June 2018 Adventure - New Moon Tides - Part 2

As we approached the Coquille River on the way to Bandon we turned off at Bullards Beach State Park, where we spent Christmas, hoping there would be a vacancy.  As we drove into the park we passed a truck towing an Airstream on its way out.  It was either a good sign (someone just checked out) or a bad sign (someone was hoping to get lucky like us and didn’t).  We drove up to the check in station the ranger there said, “You folks are in luck, that is if you only need a spot for one night.  Two campers just left so you even have a choice of spots!”  We got lucky!

We checked out our spot and went out scouting.  First we checked the park to see if dunes might be in order (they weren’t), and then we revisited the various access points to the beach to see where we might want to photograph.  After checking out the various locations, we decided to start the morning on a part of the beach we didn’t get to over Christmas, and then headed into town for an early dinner and an early bedtime.  We were going to get up even earlier than the day before and we were tired from the long morning photo session.

As it turned out, we didn’t get up early enough even though we got up an hour earlier than the day before.  By the time we got to the beach, it was well into the pre-dawn light.  Our plan had been to get there early, hike down the beach a ways, then work our way back north as the morning passed.  As it was, we decided to stay at our end destination and take advantage of the light.

It wasn’t overcast, but there was a haze along the shoreline that cast some very interesting colors.  It wasn’t wet like fog, nor did it seem particularly salty like sea spray, nor (fortunately) did it seem to smudge up our filters.  In any event, it gave us some very interesting colors.  Namely, pink!

I started with a couple of uninspired shots of the rocks at the end of the point taken as I was walking towards them.

However, those images didn’t really inspire me, so I set my gear down and just walked around for a bit, studying my surroundings and asked myself what “I” wanted to photograph.

After several minutes of anxiety ridden looking around (face it - pre-dawn light doesn’t last that long and there I was just standing around and looking), I decided I wanted to continue working on my series of objects in water images.  It was a wonderful choice given the interesting light, the rather dynamic waves and the beautiful Bandon rocks.  

I wound up pulling out my telephoto zoom lens and started isolating objects.  I’ll leave you with just one of them because I’m likely to do a post of just these images.

In time I eventually exhausted what I could do with that type of imagery, and the color in the skies was starting to change.  The mist was still there, but the interesting pink and blue combinations were fading.  So I turned to more traditional images while I assessed the changing conditions and examined the features around me.

For awhile I kept working on more traditional landscape images, trying to play with the mist that was still lingering.

And as the sun started rising, things started taking a more golden glow.

While I was working on the off-shore compositions, I had kept turning around to examine a rock feature that was behind me.  As the sun made its way upward, it was time to turn to that rock and to see what the misty skies would produce.

As the sun broke through, I turned to another cluster of rocks at the end of the point.  There, I explored the play between the light and shadows created by the layers of rock.

Really, more than anything, it was me enjoying what I could find visually and then trying to photograph it.

I turned back to the big rock behind me and made a variety of images as the last remnants of the sea mist played tug-of-war with the sun, creating hard shadows, no shadows and everything in-between.  As I was making the image below, I knew it was destined for black and white.

Eventually the sun won out and the mist largely vanished.  So I worked my way to a cluster of tangled driftwood between two rocks I’d noticed as I walked out earlier and for the first time that morning I put my water boots to good use, standing in a large pool of water left on the shoreline by the receding tide.  Again, it was a play of forms light and shadow. 

I made my way back to shore and Ann, and tried a couple of more traditional landscapes.  None of them are noteworthy.  But as we started to talk about heading back, my eye caught a beautiful clump of kelp that seemed to glow in the sunlight.  

It took me a few images (perhaps another blog post in itself), but I managed to make something that was as interesting as when my eye caught it.

I wish Ann had taken a photograph of me making this image.  My tripod legs were splayed all the way out, with my camera inches from the ground and inches away from this piece of kelp.  It’s probably the first real photograph I could not have made with any of my other lenses - thanks to Ann, I have a macro lens!

As happens in Bandon, after we are there for a few hours the crowds finally come down.  By the time we left dozens of people were wandering up and down the shore, and as we headed back to Beast, whole families were arriving.  Time to head home.

Once again, we got lucky on our adventures.  May the luck continue!