Leon Turnbull Photography

We took a very quick trip to Monterey this past long weekend, primarily to take the kids to the Aquarium. But I wanted to try to get one sunset in for photography. I had to play drums in church on Sunday, so immediately afterwards, we left to go to the coast. We arrived at the coast at about 4pm, giving just enough time to find a place for sunset. We went down to Garrapata State Park, just south of Monterey. It is a pretty area, with lots of jagged rocks and beautiful coastal scenery. We even saw quite a few gray whales spouting off in the distance, though they were too far off to get any pictures.

We climbed down from the road into a neat little cove, which required some careful footwork to get the kids down. There were already a couple other photographers down there. However, I realized the sunset would not be visible from there, so I left the wife and kids and climbed back up on the ridge where I could get an overlook of the cove and see the sunset. There were no spectacular clouds around, but it was still a gorgeous view. This shot was taken just after sunset, using a longer exposure to get the ocean waves to smooth out more evenly.