Cole Weston, who was part of a dynasty of internationally known California photographers, died Sunday at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. He was 84.

The fourth son of legendary photographer Edward Weston, Cole Weston was born Jan. 30, 1919, in Los Angeles and received his first camera, a 4-by-5 Autograflex, from his brother Brett in 1935.

Weston graduated with a degree in theater arts from the Cornish School in Seattle in 1937 and served in the Navy during World War II as a photographer.

After his discharge in 1945, Weston worked for Life magazine in Los Angeles.

He moved to Carmel in 1946 at his father's request to act as his assistant, started the Weston Trout Farm in Big Sur's Garrapata Canyon in 1948, and that same year ran for Congress on Henry Wallace's Independent Progressive Party ticket.

Also around 1948, Eastman Kodak started sending color film to Edward Weston, who didn't use it because of failing health. Instead, Cole Weston began experimenting with color and eventually became one of the world's masters at color photography.

Never one-dimensional, Weston in 1951 became president of Carmel's Forest Theater Guild and directed such plays and musicals as "Winterset," "Summer and Smoke," "View from the Bridge," "Carnival," "Camelot," and John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" and "The Grapes of Wrath."

He was also the first director of the Carmel Cultural Center and a founder of the Center for Photographic Arts at Sunset Center.

Weston had a natural talent for the theater, said former Herald drama critic Steve Hauk, who wrote the script for the recent television documentary "The Roots of California Photography: the Monterey Legacy." The show features the Westons and photographers Ansel Adams, Henry Gilpin and John Sexton, among others, and is now showing on PBS channels nationwide.

"There weren't many left like him who had that connection to the past," Hauk said. "He was very articulate and a hell of a theater director."

Hamisch Tyler, who acted and directed with Forest Theater and served with Weston on its board for many years, recalled one incident in which Weston, impassioned by an argument over selection of a play for the next production, "jumped up on the table during a board meeting and continued to recite the beauties of a particular play in contrast to another. It was an incredible performance in itself."

Lighting directors found themselves working with "a master" when staging productions, Tyler said. "He wanted light, shadows, everything. Watching him direct in his heyday was fabulous."

Weston was also adamant that people involved in community theater should work without pay, Tyler said. "We'd have epic battles over payment of personnel."

Weston "had the most charming effect on women," he added, "and was an incredible tango dancer. He was all about guts and balls."

While there won't be a headstone to mark his grave, Tyler said, there is a bust of Weston at the Forest Theater where people can leave mementos if they wish.

Louis Roberts, an architect and sculptor who created that bust, volunteered his work after meeting Weston at a Forest Theater board meeting.

"I didn't know a lot about the theater, but listening and looking, I was totally captivated by him," he said. "I thought, 'Wow, what a spirit. I'd love to do a bust of this guy.'"

That same evening, Roberts said, the board proposed having such a sculpture done to honor Weston's 50 years of uncompensated work with the theater, and he raised his hand.

In 1957, Weston began shooting his first 8-by-10 color photographs of the Monterey coastline and carried on his own portrait business while assisting his ailing father, who died in 1958.

Two decades of correspondence between father and son were published in the book "Laughing Eyes," which also contains 60 rare black-and-white photographs from the family archives.

Cole Weston began lecturing and showing his father's works in 1975. Four years later he completed a new studio and darkroom at Garrapata Creek, where he conducted live-in workshops.

His coastal landscapes, notably "Palo Corona Ranch" and "Surf and Headlands," and his nude figure studies have inspired generations of photographers.

Photographer R.H. Cravens, in the afterword to "Cole Weston: Fifty Years," may have described Weston best, Roberts said.

"Cole is... a gregarious man who genuinely loves the companionship of his fellow humans, strangers as well as intimates," Cravens wrote. "This is a rare quality among artists, particularly among photographers.... It is his humanity -- as much as his choice of color -- that infuses his emerging mastery of the Weston vision with a new dimension, a relish for life."

Weston was an avid sailor and once recalled sailing "away to the South Seas with five screaming kids and a wife."

"The four important things in my life have been photography first, theater, sailing and then women and wives," he had said.

Weston was married and divorced four times. He continued to publish and teach until his death, working from the Weston Gallery in Carmel.

He is survived by four sons, Ivor Weston of Redding, Kim and Matthew Weston of Carmel and Richard Weston of Illinois; two daughters, Cara Weston of Carmel and Erin Lamson of Texas; and nine grandchildren.

A fifth son, Rhys Weston, died in 1971.

Private family services will be held. A public memorial service will take place at a later date. Paul Mortuary is in charge of arrangements.