Who says Street Photography can only be done in the streets? Check out these photos from Manzanita Beach at the Oregon coast that I took during my coastal road trip last weekend.
Obviously, beach life in Oregon is quite different from beach life in SoCal or Florida, even in August. The northern Pacific has no more than 13 degrees celsius, so swimming is more a challenge than a refreshment, even on a nice August day.
I had the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom with me while I sat in the warm sand and observe the beach life around my.
Remember to dial in a bit of positive exposure compensation. The bright light and white sand tends to suggest the meter in your camera there is too much light in a beach environment, leading to underexposed photos.
I’m back in Portland after a great weekend on the Oregon coast. I took too many photos that will take a few days to sort through and post-process. So like yesterday I show you once more the final image of the day, a sunset scene near Lincoln City. Isn’t this what a drive along the great ocean is all about?
In my free Learning Center is a post how to shoot silhouettes, check it out!
Image was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom. Image specs 1/2000 sec @ f/9 and ISO 200, 90mm focal length.
It was a long trip down the Oregon Coast. I had sunshine on white sandy beaches and spectacular views of a blue Pacific Ocean. I had the incoming seafog turn the coastal rain forest trees to misty giants while hiking along the cliffs of Cape Lookout. I saw seals, and I saw grey whales. My last highlight of this splendid day was the beacon of historic Hecata Lighthouse near Florence, where I’m spending the night. This coast is magic. If you haven’t visited it put in on your bucket list.
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.
Photo taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom. Image specs are 1/200 sec at f/3.2 and ISO 200. Focal length was 67mm.
I took this image at Cannon Beach, where the late afternoon sun used a short break between showers to backlight the trees on the cliffs at the northern end of this magnificent mile long sandy beach at the shores of the grand Pacific Ocean.
I’ve been privileged to have been at the Pacific many times before, but never this far north. The moment felt special, the beauty of this moment where I saw the glow of the sun on the wet sand of this magnificent beach, the cliffs and the tree providing a perfect backdrop. The sound of the waves, the spray of salty air on my face. It felt great, I felt wanderlust throughout. I felt blessed that despite all the hard times that the job that pays the bills demands of my family and myself, it still gives me the opportunity to occasionally explore places I haven’t seen before and that I might never have seen otherwise.
Wanderlust!
The photo was taken with my Olympus PEN-F with the mZuiko 12-40mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom, image specs are 1/640 sec at f/9 and ISO 200 with 12mm focal length. B&W conversion of the raw file in Adobe Lightroom CC.
Yesterday I did a nice tour from Portland, driving up along the Columbia River to Astoria where the mighty river flows into the Pacific, then down the coast to Cannon Beach and finally back to PDX. All in all I was 14 hours on the road. The weather was very oregonic, starting with pouring rain along the river, turning to a sun / show mix on the coast and eventually finishing in a nice sunset. I will need to hit the digital darkroom over the next days to look through my images, but I’ll show you a first photo from the mouth of the Columbia River, where a mighty, 4.1 mile long bridge takes Route 101 across and connects Astoria in Oregon with Megler in Washington State. It opened in 1966. The south part has a 200 ft clearance so oceangoing ships can pass on their way to the upstream harbors of Portland and Vancouver.
I took this long exposure image from the Cannery Pier just west of it. To smooth out the water and clouds I dialed in a 13 second shutter speed, closed aperture down to f/20 and used the lowest ISO of my PEN-F. To avoid overexposure I had attached my Haida ND3.0 neutral density filter, essentially a piece of darkened glass that reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor by 10 stops, the only way to achieve these long shutter speeds in bright daylight. The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used the Haida ND3.0 filter.
I converted the RAW file to monochrome in Lightroom CC, using a monochrome preset as a starting point and then mainly adjusting the gradation curves.
You will get to see more of this trip in the next days. Today will be all rain and I haven’t decided if I drive up to the Columbia Gorge to see the waterfalls.
