Category: Oregon Coast

Day 81 – Beach Walker

BeachWalker

So, today was mostly a travel day and it mostly rained. Though I have to say if you have a chance to drive the road from Sutherlin to Reedsport along the Umpqua River the colors are just stunning right now. I’m hoping the weather will be a little better when I go home.

In any case I stopped in Depoe Bay and played a little with some Wind Socks on display and the sweet 50 but I didn’t get anything I really loved. So when I got settled in my hotel room I stepped out on the balcony to take some pictures of the beautiful view and decided to play with the Omni again. One of it’s attachments is called the rainbow filter. I still can’t get it to do exactly what I want but I liked the effect on this image and the lone beach walker. To process it I took it in to Nik Color Efex Pro to add detail because the clouds were very washed out. I also bumped up the vibrance and saturation to emphasize the rainbow effect a little more. I thought about adding a texture but realized I don’t have any textures on my laptop and I forgot to bring the portable hard drive that has them along. So, short of downloading some onto the laptop it looks like I won’t be using any textures this trip.  

Day 54 – Seal Rocks

SealRocks

I’ve been promising you something else from the coast but when I looked at my images there were only about 5 using the Sweet 50 and none of them had the focus where I would have liked. But I persisted and processed this one with a faded look that kind of complements the blur using a Topaz Black and White Effects preset called Hand Tinted Chiffon. Hoping to find time for some new captures in the next couple of days.

Day 23 – Jellyfish

Jellyfish

I thought about posting an image before I left home but then I thought maybe I’d stop and find something interesting to photograph. Didn’t happen. Once on the road, I’m on the road. I arrived at my Park and Fly hotel in Portland with no new images to show for the day. And though the landscaping was a little tempting I remembered that I still had my coast pictures on the laptop so why not. This Jellyfish was part of the Bandon Labyrinth I photographed in August using the Sweet 50. I’m going to have to do a better job of documenting which lenses I’m using as one thing about Lensbaby is they don’t record metadata. And, while my memory is still pretty good, keeping 100 days worth of images sorted is a challenge even for me.

Since there wasn’t much color in this image to begin with I opted for a black and white treatment in Silver Efex Pro. But first I did a High Pass filter to emphasize the lines. I thought of using a blue tone to represent the sea but it was just too cold so I went for Sepia for the sand. I also added a border since this one is all about lines.

Day 6 – Yaquina Head Light

YaquinaHeadLight

I seem to be on a vertical kick lately. Well, a lot of images were made today and I even got a few good ones. My efforts with lensbaby lenses fell a little short however. The light was awfully flat today with typical summer overcast skies at the coast. And the animals I was trying to photograph at the aquarium were moving around a little too much for the manual focus requirements of lensbaby.

This image of Yaquina Head Lighthouse was captured with the Burnside lens mounted on the Canon EOS R. Burnside is designed for street photography at 35 mm but the wide angle is also suitable for lighthouses. In the right conditions Burnside will give a swirly effect in the bokah. It also has a switch on the side that allows you to add more or less vignetting. Burnside is my newest lensbaby and I still need to work with it to master it’s full range of possibilities.

For some reason they have painted the top of the lighthouse black. I remember when it was red like other Oregon lighthouses. But with the flat light there wasn’t much color in the image so I opted to go full on monochrome in Nik Silver Efex Pro. I selected the Yellowed preset but added some structure and contrast.  I also touched up some 20th century features like wires running down the side of the lighthouse using the spot healing brush. I also took out a few tourists who did not add to the story I wanted to tell.

Day 5 – Love

Love

I was able to kill two birds with one stone today as I set out to work on the Oregon Coast Project I had only to pull a lensbaby out of the bag to complete the 100 days entry. While I was headed to Newport this trip I had learned that the Circles in the Sands folks would be doing a labyrinth in Bandon today so I made a detour to arrive a little after the crowds had died down. Today they had a heart theme going on. Since I already had the Sol 45 out I went ahead and continued using it on the M3. This image was pretty monotone to begin with so I took it into Nik Silver Efex Pro and chose the Film Noir preset. I see a potential Note card here but I think I might go with a sepia tone when I get around to printing it.

Sunset Coos Bay

Sunset2

Another beautiful sunset at the coast this week. In fact this one was right up there with the best I’ve ever seen. From the time this was shot as the sun was dipping below the horizon until about an hour later the sky just kept getting more and more colorful. I debated whether to post this one or one of the more colorful ones but I thought this one was more interesting with the sillouettes of the old piers.

Coastal Color

Splash3

I spent some time in Yachats this week trying to capture the quintessential waves crashing on rocks picture. I have others that do a better job of capturing the shear energy of the the crashing waves. But this one, shot close to sunset with a high powered neutral density filter to force a slow shutter speed, was one of my favorites for the colors and the water flowing over the rock at the end of the splash while some splashing is misting out in the background. This one I would hang on my wall, the high energy one, while a good enough picture, I would not.

Umpqua River Lighthouse

UmpquaRiverLightw

Finally finding some time to process images from the April trip to the coast. I was playing with this one as a possible black and white and after cloning out some trees I like the simple effect but I missed the color. Tried some blend modes to bring it back a little and found that luminosity did just what I wanted.

This particular lighthouse is hard to photograph because it is so accessible. There is no photographing it from a distance as a landscape element. But up close there are lots of fences and signs to contend with. Not to mention the trees I photoshopped out. So I’m pretty happy with this intimate portrait feel of just the top of the lighthouse with some sky showing in the background.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms

The Oregon Coast project is still alive thanks to a brief window of halfway decent weather this weekend. As I am currently teaching a class in Macro photography I felt compelled to put my pixels where my mouth is. Though I had a very successful day shooting tulips at Shore Acres, it was these mushrooms from a patch of forest near the Oregon Dunes that stole the day. I shot it handheld but it took six tries to get one that was properly framed and focused. Well worth all the contortions I had to go through to get down to their level.

Charleston Boat Basin

BoatBasinFinal

I was about on the verge of thinking I would have to bag the Oregon Coast project because the weather has been so bad I couldn’t get over there in February. But a very brief window of fair weather followed by a warm weather system allowed be to get to Coos Bay for a couple of days. The first day started out well but by sunset the clouds were so thick there was no color to be had. The next day was characterized by steady rain. I had chosen Coos Bay on purpose for the variety of indoor activities. I got soaked getting from my car to the Marine Life Center in Charleston but as luck would have it, it stopped raining for a few minutes just as I was leaving so I had a chance to photograph in the Boat Basin, one of my favorite places to shoot. There was a boat with a load of fish that had the attention of some seagulls so there were plenty flying around. So, once again proving that half of photography is being in the right place at the right time. I treated this image with an impressionistic painting filter followed by a texture effect for a painterly look that somehow makes the weather look a lot better than it was.