These shots were taken in Autumn of 2000. Peter Stevenson and I went up to Tomales Bay to check it out. Unfortunately, it happened to be one of the very few weeks without good winds. It did drizzle though. Ah well. Still, it's been one of our favourite stretches of water since each of us stumbled on to it at different times in the past. It's a great fjord stretching north on the far side of the headlands above San Francisco. It's narrowness is a by-product of the San Andreas fault (separating the North American plate from the Pacific, and along which the western half of California is headed to Alaska), which leaves the coast of California here. The hills surrounding Tomales are all usually very green, looking a lot like England. It's very pastoral in the area, with dairy farms and rolling hills pretty much everywhere. We almost moved to this area (before we decided on the Monterey Peninsula) but the extremely tight zoning regulations, which keep it so beautiful and make it seem like time stopped in about 1940, also make it nearly impossible to enjoy one's property without worrying about violating some environmental ordinance. Now that we're not living there, I'm glad the prohibitions are in place as it will stay a great place to visit.

Speaking of visiting, it's not too hard to get to, has good camping areas and nice hotels, a great Twin-Peaks-like cafe (the Lynch Twin Peaks...), and amazing hikes and such. It also has cute little Hog Island right in the middle of the bay. It's usually breezy and flat and there are a bunch of destinations along its ten or fifteen miles of length. In short: It's the perfect West Coast destination for Stevenson Projects Sail-In meets. When we were trying to get a group of people together for the Weekender's Twentieth Anniversary (summer of 2001) we posted a page with some info. It should still be valid, and we still want to get people to have a meet there.

These shots were scanned in from stereo pairs I took with a 1950's Realist camera. Stereo photography was a semi-popular hobby in the '50's, and is still practiced by a very few enthusiasts (read: camera nuts) who have discovered the amazingly clear and life-like shots one gets. The pictures are so satisfying it's hard to go back to snapshots and prints. The drawback is that you have to use slide film, which you have to mount your self, and people have to look through a viewer to see the shots. Still, the result is so gratifying that a lot of people prefer to shoot stereo. There is even a brand-new camera available with automatic exposure. All the rest of the cameras are entirely manual and mostly '50's vintage.