Peregrines, surf, and the shoreline ritual: how a photo circle Dave Weldon built became a South Bay community.
by Chelsea Sektnan
The fence line at the Point Vicente Lighthouse looks like a quiet photographer’s press pit. Tripods shoulder the rail, long lenses track the cliffs and the break beyond. This is the regular lineup, a crew photographer Dave Weldon pulled together and keeps in orbit, meeting when the light, wind, and text thread all say go.
The circle includes Dave Weldon of Manhattan Beach; Rich Kanemitsu, a longtime local who now returns from Texas about once a month; Fred and Eve Towns, also of Manhattan Beach; and Melissa and Roberto Chong, now in Gardena after years in Manhattan Beach. They show up for peregrine falcons and other birds in season and for surfers year-round, then drift to breakfast to compare frames. The draw is equal parts pictures and people.
“A typical shoot is an hour, hour and a half? Three to six hundred shots,” Fred Towns said. “Cull that down to the best 40 or 50.”
It’s a lot of frames; the difference now, Kanemitsu said, is digital.
“I quit film when I was a teenager because I couldn’t afford it,” Kanemitsu said. “Now you can just hit delete.”
Weldon is the point man and an easy spot — calling bird names, checking the lineup, and keeping an eye out for familiar faces in the water.
“There’s a woman out there on a raft,” he said one morning while shooting surfers at El Porto in Manhattan Beach. “That’s Monique. She’s been a regular for at least the last five, six, seven, eight years. She uses the photos on Instagram and Facebook.”
Monique “Maddy” Bryher, who drives in from the San Fernando Valley, has turned those mornings into an archive.
“I have pictures from Dave going back over 10 years,” she said. “I probably have 50 to 70 photos from him. I wish I had pictures of me surfing when I was a little kid. Sometimes I go through them and you just go, wow, that looked like fun, you’re out with your friends, the weather’s beautiful.”
The crew’s origin stories bend in different directions and meet at the shoreline. For Weldon, it started with surfing.
“Mostly because I was born in Manhattan Beach, and my brothers all surfed,” Weldon said. “I was always down fishing at the pier, and the beach is a lure. When I was able to buy that 500 millimeter (lens), I thought, let me try it for surfing, and it worked out great. Years later I got into wildlife.”
Roberto traces his start with Weldon back to those same neighborhoods and early meetups.
“I met Dave when I liveed in Manhattan Beach,” Roberto said. “He was shooting some macro photography in the nearby park, and I was doing the same. So we started talking about equipment and stuff. Our first venture wasn’t birds, it was landscape. That was an easy medium for both of us.”
What keeps him showing up is simple — “like-minded people,” Roberto said — and the place: “The South Bay… It’s just my home.”
Eve and Fred came in as Eve was easing out of the tech industry.
“Dave kind of guided me,” Fred said. “He said, ‘Come shoot birds with us, come see the surfers,’ and got me involved in some charity work where we photographed kids learning to surf. I loved what he’d formed, and he invited me into the group. We’re around the same age, some of us retired, and it’s a great way to spend our time.”
Between shoots, the group acts like a small newsroom: a running string of pictures, site reports, and teasing.
“We all get online and communicate all the time,” Eve said. “People share pictures or a thought. It’s really built like a little community.”
While on a shoot, Fred added, strangers now ask if they’re “part of Dave’s group.” “He’s kind of the mayor of photography in this town,” she said.
“Everybody knows Dave around here,” Kanemitsu said.
“The best part is that sense of having like-minded people together, a small community encouraging each other,” Roberto said.
Melissa found her way behind the lens more recently.
“When the pandemic started, I used to use my iPhone,” she said. “Compared to this camera, it’s totally different, a totally different world. I upgraded, then upgraded again to shoot birds.”
There’s some gentle nerdiness in the mix, and they own it.
“Rich and I time-sync our cameras so when we’re shooting 50 yards apart, we shoot the same person,” Weldon said. “In the gallery, you’ll see the same surfer from two angles. Everything lines up.”
“You know, nerds,” Kanemitsu said, laughing.
For Weldon, the appeal is that the same cliff can produce wildly different pictures and conversations, even when everyone is shoulder to shoulder.
“It’s incredible how you can stand in the same spot, shoot the same bird and get a totally different look,” he said.
He recalled last year’s Easy Reader News photo contest: “Melissa and I were six feet apart and her shot, almost the same as mine, was better, and it placed. We’re always sharing our best shots. We’re also always talking about the latest camera body, the latest lens, and comparing notes.”
Their subjects vary as much as the seasons: peregrines on the cliffs when they’re nesting, grebes and pelicans sliding past the rocks, and surfers at El Porto when the swell lines up. Some mornings, they trade the bluffs for botanical paths and macro work—leaves, blossoms, bees, until the text thread says the coast is alive again.
“The best part is the chance to go on outings together, exploring new places, and returning to the same ones season to season to see the changes,” Weldon said. “When there’s nothing at one spot, another might be starting to pick up, and we all go there instead.”
The cameras don’t only find birds and surfers. They’ve mapped family milestones that return with the tides. One local surfing mom, Maki Namikawa, laughed when asked about an early picture Weldon remembered — a pregnancy shot that turned into a running series starting with a photograph of her pregnant with her son titled, “Baby on Board,” and now includes images of her young son surfing.
When the light goes flat, the routine usually continues off the bluff or shoreline.
“We’ll shoot, then when it slows down, we’ll go get breakfast and sit around and talk,” Eve said.
Roberto said the conversation runs wider than f-stops.
“We talk about different things,” he said. “Other than photography, we get into health, lifestyles, food, and more equipment. It’s a hobby. For us, it’s pretty much the most serious hobby we’ve had, especially since retiring.”
Weldon doesn’t make much of being the organizer. He keeps the text thread moving, shows up early, and waves people in when the fence starts to crowd. He also keeps it light.
“Small waves today, but still kind of fun,” he said, watching the lineup from the beach while two surfers dropped into a wave. Across the sand, two shutters fired in sync — just the way the crew planned it. ER
Bravo! Respect.