Timeless Tide is an image I created in Santa Barbara, California. After a week of capturing the ocean from the beach or in the water, I wanted to try something different and headed into the mountains. I found a nice vista overlooking the coast with the city in view. Since I’m mostly a ‘peopleless’ photographer and focus on creating images that do not contain human presence in the wild, I thought it would be clever to use a motion blur to remove any evidence of civilization. I opened the shutter and shot hundreds of frames with a steady handheld pan to create this image. It is an interesting metaphor for time, that with just a flick of the wrist over 1/15th of a second, you can erase evidence of an entire bustling city on the coast. In the end, I view time is the ultimate paintbrush of the land and sea, not us. The native Chumash people of these coastlands taught the value of living by nature’s time, not man’s time, to stop and feel nature, to listen, to be cleansed and to see the cycles of all things. I hope the abstractness of this image inspires you to tap into senses beyond what you typically rely on. To feel the infinite cycle of time percolating into the now, cascading a mirage of mixed reds and oranges onto a fog above the blue sea’s swelling tide wrapping the welcoming land. And to remind you how quickly superficial things can be erased, leaving us with the nature that has always sustained us.