Haystack Rock at Dusk

August 16, 2010

Dusk is my favorite time of day because of the colors on display – a mix of cool blues and purples with vivid, warm oranges, reds, and yellows. I feel that dusk has a certain mood to it that makes for great pictures and, fortunately, I don’t have to get up early in the morning to capture it! These photos were taken a bit after the one in yesterday’s post. I was looking for a shot that would focus primarily on the waves crashing against Haystack Rock but, once I got to what I thought might be a good location to do so, I realized I could go wide and capture a pretty moody picture due to the darkness settling in, the setting sun, and the amazing looking rocks in the water. I swapped lenses, framed the shot, and then got the camera setup on the tripod. I took probably fifteen different shots like this with varying compositions, with and without a polarizing filter (I wanted the extra stops of darkness the polarizer would provide – and thus a longer shutter speed – rather than using the filter for its polarizing capabilities). I also timed my shots to coincide with different patterns in the waves [...]

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Cannon Beach at Sunset

August 15, 2010

Cannon Beach in Oregon is one of the most spectacular beaches I have been to. It’s a beautiful town with well-maintained beach homes and great, scenic coastline. If you’re looking for rugged Oregon coastline then Cannon Beach isn’t the location to visit, but it has sandy beaches and some unique, scenic coastline (especially if you have seen the movie “Goonies”). I visited Cannon Beach for a couple of days and hoped to get some good weather. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy the entire time I was there but there was a brief period during which the sun made an appearance and I had made the trip to the beach in hopes that I could capitalize on the brief opening in the clouds during sunset. After searching for a decent location I settled in and waited for the sun to work its magic. I tried to time my shots properly so as to capture the warm sunlight and good waves along the beach. I was hoping for the waves to provide some leading lines into the frame and I was able to get some decent lines to coincide with the excellent lighting we briefly received. The one real difficulty for me was the large number of [...]

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