THE PARADOXES of Carmel's Cole Weston were hard to miss.

The stage director who was known for his smoldering adaptations of John Steinbeck on the stage was also the photographer who captured tranquil sunlit canyons and grazing sheep.

The dutiful son who seemed stuck printing Edward Weston negatives until 1988 was the same man who, 30 years earlier, gave himself the ultimate photo credit with "Surf and Headlands," the world's most famous and popular image of Big Sur.

And, finally, the avid sailor who explored the world steered his way back to Carmel every time. Little Carmel was big enough to hold Cole Weston after all.

"He had a definite attachment to this place," said son Kim Weston, who represents the third generation of Weston photographers. "Carmel stood for a certain creative spirit that was a part of him."

Cole Weston, who lived in a house straddling Garrapata Creek for the last 55 years, died Sunday at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. He was 84.

Despite the many roles in life he played and the many achievements he enjoyed, Cole Weston often lived in his father's shadow. Strikingly, he would emerge from that shadow, thanks to unique talents that had little or nothing to do with Edward. The creative environment of Carmel allowed him to explore gifts that were not immediately foretold by the Weston name. It really did take a village, not just a family, to make a Cole Weston.

The stage calling

As a teenager, Cole's older brother, Brett, emerged as the great new Weston talent. Cole's attraction to photography was slow in arriving, and by no means automatic. The family name could be a burden. The outgoing, magnetic Cole was drawn to the stage -- and the love affair would be lifelong.

"His work in theater served constantly to remind us of what our roots are in Carmel," said Hamish Tyler, executive producer of the Forest Theater Guild.

Tyler said Cole brought a photographer's visual sense to lighting and stage production. His personality, meanwhile, moved him to choose gritty, emotional material. By mounting stunning productions of plays like "Of Mice and Men" and "The Grapes of Wrath" during the 1970s, Weston inspired a renaissance of local theater, which did much to restore the place of drama in a town whose actor mayors long predated Clint Eastwood.

Weston took serious works and made them exciting and profitable. All this came at a time when the city had resigned itself to turning the Outdoor Forest Theater, formerly the cultural nerve center, into a corporation yard and condo development. "During this time, Cole brought an attraction and star power that only he could bring," Tyler said.

In the Carmel of his childhood, the Weston family rubbed elbows with a confederation of writers and artists who populated the Carmel-Monterey area, including people like John Steinbeck. Staging Steinbeck later in life, of course, would take on special significance. Tyler said there was an element of "nostalgia for community, the original Carmel community," that propelled Cole over a period of decades.

The boy whose earliest memory was sailing a toy boat in his father's darkroom was not star-struck in such company. Nor did he take great interest in his father's prominence. He did absorb it as a self-evident truth that creativity should be the life blood of a community.

Right place, right time

War derailed many plans. After graduating from the Cornish School in Seattle with a theater arts degree in 1940, Cole did metal-smithing for Lockheed in Southern California. Just as Edward Weston, in Carmel, made survival for the family possible by doing portraits during the Depression, Cole started a portraits business in 1943. The whole enterprise was perfunctory. Cole's curiosity about craft was greater than any obvious talent.

Weston became a pioneer in color photography, frankly, by accident. Here's how it happened: When, in 1946, Edward Weston was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Cole and his then wife, Dorothy, moved back from Southern California to Carmel to live with Edward. Cole served as his father's assistant for the next 12 years, literally holding the camera for the master and setting up shows.

Eastman Kodak, pandering to the famous photographer, would send him boxes of color film. Color rolls just sat around unused. Brother Brett, ever the black-and-white purest, turned his nose up at all these un-shot opportunities. But Cole eagerly started experimenting.

"Black and white prints announce themselves as art, but color is just the way we see the world," Kim Weston explained. "Dad was exploring color when there was a stigma attached to it. But he stuck with it. My father did a lot to give color photography its legitimacy."

Befitting his paradoxical nature, Cole Weston blended spontaneity with a technical discipline that was anything but spontaneous. Kim Weston remembers being 5 years old when his father pulled the car over to the side of the road on the way to school, gasped at the size of the waves, and vowed to come back to the very spot. He dropped the kids off and set up to capture "Surf and Headlands," a timeless result of simply noticing.

"He believed that photography was about being at the right place at the right time," Kim Weston said. "I'm the opposite. I orchestrate the moment. With my father it was a combination of recognizing the moment and having great knowledge of the film, the equipment and the conditions."

Cole's outgoing nature was in full contrast to his introverted father, who died in 1958. Cole's passionate unpredictability and sense of drama led him to run for Congress as an Independent Progressive Party candidate in 1948.

In Edward's footsteps

It wasn't until 1971 that Cole Weston had his first solo exhibition. As teacher and lecturer, he traveled to meet audiences in such far-flung places as New Zealand, Holland and the former Soviet Union. In his own mind, he was putting the preservation of his father's legacy above his own ambitions. This was not, however, pure self-sacrifice.

As the only authorized printer of EW negatives, CW had a gold mine, as each individual copy soon netted thousands of dollars. (His father specified before his death that the prints must sell for no less than $30 apiece!)

In a less lucrative domain, Weston was equally tireless in working to preserve the community's theater legacy, becoming the premiere champion of local talent-driven performing arts. Weston's credits include single-handedly designing and building the Indoor Forest Theater as a rehearsal facility for the outdoor venue, spearheaded fund-raising drives, and, of course, directing about 30 productions for very modest salaries.

If Brett was a purist for black and white photography, Cole was something of a purist for hard-hitting drama, what he called "theater with balls." For many years, as a member of the Forest Theater Guild board, Weston fought for serious dramatic works over the more profitable comedies and musicals. Cole was sometimes known for being stubborn in the face of contemporary fiscal realities, failing to recognize that the amateur theater of his youth could not come back. Weston was respected, however, as "the conscience of the board," Tyler said.

In early 1998, Weston's 50 years of service to the Forest Theater were marked with the dedication of a bronze bust bearing Cole's likeness, located on the theater grounds. The sculptor, Louis Roberts, who became a close friend, said he met Weston at a Forest Theater Guild board meeting and found both his appearance and spirit electrifying.

"If Cole had a round face, I wouldn't have done it," he said. "But here was this face with all of these sharp angles. It was perfect for an abstract sculpture."

Cole Weston was married and divorced four times. He is survived by sons Ivor, of Redding, Kim and Matthew, of Carmel, and Richard of Illinois; daughters, Cara of Carmel, and Erin Lamson of Colorado; and nine grandchildren. His son, Rhys Weston, died in 1971.

Editor's note: Paul Wolf was a reporter and editor for The Carmel Pine Cone from 1987 to 1998. He wrote the introduction for Cole Weston's book, "At Home and Abroad," published by Aperture in 1998.

The town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood once served as mayor, is California's most charming seaside community, nestled in a pine forest above one of the Pacific Ocean's most beautiful beaches. The Carmel Pine Cone, a weekly newspaper founded in 1915, covers politics, the environment, the arts and real estate news from Big Sur, Carmel Valley, Pebble Beach, Pacific Grove, Monterey and Carmel.

Paul Miller, Publisher    www.carmelpinecone.com