It was a long trip from Nuremberg across the big ocean to Portland earlier this week. A total of 27 hours travel time. Followed by two days of intense work. But I treated myself to weekend trip to the Oregon Coast, leaving the office in time to arrive for sunset at the Heceta Head Lighthouse near Yachats.
The Hecata Head Light was built in 1894. The 56-foot (17 m) tall lighthouse shines a beam visible for 21 nautical miles (39 km; 24 mi), making it the strongest light on the Oregon Coast. Named after a Spanish explorer of the 18th century, Heceta Head is part of the traditional land of the Siuslaw tribe that populated the area.
I deliberately had selected Heceta Head as the spot to do some blue hour coastal photography, knowing its beauty from previous visits. And I really got lucky, as you never know how the weather conditions will be. But I was blessed to experience a magic pacific sunset.
I experimented a bit with the settings.I found that shutter speeds between 1/6 sec and 1/10 sec gave the the best chance to capture the light beam. In the second photograph I used 1.6 seconds, which smoothens out the water a bit but with the tradeoff of losing visibility of the beam.
All photo taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom. For the first image (the lighthouse from the viewpoint) I used a Platypod Ultra flat travel tripod. The other images I took all handheld (even the one at 1.6 seconds). As I was standing on a wet beach there was no way to place the flat mini tripod. Photography is all about trade-offs.
Post processing in Adobe Lightroom CC Classic
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Have a good Saturday!
Marcus
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