Minus tide

A big minus tide this afternoon and NO RAIN! Hoo ha! Scurried over to the beach to see what I could find.

I liked the clear, clean look of this footprint in the sand, and included part of a little "creeklet" of water at the bottom for a bit of interest. There are bowling ball-like rocks that show up at very low tides and the golden sunlight caught my eye. Metering is a challenge with such directional light and I find myself talking to myself, saying "meter here" (lock in the exposure), "focus here" (wherever that happens to be), "recompose, click." So repeat after me, "Meter here. Focus here. Recompose. Click." And in the third shot you can see the beach as I saw it on my way back to the car.

A good little walk. A bit of exercise. Away from the computer. And photos that I'm pleased with. Yowza! ©Carol Leigh

Geological detail

From yesterday's walk on the "secret" beach. I'm enjoying the colors, the jagged cracks, and the texture. The rocks are all wet, so even in overcast light they have a shine to them that a polarizing filter doesn't cut through entirely. The solution? Don't photograph smooth surfaces; look for the texture. Must make a note to return in July when things might be drier. ©Carol Leigh

Outgoing tide

I spent about an hour this afternoon walking on my "secret" beach, managing to time my departure just before the rains began. Most of what I shot were rock abstracts taken along the bluffs, but I also liked this orange rock sitting on blue-black sand, with grasses swirling around it. The outgoing tide swept the grasses in one general direction and created gentle, photogenic curves. ©Carol Leigh

Reindeer rock . . .

Kinda funny . . . ©Carol Leigh

Harsh sun + wet rocks = major challenge

When walking the beaches here we need to be aware of what the tides are doing. Pay no attention and you may end up trapped, wet, and cold against the bluffs. Alas, low tides don't always occur when the light is right, and yesterday was a perfect example. Low tide was at 1 p.m. We were there around noon. And it was a glaringly bright, sunny day. Ick.

In addition, the rock faces are quite wet, as recent rains come seeping out from the soil above, dripping down the sides of the cliffs. Bright sun. Wet rocks. The challenge is huge.

What was really exciting is that this is a new beach for me, with different types of rock formations, striations, permutations -- all of which create hyperventilations!

Here are a few shots that came out fairly well. Can't wait for the next overcast day at low tide when I can take some better photos. I am working on a montage concept involving these rock pictures which I'll present sometime next year. I've created 44 so far, but don't really know what I'm doing yet -- not that I ever do . . . ©Carol Leigh

Beach walk . . .

Clear and cold today, so I thought I'd head for the beach to see if there was any ice about. Not more than 100 yards after I'd turned onto the Coast Highway I passed an accident that had just occurred. Major ice on the roads. Hmmm... Undeterred I continued on, cautiously. When I approached "my" beach, no one behind me, I began my left turn. Nope. Car began fishtailing about, so I continued straight ahead. Eventually made a U-turn and came back, no problems. Icy roads? Probably lots of ice on the beach, right? Nope. Ah, well. Let's find some other stuff.

Those of you who took my online class that had the "hearts" lesson in it will know how jazzed I was to see this large strand of kelp. Once you've taken and worked on that lesson, the concept sticks, doesn't it?

The other three shots are just simple little images of what I was seeing -- barnacles on rocks, surrounded by water left by the receding tide, rimmed with foam, or filled with bubbles.

Just five people on the beach during the 1.5 hours I was there. Saw two ravens (love those birds), a skein of pelicans headed south, lots of feathers, lots of agates, and a green rock with white dots on it that I'm planning on photographing some rainy day.

Peace and quiet. And no ice on the road going back home. Tracy brought over some of her excellent fruitcake. Life is good. ©Carol Leigh

Beach Bum

While some people are finding faces in rocks, fishtails in ice, and whales in the sky, leave it to me to find a butt on the beach. And not a very good-looking butt at that! Maybe he's a plumber . . . ©Carol Leigh

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

The art of seeing - 091125

There's a beach down the road (maybe a half-mile to a mile away) that's accessible only at low tide. So yesterday morning I followed the tide out, seeing what I could find. I seem to be on a roll with all this beach stuff, and each beach is different, offering different photo possibilities. Once crabbing season begins (on the 28th), I've got a different beach project in mind that I'll share with you when the time comes, but in the meantime, I'm photographing rocks and sand.

Marianne Jensen has been finding faces in rocks and posting them over at her blog, so I thought of her when I found this "parrot." Here's the shot, and then here's how it looked as I walked past. See? It takes a weird mindset to notice little things like faces in rocks . . . and I know I'm not insulting Marianne when I say that!


A photo that looks sort of mountainous is actually part of a sandy cliff, where the sand has dripped and slumped downward. You can see the photo and then how the scene actually looked.

And finally, yet another rock abstract, something that I extract from a wall of rock -- all at eye level. I took about five different photographs from this one section of the bluff face.

Half a mile from home. And it's taken me what, about 8 years to discover it? Sheesh. ©Carol Leigh

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

59 minutes on the beach . . .

This morning the tide was low and it wasn't raining — perfect opportunity to go exploring on the beach. I'm now more attuned to sand patterns and so created a photo of these "sand trees," which I think look pretty cool. And then the way some smaller rocks were wedged into a large crack caught my eye and turned into and interesting shot. And finally, an overview of a row of rocks lined up below the tide line. Overviews are something I really have to struggle to take, and am trying to do better. ©Carol Leigh

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I found a very cool section of rock today on the beach -- lots of perfectly round circles. I don't think this is man-made, looking more like a tafoni rock sort of thing. Anyway. Here's what I created, and here's the overview of what the scene actually looked like. 18-55mm lens used on both. Neat, huh? ©Carol Leigh

26 minutes on the beach . . .

It wasn't raining this morning, so I headed over to the beach. Alas, the tide was coming in quickly, so I only had a few minutes to work. We had 95mph wind gusts Monday night, seas were still high, and I didn't want to become one of those stupid tourists I see from time to time paying no attention to the ocean. In front of me on the sand was a gull who hadn't weathered the storm. I moved in close to photograph its outstretched wing. Bright sunlight made photographing difficult, so I decided to incorporate the resulting dark shadows as part of the composition.

This particular beach features beautiful cinnamon-colored rocks, and I liked how the blue-black small boulders were sitting on the reddish background.

And finally, on my way back home, I stopped at the Seal Rock overlook. I had seen a bald eagle flying over the rocks on my way to the beach, and he was still there on my return, perched on a sea stack offshore. My lens (a 28-135mm) was way too short to take a frame-filling image, but when you see an eagle, you just have to photograph it anyway, don't you? So I cropped in really tight in Photoshop, and, just for grins, turned it into an orb. Ha! The eagle stands out quite nicely over there on the right. Fun stuff.

Two more storms are headed this way, so I was glad to be able to get out and enjoy some sun, some photography, and some quiet air. And a bald eagle! Hoo ha! ©Carol Leigh

Rocks

A lot's been going on the past month or so. Taking a day to be quiet. Ommmmmmmm . . . ©Carol Leigh

The Art of Seeing - 090503

This morning I visited a beach just south of us, one I've never been to, figuring it was just big and flat and boring. Well, it pretty much was exactly that! But I found a few things to shoot, including the tree-framed pathway leading down to the sand. The next photo, with no sense of scale, looks like huge, rocky cliffs, but in reality is part of a big log that washed ashore, as you can see in the second photo. The next photo could be a macro photo of the scales on a butterfly's wing, but is actually wood grain in yet another washed-ashore log. There's always something to see, something to photograph, when we really begin looking. My lens du jour? A 28-135 IS with a polarizing filter on a Canon 50D body.

The Art of Seeing - 090428

Walking along the beach yesterday I saw a nicely striated boulder and especially liked the little crack angling down. You can see what I saw in the first photo. In the second photo you can see what I made out of it.

I included a little strip of sand at the bottom to sort of anchor my shot, filling the frame mostly with the diagonal lines of the boulder and the crack. The crack is the focal point and I placed it in the left third of the frame. From there your eye travels right and upward, following the striations in the rock. The crack angles in at one angle, while the layers of rock angle out in another, creating tension. And heaven knows we all could use a bit more tension in our lives! ©Carol Leigh

The Art of Seeing - 090418

See the rocks with sand on them in the middle left of the top photo? That's where the close-up comes from. Good stuff -- color, lines, and texture. Plus a walk on the beach is always fine. ©Carol Leigh

The Art of Seeing - 090415

There are bluffs above the high tide line that have brilliant colors and amazing mosaic-like patterns in the rocks and on overcast days the colors practically glow. No one ever walks up here! The first photo shows you what I created out of a little patch of rock and the second photo shows you what I initially saw. We photographers, we "visualists," notice things like this, we find things, frame things, and then display them to the rest of the world saying, "See? See!" ©Carol Leigh

49 minutes at the beach

I'm intrigued with the kelp I'm finding on the beach, and creating something simple out of the huge spaghetti-like tangles is a challenge. But then, of course, there are always the colorful rocks below the bluffs — sort of a photographic "dessert." ©Carol Leigh

The Art of Seeing - 090411

One of the more difficult things to teach is how to see. What goes on in a photographer's brain that enables him or her to casually look at something and immediately (or maybe not so immediately) see that yup, there's a photo there? What I'm planning on doing from now on is to try to show you, whenever possible, what I see and then what I've made from that scene.

In this case, the top photo is what I see when I walk along one of my favorite beaches here on the Oregon coast. I've had people come up to me and ask what the heck I'm shooting. To them, it looks quite ordinary. And I can understand why --this is the high tide line, where the water meets the bluffs twice a day, and it's usually strewn with rocks, kelp, broken shells, etc. To me, however, it's a gold mine. The cracks in the rocks and their saturated colors can keep me busy for a long time. So from the rocks that you see in the top photo, here are two photos I made.

The role of a photographer is to show people what they might otherwise miss. And to do so in an artistic way.

This is my first go at this "here's what I saw/here's what I made" concept. Please let me know if you find it worthwhile. Thanks! ©Carol Leigh

38 minutes at the beach

The rain stopped briefly and so did I -- at one of my favorite beaches. I photographed bubbles with my reflection in them, richly colored rocks below the bluffs, contrasting textures in piles of bull kelp, and a heart-shaped rock. The tide was rapidly reaching its peak, so I hustled out of there just in time.

I also stopped at an antique store and bought yet another oil can and some very cool, very used, very stained, old pens, so stay tuned for (I hope) some interesting shots of those new items. ©Carol Leigh