Ocean Story
Photo Location: Pebble Beach, CA
The Lone Cypress has been standing on its granite headland above Carmel Bay for over 250 years. It has watched the Pacific in every condition — the flat summer mornings when the water barely moves, the winter storms that come in sideways off the ocean and have been pushing at it for centuries. Support cables hold its branches in place now, not because the tree is weak but because the storms are genuinely that strong. It is the most photographed tree in California and possibly the most patient subject I have ever pointed a camera at.
I came to this spot on the 17-Mile Drive at the hour when the Pacific was doing what it only does in a handful of mornings each year — the light breaking through the marine layer at a low angle that turned the water behind the cypress into something between silver and gold, the tree standing where it has always stood, the ocean going on behind it in every direction. The title arrived from the image itself. This is not a photograph of a tree. It is a photograph of what the ocean looks like when something old and solitary is standing in front of it, giving it a frame and a scale it doesn’t otherwise have.
Three miles from this headland, Thomas Kinkade opened his first gallery in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1992. He spent his career painting light from within. This is the light that was actually there.
TruLife acrylic-mounted limited edition of 100, signed by me with Certificate of Authenticity. Free US shipping.
Image copyright © Jongas Fine Art Photography.
