Day 1

Day 2 — June 6, 2023 — Morro Bay, San Simeon & Cambria

This was our first full day at the ocean. My wife and I decided to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to explore Morro Bay, followed by the elephant seals north of San Simeon, and finally Moonstone Beach in Cambria on the way back down. This area is just incredible, and is one of my favorite sections of coastline in California!

Did you know that there are wild zebras near San Simeon? There are! Actually, they were once part of William Hearst’s private zoo, but they escaped (were released?), and now live wild in the coastal hills below Hearst Castle. Sometimes you can spot them from the highway. We were fortunate to find a few; while they weren’t very close, I was able to photograph a couple of them with my 90mm lens. I would have loved to visit the castle on this trip, but it just didn’t work out this time.

The weather was cool and overcast. It was fairly poor light for photography. A couple of times the sun did briefly try to peek through, but it mostly remained drab all day. Still, this area is stunning, so there were many photographic opportunities—in fact, the potential for great photography always exists no matter the time and location, and it is up to the photographer to find it.

The camera gear that I used on Day 2 (you can read the entirety of the gear that I brought with me in my Ultimate Travel Compact Camera Kit article) was a Fujifilm X100V with a 5% CineBloom filter, a Fujifilm X-E4 with a Fujinon 90mm f/2 lens, a Ricoh GR III, and a Samsung ST76 digicam. The X100V was utilized the most and the X-E4 + 90mm was second most. The GR III and Samsung digicam were barely used, while everything else remained in the camera bag on this day.

For Day 2, the Film Simulation Recipes that I used on my Fujifilm cameras (which can be found in the Fuji X Weekly App) were Kodak Tri-X 400, Kodachrome 64, Kodak Ektachrome E100VS v2, The Rockwell, Urban Dreams, Fujicolor 100 Gold, Superia Premium 400, Pacific Blues, Expired Velvia, and Xpro ’62. On the GR III, I used the Monochrome Film Recipe (which can be found in the Ricoh Recipes App) for the entirety of the trip, treating the camera as a monochrome-only model. On the Samsung ST76 I used the Retro filter.

The photographs below are in order of when they were captured. The picture at the top of this article, Splash, fits in-between Wave Crash on Rock and Picture-in-Picture. The second image, Playing with Waves, fits in-between Beach Play and Self Portrait. Despite the drab weather, I was able to get a few good shots (interspersed between some so-so images)—with four more days still to go (including with Ken and Dave), there would be many, many more photographic opportunities to come.

Day 3 — Day 4, Part 1 — Day 4, Part 2 — Day 5, Part 1 — Day 5, Part 2 — Day 6

This post contains affiliate links, and if you make a purchase using my links I’ll be compensated a small amount for it.

Fujifilm X100V — Amazon   B&H  Moment
Fujifilm X-E4 — Amazon   B&H  Moment
Ricoh GR III — Amazon  B&H  Moment
Fujinon 90mm f/2 — Amazon   B&H   Moment