San Mateo

I normally get to the park in late afternoon and sometimes stay until well after the sun goes down, if the conditions are promising and I just can’t leave the remaining photos behind. I get on the trails on top of the hill for the clouds, and go down to the water’s edge for the waves and aquatic birds.

There are many different species of aquatic birds that from late afternoon on, start digging into every square inch of the soft bay mud for small crustaceans dinner, all along the shoreline. But once they’ve had their fill, they move further into the edge of the low tide for safety, and to roost for the night. The coyotes and feral cats can manage few steps on the soft bay mud for a midnight snack, but not any further, and the birds know it.

But I have my eyes on Pelicans that in late afternoons, glide in about a foot above the water near the shoreline, to groom themselves and to chat about their day with the rest of the flock, before roosting for the night. Sometimes, it appeared that some of them must have had a bad day since their beaks were wide open all the time and the beak pouch was hanging down and flapping around with their beak movements, as they “talked.”

The Pelicans visit is very random… every time I’ve seen them coming in from far away, I would rush to get closer to their usual landing strips at the edge of the water, they had already landed and were meticulously grooming and repairing their flight feathers one at a time. So, I just enjoyed the moment watching them getting ready to go to bed, which sometimes made me think… why my kids were not anywhere near as meticulous as the pelicans, with their bed time routines when they were young, or teenagers for that matter.

But regardless of my flashbacks, I’m going to spend more time scouting out their favorite roosting areas, dress warm and hang around their flight paths or their favorite “landing strips” with a 180-400mm f/4, TC1.4 that can go up to 560mm lens, and be patient.

This park is on my way to “3 Bees Coffee” shop in down town San Mateo, where I spend few hours between early to late afternoons, almost every day. I get my Espresso fix, I hang out and socialize with few other regulars who also come in as often as I do, and for the same set of priorities. We don’t solve any of the world problems let alone our own domestic ones in Washington, but it all works out at the end, and we all go home happy, it’s simple.

I take the 3rd Ave to coffee shop and back. It’s a nice drive by the SF Bay with ever-present cool ocean breeze in the summer which makes you feels happy, specially in a sunny summer day. Besides, the freeway turns into a very long parking lot from early afternoon on. Depending on suitable conditions for photography, and if I had Shadow with me that had patiently waited in the car while I was at the coffee shop, I would make a stop at the Seal Point Park that also had a very large and popular dog park.

Shadow loved the park and I couldn’t drive past it without her letting me know with her entire body shiver, that would gradually get exaggerated, as I got closer to the park entrance. Her begging eyes and subtle cries while keeping her composure like a perfect front seat passenger, was unthinkable for me to ignore and deny her the pleasure of being a dog for a while, not a pet.

The reason I’ve mentioned Shadow, is because she was most likely sitting quietly next to my feet and after a while leaning on it, which actually felt good on cold days, as I was making some of these photos. I’m sure her interpretation of these photos were totally different than yours or anyone else’s, including mine.

During the early spring and fall, the shades of colors in the sky and at the horizon cross the bay over East Bay shores, gets to be really gorgeous on some days. Around fifteen minutes or so before it gets too dark, the last rays of sunlight paints the skies into an alien world with entirely new range of colors from very light pink and blue, pale peach and orange, and various shades of subtle but visible purple.

There’s also hardly any wind or even a slight breeze during the early Spring and Fall months. Most of the colors in the sky gets reflected on the smooth surface of the water between the two ripple curls, that move in slow motion towards the shore, and finally fade away on the wet barrier rocks

The ripples roll in normally few feet apart with a mirror like water surface between them. The projected sky colors and shades, intermingle and evolve colors as they get closer to the shore, like a giant rectangular kaleidoscope. That moving target only lasts few seconds at best, but that’s when and where most of the waves photos are shot

The photos that look somewhat similar, are taken from different sections of a much larger scene, like large section of the sky, the bay, or both. Those photos will have a “Series Name” as well as an individual “Photo Title.” The editing process for those photos, is really driven by the individual photos themselves, not me. I just follow the path during the editing process, that exposes the hidden shapes, shades, and colors that best define that photo, that’s when I stop editing.

Gradually, each photo settles into its own space in the color or black and white spectrum, that it belongs to. Basically, they evolve into what I had initially envisioned when I shot that photo. I am sure each viewer will interpret each photo differently, but that’s the objective. I just happen to be the first viewer who saw its birth, its growth path through editing layers, and the final photo before it was published.


At the park, once I’m settled on a location, I scan the skies and the water’s edge for any combination of shapes, shades, and colors that look promising in a large scale. If I see a string of connected smaller scenes in it, I compose a smaller frame from within the larger scene, and start slowly panning and shooting from one end to the other, in a very small increments. I repeat this process multiple times to make sure I’ve captured most of the frames that I can work with in editing.

Most of the time I don’t even know what photos I have until I start editing them and see unexpected and surprising shades, colors, and sometimes subjects that actually make the photo vs breaking it… like the in-flight reflection of the uninvited model at the valley part of the distant wave

Sometimes, the most promising scenes of the day happens to be behind me. This scenario came true one day on the low hanging cloud formations behind me that I had no clue until I turned around and was struck by their simple beauty. I thought the different shapes and shades in the clouds were worth experimenting with, I’m happy I did.

I hope you will or have enjoyed the photos that this description belongs to, or at the very least, you have a better idea about how these photos became photographs that I immensely enjoyed capturing, editing, and writing about them.

Copyright © Ara Michaelian, #MultiMediaAra, All Rights Reserved