Coming back from dinner with my wife, I noticed that the fog had dissipated along the beach, the clouds were opening up, and unlike the day before, there might be the possibility of viewing a nice sunset. As I drove to the Haystack Rock location, I noticed a photography group already set up and waiting for the right moment to take the best photo of the sunset.
I took my trusty Nikon and started walking towards the group. The closer I walked to them, the more intimidated I felt. Observing the groups equipment and setup, I began to feel like a real novice, totally unprepared for such an undertaking. They all used full frame cameras, the best tripods, lenses and filters available.
Introducing myself to the group, I discovered that they drove north from Los Angeles, California to photograph the Pacific North West. As we had about an hour to wait before the actual sunset, I was asked what type of equipment I had, and the instructor was kind enough to lend me a 16-35mm wide angle lens for use during the sunset. He instructed me to set it below 19mm in order to experience the best results. Since I did not have any filters with me to lower to light, it was recommended to use the lowest ISO which is 64 for the Nikon, and the highest aperture (22mm) for this lens. The combination of that setup allowed me to take photos between 1 – 4 seconds in duration. Not quite enough to smooth out the waves, but it worked well enough for me. After multiple exposures during the next 30 minutes, and about fifteen minutes after the sun set, everyone was ready to call it a day. I thanked everyone for the learning experience, the use of the lens, and started walking back to the motel room thinking about the wonderful experience I just had.
Another lesson learned. Since there was a rising tide, we ended up with about a foot of water sloshing around our tripods. Instead of the light weight hiking tripod I was using, in the future, I will need to take a sturdier tripod if I am going to have waves pushing it around. In some of my photos, there was a lot of motion due to wave action.
When I got back to my hotel room, I was really worried about high noise level caused by the low ISO setting, and possible diffraction problems of using a high aperture setting. However, through the use of Photoshop and Lightroom, I was able to mitigate some of those issues. Below are some of the photos that I took during this session.
In Part 2, I limited my equipment to a 70-300mm lens, with most photos taken between 200 and 300 mm. This session was taken two days prior to this one. I’ll try to post them as time permits.
Photography is all about the light and how best to capture it. Thus its a waiting game.
Looking South East from Haystack Rock
Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach is 235 feet tall and is accessible by foot during low tide. Haystack Rock in Cannon beach is claimed to be the third largest monolith that can be reached by land. It is located just north of two smaller rock formations called the Needles.
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