West Coast: Bering to Baja, 2002-2011

The photographs are from my 2012 book, West Coast: Bering to Baja published by George F. Thompson Publishing. The highly respected photographic historian Naomi Rosenblum has written a foreword that places the images in the historical context of landscape photography. The best-selling author Simon Winchester has written an accompanying text that explains the theory of plate tectonics and the natural forces that have created this magnificent and varied seacoast.

I have always been drawn to transitional places, literally and metaphorically. For me, there is no more fascinating place on earth than the meeting of sea, land, and sky. Or is it where they part ways? It is all about perception and, indeed, scientists have shown us that the earth's surface is but a clue as to what is really going on beneath the waves, under the rock, and high in the atmosphere. The daily ebb and flow of the weather are a counterpoint to the inexorable march of tectonic plates and climate change over millennia. The earth is a perpetual motion machine that moves at its own pace. We must take care if we want to perpetuate our fragile ride.

To travel the West Coast of North America is a breathtaking, humbling experience. This vast 5,000 mile shoreline is the Pacific Rim of North America – the northeast quadrant of the aptly named Ring of Fire where great geological forces struggle and earthquakes await.

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