The Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier in La Jolla Shores attracts the attention of photographers for good reason, it’s a handsome pier on a beautiful beach which isn’t overly crowded and has great sunset views.
Joining my wife on a business trip to San Diego, I started doing my research on the area and found this pier coming up on my searches. I knew I saw this pier before and then it hit me, oh yeah, I saw a photograph of this pier in a Peter Lik gallery. Since then I’ve seen it in several fine art photography galleries. Some spots seem to be favorites of these guys and you see the nearly the same photos in their galleries like Horseshoe Curve in the Grand Canyon.
So I packed my tripod in case I had the change to photograph the pier and put my individual spin on “the shot”. Usually you see the pier photographed from below. There is a good reason for this because the top of the pier is off limits to the general public as it is a research facility.
As one of the world’s biggest research piers, it is used for boat launching and a variety of experiments. Data on ocean conditions and plankton taken from the pier since 1916 provide an unparalleled source of information on changes in the coastal Pacific Ocean.
The pier also provides a supply of fresh seawater, a critical resource for a marine institution, to an array of laboratories and aquaria. Seawater is pumped up from the end of the pier, then filtered and stored in holding tanks. Scripps pumps about 1.8 million gallons of seawater each day.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/resources-and-facilities/ellen-browning-scripps-memorial-pier
I was able to visit the pier three times during my visit. Once soon after we landed, we had a great taco or two at Galaxy Taco down the road just a bit and then walked to the pier around 2 pm to scope it out. I came back the next night at sunset after a long day of walking around the Gliderport, Black’s Beach and the University of California’s impressive San Diego campus. And then I hit Galaxy Taco again for another set of tacos.
The third day I came over after hiking all over Torrey Pines State Park. At this point I could barely move and didn’t even walk down to the pier. I was just too exhausted from hiking around for two days with a backpack of heavy camera gear. Luckily I captured a great set of images on the first sunset night.