SLO LIFE Magazine Apr/May 2018

| VIEW
INTO THE
UNKNOWN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRADY CABE
As a young father, Brady Cabe knows a thing or two about sleepless
nights. But, it is an all-nighter in August that he looks forward to
year-round. After tucking his kids into bed, and kissing his wife
goodnight, he hops into the car and heads north, then east, until the
only thing heard is the whisper of the owl’s flight overhead.
The Perseids meteor shower is a big-time event. The Super Bowl for
stargazers. And there is no better place to take in the show locally
than from some oak-studded field a few paces off of Shell Creek
Road, an offshoot of Highway 58, nowhere in particular outside of
Santa Margarita. Almost completely without urban light pollution,
the skies are deep dark, bringing the cosmos within reach.
Photographic inspiration hit Cabe in the most unusual way: surfing.
More specifically, it crept up on him during the days when the swells
failed to appear. As he would sit on his board, waiting for a set to
roll in, not far from his Grover Beach home, he started to notice
something during those early mornings. The light. Each day it was
a little bit different, but always trying to tell a story. He started to
tune in, listen with his eyes. It was not long before he became more
interested in the flat days with dramatic light than he was when south
swells were pounding the beach break. “It finally occurred to me,” is
how he remembers it, “that I ought to try to take a few pictures with
my phone.” And, so it began.
One thing led to another, which is how Cabe found himself all alone,
at 3 o’clock in the morning in one of the most uninhabited corners of
San Luis Obispo County. As he tromped around the uneven terrain,
he searched for a foreground subject—something immovable, and
timeless, something that deserved to share the stage with the heavens
above. In the distance, he saw the silhouette and knew he found it.
Carefully, he mounted his Canon 6D to the tripod below the elderly
oak, and began capturing the light. Every 30 seconds curious creatures
of the night could hear the sound of the shutter with its clunky click.
The composition you see here, called a star trail, is actually an
amalgamation of approximately 60 photos taken over the course of a
half-hour or so. Initially, Cabe was disappointed with the result. He
had hoped to shoot a meteor, which would have been represented
in the print as a thin, white streak across the canvas, but they were
not cooperating. By training his focus on the North Star, the one
stationary point in the sky, the kaleidoscope effect is created by the
Earth’s rotation. It’s not really the stars that move—it’s us. And Cabe
was there that night as an intergalactic translator of sorts, attempting
to discern the story of their ancient light, while the little blue-green
marble he found himself standing on continued to hurtle through
space, into the unknown. SLO LIFE
32 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | APR/MAY 2018