The Calendar Chronicles - January 2014

It's here!  2014 has arrived.   I hope you have started the year off right and that you are blessed in 2014.

It's also time to share a little about the photo for January - Second Beach, Washington State.  If you're like me, you're thinking that is not a very creative name for a beach.  One of three beaches (yes First Second and Third Beach) just south of the village of La Push Washington.  Like the other two, Second Beach is hemmed in by dramatic bluffs and headlands. To get to Second Beach you have to hike 2/3 of a mile up and then back down a forested trail.  It was a bit confusing at first because we started out above the beach and hiked up.   After a while we made our way down to the beach.

Path to Second Beach

We were there as part of a photography workshop with Bill Fortney and  His Light Workshops.   There was at least one other photography group there that afternoon so there were plenty of photographers wandering around the beach.      We arrived at the beach at 8 PM and stayed about an hour while the sun was going down.  It sure is nice photographing sunsets on west coast beaches than sunrises on the east coast beaches.

I took 60 shots in those 60 minutes on the beach, which is less than what I usually take.  There was a lot of time waiting for something to happen, the light to change, people to move, or new ideas to pop into my head.

Sea Stack and Sea Gulls

I was fascinated by the sea stacks offshore.  We don't have anything like these where I grew up.   These forbidding landmarks are part of the Quillayute Needles National Wildlife Refuge. Inhospitable to humans, they're productive breeding grounds to thousands of seabirds, oystercatchers, murres, gulls, petrels, cormorants, and auklets among them.

You never know what you will get at sunrise or sunset.  This time we were blessed with beautiful clouds and a break in the clouds that allowed the sun to shine up and light up the under sides.  As the sun set I positioned myself at this cool rock surrounded by a pool of sea water.  I could see that the sun was going to set directly behind the headland to the right of the primary sea stack and might shine through the natural arch.  Now it was just a matter of getting ready and waiting.  I was rewarded with warm colors from the sunset and blue of the darkening skies for some nice color contrast.  The rock and reflections in the pool made interesting foreground for my photo.

For the photographers that might be interested, this was shot at a 32 mm focal length using a 24-105 mm lens with a small f/22 aperture.  The wide lens and small aperture allowed me to have the foreground rock and the trees in the distance all in focus.  This was a one second exposure so I was using my tripod.  I set the camera down low to the ground to be able to include the sand, rock and clouds.

I hope you enjoy this photo during January and it reminds you that His greatness can be seen through His creations all around us.

Learning All The Time

Seems like every time I go out shooting I learn something new, even without trying.

I wanted to capture the misty effect you can get with long exposures of several seconds or more with waves on the beach.   When I took this shot it was still too bright for a long exposures.  In order to get the longest shutter speed possible I set my ISO as low as possible (100), my aperture as small as possible (f/22), and added a neutral density filter to the front of my lens to cut the light even more.   I further slowed my shutter by making sure I exposed for the sky and not the sea stack.   I was able to get a 15 second exposure even shooting into the sunset.

Sea Stack Sunset

When I looked at the LCD display on the back of my camera I thought I had captured what I was after.  The waves on the beach blurred into a smooth misty surface that reflected the colors of sunset.  Good for me!

When I was working on this photo just now I realized my mistake, the results of which you can see in this close crop of the trees on top of the sea stack.

See the ghost image of the tree tops?  Obviously the camera moved during that 15 seconds when the shutter was open.   Then I remembered.  To get the shot I wanted without the sandy beach I had to set my camera out near the water.  I had my camera on my tripod, which I set down in the sand and composed the shot.  I waited for the waves to be where I wanted them and started the exposure.   What happened next was comical.  The waves did not stop just below my tripod but continued up the beach and around the tripod legs.  Anyone who has stood at the edge of the surf knows what happens.  The wave washed the sand out from under the tripod legs, which then settled into the sand.  The comical part was me with my hiking boots running from the waves while leaving my camera and tripod in the surf.   Some of my photo buddies who were there with me chuckled at my antics.

Lesson learned - make sure the camera is on a solid surface and is not going to move during the exposure.  Beach sand and waves do not make a solid surface to shoot from.

I had fun trying the long exposures and will try again when I get a chance.  I'm sure I'll learn another lesson in the process.