TC and I attempted to escape the perils of winter in the Northeast this year by spending January in Southern California. We should have stayed longer as we are now being hit with winter storm after winter storm. But the trip was a great success photographically. I have been working on the images all through February and now am ready for the great reveal.

I have also concluded that we are Sunday Explorers – a nice walk along the water’s edge, lots of wildlife to photograph, and, of course, a nice lunch! What can I say? We are spoiled.

A totally remarkable place on this trip was La Jolla cove. I think that we went there four or five times. The why is obvious from the image of Figure 1. There you come face-to-face with enormity – the enormity of the Pacific, the enormity the Earth, and the enormity of life on Earth. Here nature meets man often to sad effect, I came upon a Brandt’s Cormorant with what I thought at first was a white feather on its chest. In reality it was one of those plastic six-pack ties – so sad – and nothing to be done.

Still in the picture, I hope you can get a sense of the enormity of the place. Here three cormorants bravely battle the sea to defend their rock. The Pacific defies its name and pounds bird and rock with enormous force. For a moment you can ignore the presence of man and urban outcroppings to see the world as Darwin did on his “Voyage of the Beagle” almost two hundred years ago.

Darwin’s great champion, Sir Thomas H. Huxley said,

“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.”

Canon T2i with EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens at 200mm, 1/3200 sec at f/7.1, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE mode.