Yachats Day 3

We woke up yet again to different conditions at Yachats on the third morning.  Fog.  Since we were in no particular rush to get home, we took advantage of the fog while it was there, of course starting with the now familiar areas from our night shots.

One of the things that I find interesting about fog, is how sometimes just a touch of color really seems to come out and influence how an image feels.  Sometimes it’s really subtle and not very noticeable, that is until you look at the image in black and white and seem to lose something.

As time passed, I started seeing things and photographing things I had passed over before.  Some of that was due to the fog, others due to the fact that the tide was lower and, therefore, things were exposed that weren’t there earlier.  There’s something nice about returning to the same place over and over, whether it’s during different seasons, different times of days or even different decades.  Places are never the same twice.  I guess neither are we.

It’s also nice to spend time at one place and feel like you have the time to just be there and explore, without any rush to move on.  I’m increasingly learning that I like my vacations that way, and it’s helpful for photography as well.  

I wound up spending a lot of time looking at the different geometric wave patterns and disruptions caused by the rocks, and trying to photograph them.  Especially at low tide you have these long gentle waves washing up on the shore creating these delicate patters - waves that originated thousands of miles away, ending here at the shoreline in something this delicate.  Huge pounding surf doesn’t surprise me, it’s patterns of gentle, at times, near-still movement in times that this that is captivating.

I have several image sequences of the off-shore rocks taken from various positions on the near-by rock outcropping.  Remember, I can’t change lenses on my fuji and it doesn’t have a zoom, so if I want a very different view, I have to move myself around, closer-farther, higher-lower (well, not too lower in this case).  In some ways that adds to the sense of exploring and, when you’re climbing up and down sea rocks, you realize how little exercise we really do in your every-day office lives.

Ann and I have been talking recently about how fast-paced landscape photography can be.  One thinks that the landscape is never changing, and that you have all the time in the world to set up your tripod, get your camera into position, make sure you have the right exposure and finally to press the shutter.  But that’s not the case, even if you’re not using a tripod.  The light is ever changing (whether you notice it or not); certainly wave patterns and splashes are never the same twice; and then, every once in a while, something like a bird flies into the frame and . . . you either have it or you don’t.

As we made our way back to the hotel to pack up and head to breakfast, I decided to walk out onto one of the rock fingers I hadn’t checked out before and was once again reminded how different any particular part of the coast can be at low tide.  Looking down into an area that was a swirl of waves the previous times we’d been out, I saw beautiful patterns of sea foam, rocks and water below.  

I stayed out there much longer than I ever thought I would, trying this, that, moving around, framing things differently - 45 shots in all with 4 fundamentally different compositions.  I learned a couple of things.  1)  I hate autofocus - I have three nice wave patterns from one of the positions.  Two of them have razor sharp sand texture, one is (for whatever reason) a bit “soft”.  Of course the best of the bunch is the soft one, which is included here, but if I ever print one of them, I’ll use the sharp one. [Ok, maybe it wasn’t autofocus which leads me to . . .] 2) I have to start heeding my own advice - use the damn tripod.  I had it with me (Ann has photographs to prove it so I can’t claim otherwise), but didn’t use it.  Also use a much faster shutter speed than I used to use with film - digital is unforgiving in that respect.  Either one of those two would have kept the image below razor sharp (unless of course I screw up focusing manually).  Oh well, I hope I learn my lesson from this.  Anyway, that time I spent out overlooking this scene, the excitement I felt, the curiosity of watching the world unfold before my eye and lens, simply takes me to another place.  That’s why I love photography.

Well, we finally stopped, headed off to breakfast and down the coast and stopped off at Haceta Head.

Haceta Head is a part located where Haceta Creek enters the ocean in a small bay that has a lighthouse on the north point.  Below you can barely see it behind the small clump of trees at the tip of the ridge before it drops down to the sea.

As I hinted the other day, I finally made a decent image of kelp and sand after who knows how many tries.  As I was working with the image, I couldn’t tell whether I liked it better as a rectangle, or square (usually I find trying to compose square images extremely frustrating).

What do you think?

Haceta Head has a fascinating range of textures and subjects in a very restricted area.  There are a number of sea caves that always appeal to me.  So I couldn’t help but photograph them.

and . . .

As you move towards the lighthouse, the shore transitions from sand to rock.

With interesting patterns etched into the rock by waves, sand and life-forms.

And from the far side of the bay we got a nicer view of the bluffs overlooking Haceta Head and the fog that was still ever-present.

And, of course, as we approached the light house there were more sea caves.

Maybe I’m just a cave man at heart and just can’t help myself from photographing them.

Now this whole time I wasn’t alone in taking photographs.  Ann has developed her own passion for photography and she too was exploring.

Or should I say, getting in my way.  I decided to wait until she was done to make the photograph I wanted, but in the meantime, why not take one of her!

And of course, me being me, I couldn’t help but point my camera downward and seeing what was there.

So, after a while I’d realized I’d pretty much photographed what I could for the day, took one last shot of Ann, and then we headed back to the car.

But that didn’t mean we were done for the day.  We had decided to stop by Sweet Creek Falls again on the way home.  And even though the fog lifted as we approached Florence, we still decided to stop and do a scouting trip in preparation for when I’m home in the Fall and, hopefully, we may get some overcast days and Fall colors.

When we got there, the lighting conditions were as bad as I’d anticipated.  I took several shots with my sony point-and-shoot, primarily for compositional purposes - there was way too much contrast between the brilliant sunlit areas and shadowed forests to make for good images - but the scouting trip served its purpose. 

I got a couple of more photos of Ann.

We scouted out places to photograph later and others to not bother with (no need to go to the falls at the end of the trail!), and by the time we were coming back down the trail, the sun had moved far enough to place one area mostly in shade, which called for pulling out the fuji for one final shot for the day.

After that, we headed home with a nice day of photography to end our photography mini-vacation to the coast.