Poison Oak be damned, it's nice when a 5×7 large format (LF) photography trip for a HAER photo documentation works out. It almost makes the two weeks with a rash worth it. I'll forget about the rash, but in the spirit of the HABS/HAER/HALS* programs these photos will endure in cold storage at Fort Meade in the LoC P&P* storage facility. Two weeks of itchin' & scratchin' for 500+ years of public benefit… So worth it.
If you decide to get out of your car on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and photograph in this area watch out for those little Poison Oak plants with red leaves, "leaves of three, let it be." There are a million pages on the WWW about Poison Oak and they are all over the Big Sur hills. If I ever write a magazine article about photography in coastal CA (California) there will be a section about Posion Oak, so be careful.
This brings to mind the adage: "A picture is worth a thousand words," it's actually two pictures, so maybe it's 2000 words? And for those of you who stumbled upon this BLOG (Web log) and photo on the WWW and have never heard of all these silly letters:
* The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), are historical documentation collections administered by the National Park Service (NPS) Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) and available in the Library of Congress (LoC) Prints & Photographs (P&P) Reading Room. The collections of thousands of heritage buildings, bridges, tunnels, and parks can be keyword searched on the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/
The Bixby Bridge images from this itchy outing will be sent to HDP in late 2012 and should be searchable in 2014. I can now join DATIC, the official club of people who: Drop Acronyms to Increase Credibility.