Rocks and Feathers

The ubiquitous rocks and feathers, found daily on our beaches. These are quick grab shots, but they inspire me to do a complete series in a more studied manner. You know what the tough part is about photographing feathers? The shaft of the feather invariably is pure white at the lower end. Meter for everything else and that light, white part loses all its detail. Expose for the white and everything else goes really dark. My solution is going to be a combination of multiple exposures, bracketing, blending, and cloning. ©Carol Leigh

Yin Yang

Photographed the other day on the beach in Waldport. ©Carol Leigh

A quick trip up to Newport

Thursday is our day to run errands -- trip to the library, various stores, and, if we're in the area, a quick zoom around the fishing boats. Most of the boats are out right now, pulling in crabs, re-baiting the pots, and throwing the pots back in, so there aren't many boats to admire/photograph. In the first photo, two boats share the same cleat, and I liked the semi-symmetry of the lines diagonating outward.

A cormorant popped up next to me and, since I had my camera obscuring my face, I don't think he knew I was human (perhaps simply another vertical post) and so he hung around a bit longer than he would have. I liked his silhouette on the water and especially liked how his head and neck are turned, creating a backward line. I purposely left more space on the right to accommodate that left-right implied movement.

And then finally the fishing vessel "Judy" comes into port, loaded down with Dungeness crabs. Whenever I see this boat, I think of you, Judy T.!

During these first three days of crab season, the fishermen are assured a price of $1.75 per pound. A good haul is 15,000-18,000 pounds of crab, giving them a potential gross of $26,250-$31,500 per haul. Where the price goes after these three days, I don't know. Just a bit of crabbing trivia for you . . . ©Carol Leigh

Seduced by color. Or, bad photos and why they're bad.

This happens to all of us. We KNOW we've not done our best work. Something's a little soft. Or some elements in the photo blend in too much with other elements. The perspective may be all wonky. But man, the colors are so cool that we just can't bear to toss those photos right now. We're hoping the dramatic colors will distract the viewer from the sloppy photography. And that's what happened this evening.

Chris and I headed down to Yachats to have dinner. The sun had set and the sky was bright orange. I had my camera but we'd taken the tripod out of the car. Bad move. Stop #1 was an overview of the beach and a surfer was heading home for the day. The colors are wonderful, but his body blends in with the patch of darkness behind him, which isn't good. And the photo's somewhat soft.

Stop #2 was in Yachats and I liked the way the grasses were silhouetted against the orange sky and how the blue ocean shows through on the left. There were some flowers (either yarrow or Queen Anne's lace) sticking up against the ocean, but a dark wave ended up right behind them, turning their bold forms rather amorphous.

And stop #3 is also in Yachats, where the outrageous orange sky reflected wonderfully in the windows of this house. The background cobalt blue sky looked pretty darned good, too. I'm shooting at an angle with no tripod and all the lines are skewed. I tried to alter the perspective in Photoshop, but I didn't do a very good job.

BUT LOOK AT THE COLORS! Pay no attention to shapeless blobs, soft focus, and tilted architecture! Are the colors not cool? See? You were seduced, too. Eye candy. Sweet, but short-lived. Heavy sigh. ©Carol Leigh

Alsea Bay

As I was heading home from Seal Rock, I noticed how the fog was moving in and around Alsea Bay, so I drove up to an overlook and shot across the bay, looking east toward the hills and then south at the Port of Alsea, the docks in Waldport. Even though my camera bag was in the car and I had access to a variety of lenses, I stuck with the 28-135mm. Why? Because light and fog move quickly and I didn't want to take the time to switch lenses, plus this one was doing just fine for me.

All in all, a good morning. 76 minutes of photography. Leaving the warm house was the hardest part. ©Carol Leigh

Kinda screwy . . .

They're not "sweeps." They're not "swipes." Nope, these are SWIRLS. The light was still low, so I decided to play with sweeps (moving the camera right/left), but they didn't have a lot of interest to them, plus the lights from the fishing boats turned into little yellow dotted lines that I didn't like. So instead I tried swirling the camera in front of me during the exposure. I'll say no more because I think I'm going to use this idea as one of my Photomotivation tutorials/lessons, and will be taking more of these sorts of pictures as examples. Fun stuff! ©Carol Leigh

Pre-dawn

There was a big moon in the sky this morning and a lot of fishing boats out on the horizon. It's difficult to get dressed, leave a warm house, a snuggly cat, and go out to shoot. But I did. (Oops, I should have said "and a loving husband, as well." Sorry, Chris!)

I parked at the Seal Rock overlook and took a few photos. Nah, too much foliage in front of me. I grabbed a flashlight from the car and found a path up to a higher vantage point. The path dipped, I didn't, but nothing broke.

The moon was so bright. The lights on the fishing boats were bright. And the foreground just about pitch black. Tough exposure situation. Clouds scudding across the face of the moon helped tone things down.

The moon disappeared for awhile behind a fog bank, but then reappeared for a few seconds before leaving the scene for good. I was using a 28-135mm lens for all these shots, which was fine for overviewish images, but not ideal for the moon. No regrets, however.

I was hoping for some pink lighting on clouds before dawn, but nope, that didn't happen. So I fumbled my way back down the trail, using the tripod as a walking stick, and headed toward home.

And that's when I saw the fog moving in among the hills over the Alsea Bay. More to follow. ©Carol Leigh