match with the lazy part of myself because all my gear was nicely tucked away in my backpack. Thankfully, my photographer self won the battle and I took out my monochrome camera.

The fog. It makes for such wonderful photographs but it comes rarely in the area where I live. So when it happens, I have no choice but to get dressed and drive to a ravine close to our house to take pictures. But I was tired. I didn’t want to get dressed and go out into the cold. I hadn’t even had my coffee yet!

It has been a fruitful wildflower season during the Spring of 2022, but I felt like I still hadn’t gotten “the” shot. The Lupin had already been in bloom for a couple of weeks, surely there wouldn’t be any left to photograph?

The sun was setting, the waves were crashing, and I didn’t have a tripod to capture the moment. On top of that, all I had with me was a black and white camera. Who shoots coastal sunsets in black and white? The answer: I do.

And the light. Oh, my, the light. There was a tall clump of trees off to the left and their shadow fell around the area except for a swath of sunlight that illuminated the tree and the rocks directly in front.