Hopefully all of you are hanging in there during this challenging and difficult time. So much has happened since my last post. I made another trip up the coast during my Spring/Winter break at the end of February and drove right through virus country when it was taking off and then went right back to teaching after arriving home. A week later I traveled to a convention in Salt Lake and when I returned, I may or may not have had COVID-19. I had all the symptoms and dutifully contacted Kaiser about the possibility of getting a test but was turned down, presumably because they didn't have enough tests in the early days of the pandemic. Not to be deterred, I headed in for a flu test so I could rule out the virus, but the flu test came back negative. And they STILL wouldn't give me a COVID-19 test. So....after two weeks of coughing and a fever that kept coming back...I'm symptom free. Whatever I had is now gone. :)
Along with almost all of my classes. :( My online classes are still going strong, but my on campus ensembles were all cancelled for the semester...which now has given me quite a bit of extra time. What to do? Well...I guess it's time to start digging through the thousands of shots that I haven't had time to get to for the past 8 months or so.
So I thought I should probably start with a shot that represents the reason I dropped everything and made the 2000 mile round trip to the Oregon Coast last December. I had seen a couple of other shots from Shore Acres toward the end of November and I promised myself if I ever had the opportunity to head up there with the right conditions, I would jump on it. After checking the forecast and seeing a high surf warning with high winds and waves approaching 25 feet, I was in the Prius and heading North the next day.
After spending most of the day shooting facing North with a hardy crowd of photographers who didn't seem to mind the gale or the rain, I began to wonder what this section of beach looked like from the opposite direction. Either way you look at it, this particular section of the Oregon Coast is simply awe inspiring if you show up on a day with a high tide and a high surf warning. From what I have seen, the coastal rocks in this area must form some sort of ramp and as large waves approach and crash, they are launched dozens of feet into the air....possibly over 100 feet at times. It's like the fourth of July with 20,000 cubic feet of water.
Granted this isn't the cleanest photo I've ever taken as the air was full of mist and it was still raining off and on while I was shooting, but it's one of the larger explosions that I witnessed over the two days I shot there. If you look closely, you might be able to see the ant sized people standing just to the left of this massive wave.
Later that week I made the trip up to Cape Disappointment before turning around and heading home. I was hoping for similar conditions on my February trip, but unfortunately, the sun came out for several days which must have been awesome for the folks who live up there....but not as much for wave junkies like me.
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Tags: Shore Acres Oregon Pacific Northwest Waves Storm
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OK....so there's the fact that this is one of the most photographed waterfalls in the world...and the fact that you can pull into the parking lot and waddle up the fairly short trail behind the restaurant and gift shop and shoot away without breaking a sweat, and the fact that neither of these facts really do much for the "I want to be a serious landscape photographer" part of my psyche. (The Mossy Grotto was one of those locations. Hike straight up the side of a mountain and hurl yourself over a cliff into a pile of poison oak. Now THAT'S what landscape photography is all about!)
And yet...I'd have to admit that this was one of those locations that I was most looking forward to shooting when we got to the gorge. There's just something about the combination of that white bridge surrounded by lush trees and a waterfall that goes right up to the sky. As with my other shots from that week, I experimented quite a bit with the framing, but with my first post of this location, I wanted to focus on the bridge rather than the entirety of the falls.
After Multnomah, it was Elowah, Falls Creek, Panther, and Spirit Falls, and by the time I clawed my way out of the gorge back to the road, gasping for air at 7 PM, I had had quite enough "serious landscape photography" for one day. I'm hoping to be in shape enough to try some backpacking in the not so distant future, but in the mean time, I'm sure not going to complain when a waterfall like Multnomah is within throwing distance of my car.
William McIntosh Photography
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Tags: Multnomah Falls Columbia River Gorge Oregon
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I was up early on this particular morning making drive up from Coos Bay in about an hour and a half. Upon arriving I headed immediately for the Haceta Head Lighthouse but the conditions weren't particularly great and there were signs all over the place stating that some of the more popular areas to shoot from were closed. I shot the lighthouse for about an hour or so before I began looking over my shoulder toward the Light Keeper's House. Low clouds were pouring over the ridge and swirling around the canyon just beyond the house and the light was amazing!
Completely bailing on the lighthouse, I headed back down the road hoping that the conditions would last long enough for me to set up my tripod. I shot this house from just about every angle before spotting the puddle from the storm that was clearing and then noticed the reflection of the flag. I'm still not entirely sure if this composition works but the light was so amazing, I just had to get a shot. As I was trying to decide whether to post it or not, it occurred to me that maybe some photos need to be less about composition and more about what it felt like to stand there as the sky lights up and the morning mist is swirling in all directions. Definitely not the shot I set out for at 5 AM, but glad that I broke away from the lighthouse to see what was going on behind me.
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Lighthouse Haceta Head Sunrise Oregon
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Roughly about 20 minutes after the prior photo was taken the sky lit up in all directions at once. In my earlier shot, you can see a bit of color beginning to creep into the sky. I had actually made a trip out to the same spot the night before and was disappointed with the light went off directly behind me and then promptly died. And if you have been following me on flickr for any length of time, you have probably seen me bemoan the fact that my batting average for good light is horrendously low. Several times on this trip last December I set off at 4:30 AM and drove over 2 hours just to find that the promise of high clouds had evaporated, or that the gap to the East had disappeared leaving a wall of unbroken gray.
But every so often...you wake up and it's raining, and Skyfire says you only have a 50% shot of a sunrise, and you're thinking it's more like zero because...well...it's raining...but you head out anyway. And you get out of the car and you're freezing, and you're tired and your fingers aren't working and there's too many clouds and you know in your gut that you're going to get skunked again....and despite the odds, a wisp of pink appears... and then another....and then everything explodes. THOSE are the mornings that keep you coming back.
And so I shall. Thursday morning at 5 AM I'll be trying to beat the rush hour traffic up the 5 and out towards the grapevine...and then another 12 hour drive across the Oregon border for another week of shooting along that amazing coastline.
As for this particular shot, I think it has a bit too much sky in it....but I just couldn't bring myself to crop out any more. We just don't get skies like this where I come from. I remember hearing a podcast not too long ago where Alex Noriega announced that he is done with sunsets and sunrises. They hold no interest for him. I remember thinking...that must be nice. To be so inundated with skies that you don't jump up and down anymore when the light goes off. As for me...I live here in Southern California in an unbroken cesspool of brown weeds, power lines, and pavement. We see MAYBE one sky like this a year. We can go months without seeing a cloud. So when the sky lights up along the coast of Oregon and Washington, I have to remind myself to keep shooting because I'm generally standing there with my mouth hanging open. We are STARVED for skies like this in my neighborhood, but I imagine this sort of thing might become rather routine for photographers in the Pacific Northwest.
I doubt if it will ever become routine for me.
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Cape Disappointment Sunrise Washington Pacific Coast
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Last December, I completed by responsibilities at the college a bit earlier than usual and took off like a shot for the Pacific Northwest. I had been looking for ideas the week before and when I finally saw that waves approaching 25 feet were due to hit the Central Oregon Coast, I made a quick reservation at an Airbnb in Coos Bay and set off on the 16 hour drive to Medford. I spent the night at a truck stop before heading over to Brookings and then up the coast. I spent the next 8 days shooting my butt off.
After shooting some colossal waves, I decided to continue North up to Cape Disappointment in Washington with hopes of grabbing more large waves as high winds were in the forecast. I arrived early on this particular morning fairly certain that I was going to get skunked. I spent about 30 minutes or so shooting long exposures in the dim morning twilight before some color began to creep into the sky. The mist that you see in this shot was not from low clouds but instead from spray left when the waves in this area slammed into the cliff face. I also waited long enough to allow the beam of the light house to sweep across during this exposure.
Shortly after this photo was taken, the entire sky erupted over Cape Disappointment. This is easily one of my favorite spots on the Washington Coast, and I'm hoping to get back here next week on a short break before my Spring semester begins.
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Thank you so much for your views and comments! If you have specific questions or need to get in touch with me, please be sure to send me a message via flickr mail, or feel free to contact me via one of the following:
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Tags: Cape Disappointment Washington Pacific Coast Sunrise
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