Last week I got the chance to do a little more location scouting for my coastal rephotographic project. This time I got to check out one of my favorite sites along the Big Sur Coast, which is the view of Point Sur. I have always loved this particular spot because of the many photographers who stopped and made photographs here. Brett Weston is at the top of my personal list. In fact, it’s this image, from his book Voyage of the Eye, that has always been one of my favorites:
Image 2: “Big Sur, Fog” from Brett Weston’s book Voyage of the Eye. This photo was taken in 1966. Notice my very high tech method of using an old notebook and iPhone to help keep the page flat!
Back when I first started photography in the mid 1990s I was inspired by a lot of the West Coast photographers like Brett Weston, Edward Weston, Morley Baer, and Ansel Adams. On one of my trips up the coast I took this photo of Point Sur:
Image 3: Point Sur, 1997. Photo by Ryan Anderson.
I took that photograph long before I had ever heard about ‘repeat photography’ or the work of Mark Klett and others who were doing that kind of thing. So at the time I wasn’t concerned about taking the photograph from the same spot…I was just more interested in stopping and getting a photo of Point Sur. I had also seen other images of Point Sur and Little Sur, like this one from Morley Baer’s book:
Image 4: “Beach at Little Sur” (1951) from Morley Baer’s book Light Years (1988).
For this project, my goals are different and more specific. I am interested in what historical images of the coast tell us about coastal change (and stability). With Point Sur, my plan is to select a few images to relocate and rephotograph. I’d like to choose one from Brett Weston and one from either Morley Baer or Ansel Adams. I’d also like to look into some photographic archives for older images from photographers who are not as well known. In addition to those, it would be fun to relocate and rephotograph the one I took in 1997 (Image 3 above). I got pretty close to the right spot with this one from last week:
Image 5: Point Sur, July 22, 2025. Photo by Ryan Anderson.
So I have one correct location, and the next step is getting the composition and lens as close as possible. The one I shot in 1997 was likely taken with a Wisner 4x5 and a 210 mm lens. I may have shot it with a 150 though—I’ll have to check. Those two focal lengths would translate to a 70 mm and 50 mm on my Canon digital setup. The photo above (Image 5) was taken with a Canon 5d Mark IV and a 50 mm lens. It might be good to do the rephotographic part with both digital and 4x5 just for fun.
My next step is to decide upon the index images from Weston and others. Brett Weston took a lot of photographs of Point Sur, so it will be fun to look through them and decide which one to go with. One of the challenges here will be finding those images. Some of them are listed online here and there. But ideally I’ll be able to track some down in various archives, personal collections, or perhaps galleries. Here are a few that Brett made between the 1950s and 1960s that I found floating around online:
Image 6: “Big Sur, CA” (1955). I found this image posted via an auction at Christie’s here.
Image 7: “Big Sur California” (1963). I found this one here.
I really like the one from 1955 by Weston (Image 6), but I also have to remember that one of the main points here is showing coastal change. I’ll keep that in mind as I decide which image to choose for rephotographing. The Morley Baer photo above (Image 4) is a great candidate for showing coastal change with that view of Little Sur more than seven decades ago.
To be continued…