Twilight on El Matador Beach in Malibu.
What happens when a legend becomes a cliché?
The tide was low enough to turn the sand into a mirror. And for a moment the whole beach looked staged, as if someone had ordered the Pacific to pose for a perfect reflection.
El Matador has been filmed so often it hardly feels real anymore. You’ve seen it, even if you don’t remember where: The Notebook, True Romance, that perfume commercial that mistook wind for desire. This beach has been photographed to exhaustion, and still, we return.
But this is what the cliché means to me: it’s permission to arrive after the myth has been exhausted and still make it personal. The photograph doesn’t pretend to be new. But, it remembers everything shot before it: every ad, every love story, every fantasy of a romantic sunset.
The frame is cliché: the clear sky, the setting sun, the tripod planted in wet sand, and a bird cutting across the reflection like punctuation.
But it felt like the legend was reflecting upon itself:
Welcome. You know what this is. Now make it yours.
About the lens
The Leica APO-Summicron-M 90mm f/2 ASPH is a lens of remarkable fidelity. It renders images with clarity but never clinical detachment. There are no flares, no aberrations, no drama. Favored for portraits and moments that demand honesty over embellishment. Sharp, truthful, quietly luminous.
