East Cape stock footage: a location guide

The East Cape runs northeast from San José del Cabo along the Sea of Cortez: Buzzards Beach, Punta Gorda, Vinorama, Los Barriles, Los Frailes. No resort strip, long dirt roads, water that swings from wind chop to dead calm. Commercial shooters rarely make it past the pavement, which is why this stretch barely exists in stock catalogs. Phil Maher has been filming it since 2019, and that coverage is the deepest part of this library.

Places by name

• Buzzards Beach — the first open stretch past Puerto Los Cabos, and the most heavily covered: surf, empty sand, and the whale encounters below.
• Punta Gorda — a point break and fishing stretch a little further up.
• Vinorama — mid-Cape, where the dirt road and the coast run alone together.
• Los Barriles — the town anchoring the Cape's north end.
• Los Frailes — the bay near Cabo Pulmo at the Cape's far end.

Whales off Buzzards

In January 2022, humpbacks worked the water off Buzzards Beach close enough for the drone. The library holds that session — tail flukes, tail slaps, whales at the surface against the green-blue Cortez water. They sit in the whale search and the wildlife category, and several are priced premium as hero shots.

Why this coverage is rare

There's no production infrastructure out here — no resorts to anchor a shoot, kilometers of washboard road between locations, and nothing to film on a schedule. That's exactly what the footage shows: an undeveloped desert coastline in current-decade 4K, the thing most "Baja" stock imagery doesn't actually contain.

Cabo Pulmo sits on this coast

The marine park is the East Cape's far anchor, with its own reef, underwater work, and guide: the Cabo Pulmo guide.

Using the footage

Most East Cape clips are landscape, surf, and wildlife — no releases involved. Licensing is the same flat structure as the rest of the catalog: $79 royalty-free standard, $199 broadcast, instant 4K download with a certificate PDF, free watermarked previews to cut with before buying.

Where to look in the catalog

• The East Cape hub — the whole stretch.
• Coastline — the desert-meets-sea edge, both coasts.
• Whale clips — the Buzzards humpback session and more.
• The Cabo Pulmo guide — the reef at the end of the road.