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An Oregon Travel Tale (Part 2)

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The light was beautiful but as it got higher the sky it was time to start our tour of lighthouses in the horrible high sun. This part of the coast is gorgeous but the driving between locations is long. So back to the podcasts on our sons’ phones with hands on the wheel and back and forth discussions between two old folks and their close to thirty something sons. Heated discussions at times! But interesting never the less.


I have always wanted to see the entrance to the Coquille River. It has jettys on either side which are guarded by a lighthouse. If any of you know the crazy entrance to Newburyport in Massachusetts then you know exactly what I mean. It’s nuts! So much so that the Coast Guard practices going out of the mouth and over the huge waves with their forty footers. We watched one go out for a practice run it was crazy. The waves were huge. The other impressive thing about this location was the amount of driftwood everywhere. 


The beach on the right side was packed with driftwood. Truly amazing. We spent lots of time wandering on the beach and watching the huge waves crashing on the jetty and beach. Then we got back in the car for more driving and listening. More driving – ugh! The next stop was the  Cape Arago Lighthouse which is privately owned by Native American’s so it can only be photographed from far away. Kind of boring looking anyway.


After seeing this scene along the way we travelled up to the Umpqua River light which was beautiful but was not much of a photo in the mid day light. I can’t remember if I shot a photo of it or not. If I find one I’ll slide it into this post. They had a museum there and a great view of the entrance to the river. Then it was back on the road again. More to come in the next segment.

An Oregon Coast Travel Tale (Part 1)

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Ok, so what do you do when you travel six hours on a flight pull into the hotel exhausted and wake up the next morning to gray skies and fog? You pray it gets better! That being said praying kind of worked. 

Let me explain. We left our hotel with gray skies and headed for the fog enshrouded coast not knowing if the fog would hold all day – it did. What a disappointment. Our trip down route 101 along the coast was another six hours of not seeing much. The beautiful scenery along 101 was invisible to us as we sped by listening to pod casts our sons’ had downloaded on their phones.

We stopped every once in a while to make a shot or two of the fog covered shore or islands peering through the mist. We did not bother to stop at Cannon Beach as it was covered in fog. When we arrived at our destination on Bandon Beach on the south shore just below Coos Bay we were met with an overlook of incredible beauty but covered by fog. 

We decided to put long pants and hiking shoes on to climb down the massive set of stairs to the beach. We were met with incredible amounts of huge driftwood – wow, a B&W photographers dream.  The driftwood and fog made for some great images.


Plus there was no one on the beach, yay! I had a great time poking around the giant stumps. The fog started to clear a little as sunset approached but we only got a sliver of color. The next morning I was up early hoping for some nice light and I was not disappointed. 


The shot above is not my best one. I have three frames with the flock of geese in it but the thumb nails on my iPad are so small on import I could not tell which one I wanted. 


Walking around in the early morning light on the beach and on the bluff was great, the scenery was outstanding.


As the light rose and made it over the cliff face it was almost like alpen glow the way it just lit the top portions of these giant edifices. I met some nice photogs along the way who were participating in workshops. This the end of part one. More to come on a day of travel to shoot lighthouses in horrible light and another morning among the giant rocks! 

Landscape photography tools – leading elements

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One of the most important elements of landscape photography is the leading element. It’s that one aspect of the image that pulls the viewer right into the frame. On one of my recent tours to Good Harbor Beach we were faced with a very low tide which gave us some very cool mounds of sand created by the tide. This added to the visual aspects of this image by also giving it some texture. The curving structure of the rivulets of sand leading up to the rising sun pulls the viewer into the image.

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I shot this in both horizontal and vertical but the vertical to me is much better. It gives the image more depth.

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The sun star is much better in this image because the sun is lower, but I still like the vertical even if it does have some sun flare from the filter as the sun was higher.