Three albumen boudoir card photographs by Isaiah West Taber of San Francisco document three celebrated California subjects from his numbered Pacific Coast scenery series, each bearing the printed Taber studio imprint and series numbers on the face. Taber produced an extensive series of California views, photographing subjects along the California coast, circa 1885. His highly successful business was well-known for a vast stock of California and Western views, and these three cards are characteristic examples from that commercial landscape program.

The first card, numbered B 1317, depicts the massive grapevine near Santa Barbara, its enormously gnarled and twisted trunk rising from a rocky earthen floor to fill the lower frame, while heavy multiple canes twist and splay outward beneath a wooden overhead trellis structure of horizontal beams and vertical supports. The second, numbered B 1366, records the natural rock arches on Cliff Road at Santa Cruz: a coastal sandstone formation perforated by a broad arched opening sits at the water's edge, calm water filling the foreground and a dense treeline stretching across the horizon. The third, partially numbered, shows Mt. Shasta and Black Butte in an expansive horizontal composition of open sagebrush-covered valley floor, gently rolling forested ridgelines, and the distant volcanic peak rising above the tree canopy against a pale sky.

Not one but two giant grape vines were significant tourist attractions in Santa Barbara's history; one known as La Parra Grande, planted in Montecito from a European cutting, flourished as a Mission variety, covered 10,000 square feet, could shade more than 700 people, and was a popular site for dances, elections, weddings, and fiestas. Taber's stature as a California photographer was considerable, and his entire collection of glass plates and view negatives was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

The reverse of each card bears the printed Taber "Photographic Parlors, 8 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, Cal." studio advertisement including an engraved illustration of the studio building, the notation "View Department," and text advertising Pacific Coast scenery views including Yosemite, Big Trees, Geysers, Columbia River, Oregon, the Railroads, Mining, Indians, and Sandwich Islands, as well as "New Importations of Japanese Views, Colored and Plain." The left-hand card additionally bears a pencil inscription reading "Frank H. Taylor" and handwritten notations, and a partial printed imprint at lower left reading "Frank H. Taylor, Agent and Publisher."