The California Beach Feet Story

The idea for California Beach Feet formed in the late 90s during the early days of the internet with a simple fascination: feet are an extraordinarily interesting photographic subject.

What started as a personal experiment in 2004 gradually became a long-running photographic project and, over more than two decades, an extensive visual archive.

The idea has always been straightforward. I go out with my cameras without knowing exactly who I am looking for, but I know it when I see it. A particular pair of feet may catch my attention, but it is rarely the feet alone.

It is the person they belong to—their appearance, vibe, footwear, fashion, attitude, and style; the way their personality, energy, and surroundings all come together in a moment that feels worth photographing.

That element of discovery has remained at the heart of California Beach Feet since the very beginning.

The People Make the Pictures

Most of the women who have appeared on California Beach Feet were never models per se, and few had any previous modeling experience at all. They were simply people encountered at beaches, events, tourist destinations, campuses, parks, and other public places who were invited to pose, impromptu and on the spot.

That kind of spontaneous in-person encounter has always been one of the defining characteristics of the project.

After all, most people who might make an interesting photographic subject would never answer a casting advertisement, respond to a message from a stranger online, or think of themselves as a model.

Approaching someone in person creates an entirely different possibility: an unexpected invitation, an immediate decision, and a photographic session that begins with no script.

Some people decline, of course. Others are curious. Some participate briefly, while others immediately get into the spirit of it and have fun with the camera. A few become recurring subjects. Many appear only once.

The spontaneity of these encounters creates a natural quality in the expressions, reactions, and body language—the little things that happen naturally in unscripted moments. Those moments produce photographs that could never have been planned in advance.

There are also, of course, many experienced and well-known models represented in the archive, including many performers and other public figures. Yet even a seasoned professional can produce something completely different when the circumstances are unexpected and fun, such as suddenly being asked to take off their shoes and pose barefoot.

Some of the most memorable sets came from shoots such as these that were never formal modeling sessions to begin with.

That spontaneity is very much by design. The beauty of an unplanned, spur-of-the-moment session is not only in the surprise expressions and reactions, but in the rawness and unpolished, in-your-face realism of the imagery. The little details that would ordinarily be edited away are part of the whole point: sock marks and lint, shoe tan lines, sweat, dirt, toe jam, chipped polish, and all the other perfectly ordinary signs of real life. These are not sanitized, idealized feet created for a catalog. They are real everyday feet, photographed straight out of footwear, in all their imperfections and glory.

And, of course, you never know what you might get when asking a stranger to take her shoes off. There have certainly been times when I got far more than I bargained for! “Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it,” as the saying goes. That unpredictability is all part of the fun.

Feet, Fashion, Personality, and Style

The subject of California Beach Feet has always been feet first, but the appeal of the subject lies in everything that comes along with them.

The different shapes, sizes, curves, proportions, skin tones, arches, nails, toes, footwear, posture, and countless other details vary enormously from person to person. Feet are also closely connected to fashion and lifestyle.

Flip-flops, sandals, sneakers, socks, boots, high heels, flats—all say something about the person wearing them. So can the way someone walks, moves, relaxes, and poses. The surrounding environment matters too.

A busy public beach can provide a spectacular backdrop, but sometimes the most interesting setting is simply an ordinary place where an extraordinary model happens to appear.

California Beach Feet is a celebration of feet, footwear, attitude, and style—but also of individuality and the surprising visual possibilities contained in something so often taken for granted, something so mundane, even pedestrian, as an overlooked and arguably underappreciated part of the human form.

Natural Encounters

While much of the collection comes from spontaneous encounters rather than conventional casting, there is no predetermined checklist of what someone has to look like to qualify. The process is much more instinctive: I see someone whose overall appearance and presence strike me as interesting, and I immediately know I want to photograph her.

That unpredictability is one reason the collection has become so unusually diverse.

If the project had depended primarily on advertising for models, much of this diversity would never have happened. Most of the “models” who have appeared on California Beach Feet probably would never have considered themselves candidates to be photographed in the first place.

Instead, the archive has grown organically through thousands of individual encounters. Some have been fleeting. Others have developed into extended and recurring sessions. Many took place on beaches in Southern California, while others happened at events, parties, destinations, campuses, and other places where interesting people happened to be.

The resulting collection reflects that randomness. There is no single “CBF type.” The range of ages, appearances, personalities, styles, and backgrounds is part of what makes the archive so interesting.

People often ask, “How do you find these models?” The selection process is not a numbers game, nor is it about indiscriminately casting a wide net. It is much more selective and instinctive than that. There have been plenty of days when I have gone out all day, walked for miles, and not seen anyone who particularly interested me. Other days seem almost magical, with interesting potential subjects appearing one after another—or even too many at once to approach them all.

Whether or not to approach usually comes down to something very simple: “Look how interesting that person is. I wonder what her feet are like.” That is often all it takes. There is no secret formula beyond that instinct. Often the answer is yes, sometimes no, but no matter what happens, the resulting photographs tend to be interesting and unique.

Photography First

California Beach Feet has always been primarily visual. The images are meant to stand on their own.

A photograph does not necessarily need a paragraph explaining what the viewer should think or feel. It can simply be seen. That freedom of interpretation is intentional.

The goal is not to tell visitors what they are supposed to see, but to give them something worth looking at.

The Technical Challenge

Another defining feature of California Beach Feet has been the technical challenge of photographing feet clearly.

That challenge goes back to the very beginning.

In the earliest years of digital photography, cameras with resolutions of only a few megapixels were considered impressive. The transition from film to digital was still being debated, and some photographers wondered whether digital cameras would ever match the quality of film.

At the same time, the Internet was rapidly booming with new photo websites, yet high-quality visual content was still relatively scarce.

The arrival of the first generation of HD video cameras around the middle of the 2000s was particularly influential. Suddenly it became possible to capture and present imagery at a level of detail never before seen in this genre.

California Beach Feet embraced that progression from the very beginning. As each new generation of cameras arrived, there were new possibilities to explore: higher resolutions, better sensors, sharper optics, improved video, stereoscopic 3D, and eventually 4K Ultra HD.

The archive's technical history reflects that progression.

Technology has continued to advance ever since, yet better cameras have never eliminated the difficulty of making genuinely sharp, compelling photographs of feet.

Feet are curving, elusive, three-dimensional subjects with many small areas of detail, often photographed from difficult angles or while moving. Achieving consistent clarity still requires careful attention to focus, lighting, aperture, shutter speed, lens selection, perspective, and timing.

A technically capable camera can capture more information, but cannot by itself decide where to focus, where to position the subject, how to compose the frame, or when to snap the photo.

That remains the photographer's job.

Twenty Years of Change

When California Beach Feet began, the Web was a very different place.

Photos were smaller and Internet connections were much slower. Dedicated photography websites were popping up everywhere, but there was still a real need for quality content. Digital cameras were rapidly evolving, and there was genuine excitement every time a new generation of equipment arrived.

Two decades later, much of that early Internet has disappeared. Many of the independent websites that existed in the 2000s are now gone. Many archives disappeared with them. Social media has largely replaced the old legacy websites and forums.

While the widespread adoption of smartphones has made taking photos easier than ever, the enormous increase in picture quantity has not necessarily produced an increase in photographic quality.

Platform compression, algorithmic feeds, tiny display formats, and the overwhelming volume of imagery inundating us every day can work against the kind of careful, high-fidelity viewing experience that originally inspired this project.

California Beach Feet has therefore continued to preserve not only new material, but also to remaster a visual record of its own history, since much of the early material was published before modern standards.

Older photographs and videos remain part of the archive because they document where the project came from and how photography itself has changed.

A Collection Built One Encounter at a Time

By the end of the 2000s, California Beach Feet had already grown into what was being described as the world's largest collection of its kind—something of a benchmark within its niche, with a dedicated global community of collectors, fans, and admirers eagerly anticipating each new update.

The project continued to expand through the 2010s and 2020s, adding many new models, new locations, new formats, and successive generations of increasingly capable cameras.

The scale of the archive is now one of its defining characteristics.

While each individual portrait highlights the model in a way that can feel larger than life, the true impact of the project lies in the sheer depth and scale of its visual body of work.

There is something compelling about the accumulation of so many individual encounters over such a long period of time. The archive contains an extraordinary range of people and circumstances precisely because it was built one encounter at a time.

That breadth would be difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce through conventional casting alone.

The Community

CBF has also developed a loyal international following thanks to the World Wide Web. Some members have been visiting since the earliest years of the site. Others have followed it for many years, returning regularly to see new photographs and videos and to watch the site evolve.

The archive of comments and reviews has become a record of that history in its own right. Longtime members have watched the project develop over many years and written about particular models and sessions, new equipment, image quality, and the photographs that have stayed with them. Their enthusiasm, curiosity, encouragement, and continued support have been an important part of what has kept the project going.

To everyone who has followed this work, shared in its history, and continued to come back year after year: thank you. A project like this ultimately becomes what it is because viewers care enough to keep looking.

Moments That Would Otherwise Be Lost

One of the most interesting things that becomes more apparent with the passage of time is just how fleeting many of these encounters really were.

Photographs and videos preserve precious moments in time that would otherwise disappear in a heartbeat. Someone happens to be in a particular place on a particular day. I happen to be there too and notice, approach, and ask if she would like to pose.

She says yes!

A few minutes later, the moment is over.

It could have just as easily never happened at all.

Some of the women photographed for California Beach Feet were completely unknown at the time and later became well known. Others were already recognizable figures. Many were simply random passersby who happened to be in the right place at the right time, and who were kind enough to stop and pose for a stranger for a few brief magical moments.

Who knows where most are today?

Some no doubt look completely different. Some may have moved to the other side of the world. Some have gone on to lives that could never have been anticipated at the time they stood in front of the camera.

And, inevitably, some are no longer with us.

That is one of the unexpected things about maintaining a long-running photographic archive. What once seemed like an ordinary afternoon can eventually become a record of a moment in time that can never happen again.

Time marches on and waits for no one.

The photographs remain.

The Odds of an Encounter

There is also something fascinating about the role that chance plays in this project.

At any given moment, an unimaginable number of people are out in the world, yet only a small percentage will ever cross paths with us. Fewer still will happen to be interesting photographic subjects. Fewer still will be approachable in that particular moment. And of those, only some will decide to stop, participate, and create photographs.

The women who ultimately appear on California Beach Feet represent only a tiny fraction of the possibilities that existed.

There are countless photographs and videos that were never taken. Countless potential models who were never encountered. Countless moments that passed unnoticed simply because I was somewhere else, arrived too early, too late, or was looking in a different direction.

If only one could be anywhere and everywhere at once.

That is part of what makes the collection so compelling. It emerged from the nearly infinite possibilities presented by real life, one chance encounter at a time.

Why It Has Continued

California Beach Feet has never been maintained solely as a commercial proposition.

Commercial viability certainly makes it possible to keep producing and preserving the work, but the project has continued for more than two decades because there is still a genuine sense of purpose behind it.

There is always another interesting model to discover. Another day at the beach. Another event. Another pair of feet. Another new camera or lens to experiment with. Another photo session that might turn out better than anything made before it.

All of that is part of the attraction. I can go out and explore with the cameras not knowing exactly who I might find. That uncertainty is not an obstacle to the project—it is one of the reasons for doing it.

I know what I am looking for when I see it.

Looking Back—and Continuing Forward

More than twenty years after the project began, the basic idea has changed little.

The cameras have changed. The formats have changed. The Internet has changed almost beyond recognition. The ways people discover and consume content have changed.

But the essential process remains the same:

Go out. Look. Notice someone interesting. Ask. Photograph.

Sometimes the result is an amazing moment that could never have been planned.

California Beach Feet is, above all, a photographic archive built through thousands of real encounters over more than two decades—a celebration of feet, footwear, attitude, style, spontaneity, and the remarkable variety of beautiful women who have generously stepped in front of the camera. I am deeply grateful to all of the women who have taken a chance on a stranger with a camera, whether for a few brief moments or through many years of friendship and photography. Without their willingness to participate, there would be no collection to preserve.

—CBF