Steve Immel Photography: Mysteries and Myths

There were a slew of motivations for my recent photo safari to the left coast. Among them were the continuation of my long look back at the places of my early childhood and a second visit to Fort Ord where I spent the summer of sixty in basic training and less sanctioned but equally instructive adventures at Main Beach in Carmel and a cabin in the redwoods above Santa Cruz. Then there was the pursuit of fog which quite naturally led me to the Marin coast where I left at least part of heart, apologies to San Francisco.

Farm in Fog, 1969

Credit where credit is due, the fog series was reignited at the Presidio of San Francisco three years ago but the real genesis was a flawed little number from Mendocino County in 1969. Blemishes notwithstanding the moody image stirs memories and melancholy like few other images have.

Presidio Pines #1, 2010

The Bridge to Nowhere, 2010

Forty years later pea soup crept into San Francisco Bay producing a wondrous backdrop for wind bent pines and a mysterious bridge to nowhere.

Then last month at Tomales Bay and the Point Reyes National Seashore I pursued the fog and other muses. I meandered through the rolling pastures and nineteenth century dairy farms that cover much of the Point Reyes Peninsula as I headed for the lighthouse.

Dairy Cattle at Drake's Estero, 2013

Farm #1, 2013

At land's end Point Reyes Light was cloaked in fog and as invisible as the crashing surf. So instead I photographed the gnarled Bishop Pines along the path to the lighthouse, the moisture literally dripping from the canopy above me. The fog's thick wetness enveloped me and masked the mysteries ahead and the Pacific a hundred feet below.