Trillium Lake & Bandon

Last month I was finally able to take the Nikon D800E for a test drive after renting it as a second camera for a wedding and compared it to my Nikon D700.  Timing couldn’t be better as Nikon has released the D810 to replace it.  LOL.  I thought about doing a review on this camera, but there’s already enough information about it on the web, so there’s really no point.  I will say that the take away from my testing is that pixel count and noise reduction are less important than lighting and composition (imagine that.  LOL).  My best image of the night (below) was taken with my D700!

For the 4^th of July I had this really unique idea of going to the Oregon Coast!  Yep, I came up with it all by myself!  On my way there my wife and I stopped by The Bread Board to display some of my prints!  I also enjoyed a magnificent cinnamon roll with almonds and orange zest.  It was Amazing!  We then drove to Bandon with our dog Chewy and spent the night there.  We walked quite a ways South on the beach where I found this nice little section.

We then walked back North to see if we could find more sections like this, but with all the people visiting, we only found foot prints all the way back until the end where we found this one last spot. 

We continued walking north until we reached the end of the beach, and my wife thought these stairs with the clouds were interesting…  I couldn’t agree more.  J 

And now it’s time to get serious.  As the sun fell and the lighting changed I went to work.  I was so caught up in taking pictures that I didn’t even notice my wife and dog had left.  I wasn’t wearing any weather gear so I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants, and found my composition.  That water is freezing by the way.  It totally caught me off guard!  It’s not bad once your feet go numb, but that takes some time.  LOL.  Anyway, it’s a small price to pay for this wonderful lighting.

You can see in the picture above that there were two layers of clouds, and the top layer had a really nice pattern to it, but it was mostly directly above and behind us, so I tried to get as much of it as I could by shooting vertical.

After the best lighting had left I stayed in hopes of a last hurrah, but was only teased with some promising soft pinks that quickly came and left on a small section of high clouds, so I didn’t get exactly what I was looking for, but I do love the textures of this water and the soft colors in the sky.  Right after I took this one, the ocean tried to steal my shoes!  I thought I put them far enough away from the waves to keep dry, but a sneaker wave briefly took hold of them.  I watched it all happening right after taking this shot, so they didn’t get far, but it’s funny to watch your shoes drift away.  J

Sunrise didn’t offer much with clear skies, so I don’t have anything that interesting to share.  After this we left for the Dunes in Florence to hang with my relatives and take some SICK senior photos of my cousin.  I will be sharing those images later, but as a teaser, let’s just say he knows how to ride a quad!

This last weekend on my drive home I could see Mt Hood from Tigard with a nice layer of high clouds so I decided to make the drive to Trillium Lake in hopes to catch some epic light.  I’ve made this trip a few times with similar conditions, but came up empty, but I was in for a treat this evening!

This evening I really challenged myself to find some different compositions, so here is a different view.  After I took this one, a couple guys watching behind me saw the image on the back of my camera, and commented, “wow, that’s pretty cool”.  J  I was so focused on shooting that it almost didn’t register.