Working Hard is Satisfying

Two weeks ago we had a second outing during which I was skunked. We'd had a nice trip up the Oregon coast to try to redo a photo at an area where we enjoy shooting, but in the end, found ourselves far from the spot (enjoying a marvelous dinner at The Crazy Norwegian) as the sun was rapidly setting. We drove as fast as we safely could watching the light develop deliciously, but quickly. It was unlikely we'd get much that was really good since we knew from earlier that the mist in the air had been quite heavy, but it was such pretty sunset light. We get there, grab our gear and race down to the viewpoint to start setting up and I realize the quick release plate is not on my camera. I've got no way to put the camera on the tripod. At first I was really disappointed, the quick release plate is at home and I am positive of that fact. But the light was already too late when we got there and the air was still very hazy, so no loss, we had a fun day and we just have to drive up the coast again. Oh darn!

Yesterday we went out the the South Spit on the southern Humbolt bay, Scott wanted to look for some flowers that were rare and known to be out there, but there was very little blooming. Next we went out to Bridgeville because I wanted to retake a photo I had taken almost three years ago. It is the first photo here of a tree in fall color I want to work the composition, improve the sharpness and depth of field, and try taking a longer shot to smooth the water out more. On the way there and once we arrived, we saw that the fall color has yet to begin. It looks like we've got about another month or so until we can go back out to retake this particular photo. Again, that's no problem since we both enjoy shooting at Bridgeville plus Grizzly Creek State Park is on the way and we both love shooting there as well. I've got a couple of mushroom photos I'd like to try and redo there, if I can find these mushrooms again, or similar ones, anyway.


We decided to drive around the bay looking for old pier pilings in the hopes of doing some good reflection work with them eventually. The first place we stopped was at the end of Depot Road and it has great, gorgeous pilings. I took my clue from an amazing photographer, Tony Sweet and put my 100mm lens on my camera and walked around having a look through to see where my photo might be. It was great because I wasn't burdened with a lot of gear to carry around so I could walk around, get near and far from the bank, and decide that the 100mm was not the lens I wanted, so I switched to our 17mm to 40mm zoom lens and walked back to the edge. I found a

set of pilings that looked out over some pretty water and into the oncoming sunset. It was very pretty since we had a high fog overhead and a fog bank far out on the surface of the ocean. That left a small sliver of bright light shining onto the water and I could see about where the sun was going to set. Perfect. I made note of the spot I was standing on, then went to get my tripod and set it up. and worked on my composition taking sets of 5 images for an HDR photo since the sliver of light was very bright and the foreground pilings were very dark in shadow. Then I'd look at what I'd gotten, work on the composition some more, readjust to put the brightest spot on the horizon where I wanted it in my image, since I was waiting for the sun to peek through. Then I'd take another set of five, and do it all again. Boy did that pay off! I played with a four-stop neutral density filter, used the shoe-mounted bubble level to make sure my horizon was as straight as possible. Remembered to set my camera to aperture priority for HDR photography, and made the aperture as small as possible for the greatest depth of field and the longest exposure to smooth out the slight movement in the water from boats passing nearby.

Finally, after nearly an hour, the sun got to the sweet spot, the light got bright and very orange. I called to Scott and he rushed over to snap a few of his own. I got three sets before the sun was finally gone and all the light went cold. That is in addition to the five or six sets before the light got sweet, of course.