A boxed set of note cards featuring three original photographs from Bean Hollow State Beach, California. Each card is a fine-art print on high-quality paper, affixed to folded 60# 4x6" card stock, with a hand-written description and signature by the photographer.
South of Half Moon Bay, along a stretch of Highway 1 that most drivers pass without a second look, a barely marked turnout drops down to Bean Hollow State Beach. From the road it doesn't look like much — no view, no hint of what's below. You have to park and walk down to find it: a beach carpeted in polished pebbles, backed by sandstone cliffs weathered into an intricate honeycomb pattern called tafoni.
This three-card set was shot in a single afternoon at Bean Hollow — overcast, quiet, the light flattening toward golden hour. All three images were taken handheld on a Canon EOS 77D, working the same stretch of coast from different vantage points: down in the pockets of the rock, along the cliff face, and up on the bluff overlooking the surf.
The first image is a close study of the tafoni itself — small, sea-worn pebbles collected in the honeycombed hollows of the sandstone. These pockets aren't carved by the brute force of crashing waves, as it might seem. They form slowly, over thousands of years, as salt spray soaks into the porous rock and crystallizes as it dries, quietly pushing the stone apart grain by grain. Bean Hollow itself takes its name from the Spanish Cañada del Frijol — "Creek of the Beans" — after wild beans once found growing along the creek here. But looking at these small round stones tucked into their pockets, it's tempting to believe another theory: that the name was just as easily inspired by the beach's own pebbles.
The second image pulls back to show the layered geology of the same cliff face — sandstone at the surface, a band of iron-stained rock beneath it, tafoni cut into the face below, and a glimpse of older granite at the base. It's the whole story of this coastline compressed into one frame.
The third image trades color for black and white. Standing on the bluff above the beach, watching a rocky sea stack take on wave after wave, the photographer counted the sets rolling in — waiting, as the old saying goes, for the seventh wave, reputed to be the biggest of the set — to time the shot. The flat, gray light of the day made the scene better suited to black and white than color: the drama lives in the contrast between the dark rock, the white spray, and the pale sky, not in any color that was actually there to see.
Together, the three cards trace a single afternoon of patience on an easy-to-miss stretch of California coast — proof that Bean Hollow offers far more than what you can see from the highway.
Format: Set of 6 note cards (3 images). Fine-art print mounted on folded 60# 4x6" card stock. Each card individually hand-annotated and signed.
Tafoni close-up (pebbles in hollows): Nature's Jewel Box, Bean Hollow — small stones settled into salt-carved pockets of sandstone, a quiet nod to the beach's own name.
Layered cliff face: Written in Stone, Bean Hollow — sandstone, iron, tafoni, and granite — one cliff face, thousands of years.
Black-and-white wave / sea stack: The Seventh Wave, Bean Hollow — a gray afternoon, a count of the waves, and the one worth waiting for.
A boxed set of note cards featuring three original photographs from Bean Hollow State Beach, California. Each card is a fine-art print on high-quality paper, affixed to folded 60# 4x6" card stock, with a hand-written description and signature by the photographer.
South of Half Moon Bay, along a stretch of Highway 1 that most drivers pass without a second look, a barely marked turnout drops down to Bean Hollow State Beach. From the road it doesn't look like much — no view, no hint of what's below. You have to park and walk down to find it: a beach carpeted in polished pebbles, backed by sandstone cliffs weathered into an intricate honeycomb pattern called tafoni.
This three-card set was shot in a single afternoon at Bean Hollow — overcast, quiet, the light flattening toward golden hour. All three images were taken handheld on a Canon EOS 77D, working the same stretch of coast from different vantage points: down in the pockets of the rock, along the cliff face, and up on the bluff overlooking the surf.
The first image is a close study of the tafoni itself — small, sea-worn pebbles collected in the honeycombed hollows of the sandstone. These pockets aren't carved by the brute force of crashing waves, as it might seem. They form slowly, over thousands of years, as salt spray soaks into the porous rock and crystallizes as it dries, quietly pushing the stone apart grain by grain. Bean Hollow itself takes its name from the Spanish Cañada del Frijol — "Creek of the Beans" — after wild beans once found growing along the creek here. But looking at these small round stones tucked into their pockets, it's tempting to believe another theory: that the name was just as easily inspired by the beach's own pebbles.
The second image pulls back to show the layered geology of the same cliff face — sandstone at the surface, a band of iron-stained rock beneath it, tafoni cut into the face below, and a glimpse of older granite at the base. It's the whole story of this coastline compressed into one frame.
The third image trades color for black and white. Standing on the bluff above the beach, watching a rocky sea stack take on wave after wave, the photographer counted the sets rolling in — waiting, as the old saying goes, for the seventh wave, reputed to be the biggest of the set — to time the shot. The flat, gray light of the day made the scene better suited to black and white than color: the drama lives in the contrast between the dark rock, the white spray, and the pale sky, not in any color that was actually there to see.
Together, the three cards trace a single afternoon of patience on an easy-to-miss stretch of California coast — proof that Bean Hollow offers far more than what you can see from the highway.
Format: Set of 6 note cards (3 images). Fine-art print mounted on folded 60# 4x6" card stock. Each card individually hand-annotated and signed.
Tafoni close-up (pebbles in hollows): Nature's Jewel Box, Bean Hollow — small stones settled into salt-carved pockets of sandstone, a quiet nod to the beach's own name.
Layered cliff face: Written in Stone, Bean Hollow — sandstone, iron, tafoni, and granite — one cliff face, thousands of years.
Black-and-white wave / sea stack: The Seventh Wave, Bean Hollow — a gray afternoon, a count of the waves, and the one worth waiting for.
