Otter Cliff

Author's Comments

There is a particular hour in early autumn, just after sunrise, when the light hits Otter Cliff straight on and the granite goes the color of a faded rose. The cliff faces southeast, which is the gift here. You arrive in the dark, you wait, and then the ocean below you turns from black to slate to something almost silver as the sun comes up over the water. The face of the cliff catches it directly. That pink stone, which looks ordinary in midday, becomes briefly something else entirely. The waves are the other half of the photograph. One hundred and ten feet is high enough that the surf reads as pattern rather than threat, and a long exposure pulls the white water into soft, drifting shapes against the dark rock at the base. I have spent whole mornings here cycling between two compositions - the wide one that takes in the headland and the horizon, and the tighter frame that isolates a climber on the wall against nothing but ocean. Both are worth making. The climbers usually arrive after the best light has gone, which is its own small problem to solve. The pulloff on Park Loop Road is easy to miss in the dark. Go anyway. By the time the casual visitors arrive at nine or ten, the light has flattened and the cliff has lost what makes it remarkable. This is a morning place. It does not really exist any other way.

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