On August 28th I'm starting a new pop-up newsletter called Point Lobos, & Maybe Monterey. Four days, four e-mails, words and pictures. Sign up here.

When I'm reading about photography and the history of photography, and see some particularly spectacular example, some early masterpiece of the form, I've started to notice that often -- not always, but often -- there's a word that comes next. California. Usually not born here, and not always shot here, but often lived here, and for a long time. "The Cascades" comes up a lot. San Francisco. And-- Point Lobos.

I like to think that this is because of California's particular genius for the new. The technological. And for photography's particular, intimate relationship with the technical. All art is technical, it can't escape from being about technology, but photography is especially, inescapably that way, can't pretend not to be, the way that paint can pretend not to be intricately linked to the difficult chemical technology of the pigment.

Camera, fortunately or unfortunately, have buttons. They can't escape from being devices.

It's kind of popular, especially in my online circles but somewhat in my offline ones, to complain about California. It's so expensive. There's so much crime, so many people living in tents on the street. Our politicians are so clueless, so self-interested. We don't build enough houses. (Or we build too many.) We don't have enough water for the people here. The Whole Food at Haight Street had to stop giving out free samples on account of all the dogs. (Minute 1:08:35 in the linked episode.)

When you drive back to Oakland from SFO there are billboards by the highway for things like Snowflake and Checkr and Snyk, offering data warehouses and enterprise readiness.

Some of this is frustration. If you do a certain kind of work and make a certain kind of money, you have basically had to live in northern California for the past two decades, whether you want to be here or not.

But some of it is despair. Because if you don't do that certain kind of work -- or if you do, but don't make the money at the very top end of it -- there are all these fuckers running around who don't to be here but insist on making it unlivably expensive anyway.

Utterly fucked local politics or not, there are a lot of reasons to want to live here. The weather is perfect. The food is great. We're a comfortable distance from the American East Coast, with all its suit-wearing, scandal-having self-absorption. Instead, we get to be a part of the Pacific Rim, cultural neighbors to Japan and Australia and Taiwan and the Philippines. We're next to the Central Valley, one of the eighth wonders of the world, a civilizational and hydrological marvel. We're a five hour flight away from Hawai'i.

And it is absolutely gorgeous.

I'm about to finish up my most recent pop-up newsletter (thanks again to those of you who signed up for that, it's been fun!) and so naturally I'm already thinking about the next one. I've been writing a lot about, basically, tech stuff, and I'm itching to write more about not that. To take more photographs, and more photographs about more specific subjects. I've got one eye on the fall, on the next full-time contract.

And I happen to have four or five days all to myself at the end of the month, because my partner will be doing some traveling. Last time I was alone in the house for that long I got kind of weird, so I need some kind of project. My therapist has been suggesting that I take a real vacation -- go somewhere else -- for a while now, and he also suggested that I get the dog, so I figure he knows what he's doing. So I thought, well, what I really want is to spend that time doing nothing but photographing and writing. The best way to do that would be to do another pop-up newsletter.

Tight timing pretty much drove the rest of the decisions. Needs to be within a days drive. Needs to be somewhere I was already thinking about photographing. I was tempted to do the whole thing as a walk, to start in, say, Baker's Beach or Half Moon bay and head south, but there's so much coastline that I've had a hard time narrowing down where to start and where to end. And I kept fiddling with the spreadsheet and thinking, well, but I'd really like to make it all the way to Point Lobos.

So I figured I'd just start there.

I'm still working through the exact shape of the thing -- the exact rules. I want to spend a solid 4-5 hours of walking each day but Point Lobos is so small. You can, in theory, see the whole thing in that amount of time, or less. There's something appealing about spending three or four or eight times that time in a small space, really going over it, getting to know it -- but I worry about getting bored. I don't know the area well, don't know this kind of project well, don't know what to expect from either.

Then, too, there are details of timing. Sunrise around here starts at about 6:30, this time of year, but the park doesn't open until 8am. So I can't actually get in during peak photographing time. And then it closes at 5pm -- well before sunset.

So. We're going to have some rules. The exact details of where I'm going to walk and what I'm going to photograph will be a little loose, but hopefully it'll weld together into something tight and specific once we're physically there. Can interact with the space.

1. Be within sight of the ocean by sunrise

2. Walk into the park

3. Take at least one person's portrait each morning

4. Walk at least 20,000 steps, either around Point Lobos or through Carmel and Monterey

5. Find a cafe to work in

6. Import, edit, and process the days photos

7. Write 1,000 - 5,000 words about the day's walk

8. Publish the photos and essay before 9pm

9. Bed by 9:30pm

I can't promise that the photographs are going to live up to the subject, especially this already-lovingly-photographed subject. I'm still solidly in the "developing the work" phase of my -- clears through nervously -- artistic career, but I've found that having an audience does make me more productive, and more disciplined.

And braver. That portrait thing is a hard requirement. Photographing strangers, talking to strangers, is something that I know I need to do, to do the kind of photographing that I want to do, but I am terrified of it. I'm going to need ya'll to keep me honest.

So, come join me for a walk, around one of the most beautiful places in the world.