Ancient Forms

There is a beach on the Northern California coast where the rocks are round. Not polished-smooth round, but spherical—nearly perfect in their symmetry—as though something ancient and patient shaped each one individually and placed them in the surf. They are covered in kelp and barnacles, and at low tide they emerge from the water in clusters, their forms rising from the silky shallows like something from another world.

I came here in the fog, which is the only way to come to a place like this. The overcast sky flattened the light and extended the tones across the scene into something quiet and gray and immense. I set a long exposure to let the water soften, to let the surf that moved between the boulders lose its urgency and become something more like silk. In the resulting image, the rocks appear to float—not in drama, but in calm—held in a surface that the camera sees differently than the eye does.

Bowling Ball Beach is an exercise in geological patience. These boulders formed in layers of sedimentary rock and were revealed over millennia by the erosion of the cliff above them. They have been here far longer than I have, and they will continue to be here long after. Standing among them, even in fog, even in cold, there is an unmistakable sense of time—of being a brief visitor in the presence of something that has no interest in hurrying. That feeling is what I tried to carry back in this image.