Hug Point Sunset

The last day of my trip to Oregon I was told how a photographer needs to be flexible in his/her travel, because light and weather cannot be planned. We shot some sea stacks on the coast in Oceanside, Oregon, that morning, and then drove up the coast to Hug Point, just south of Ecola State Park. We spent a couple of hours scouting an interesting location where a waterfall empties into the ocean. It looked to be good sunset (more than I can say for the rest of the trip), and so we scratched our plans to shoot at Ecola and went back to the waterfall for sunset. The conditions were perfect, except the tide was about a foot higher than would be ideal. After setting up my desired composition, I waited for the light to cast a glow on the waterfall. As I was waiting, the tide rolled in, and I found myself standing waist deep in ocean current. A few waves got me and my camera soaked, but really there was nothing I could do at that point. I took over a hundred frames as the sun set, and it wasn't until my third to last frame that the sun peaked through the clouds and cast a glow on the falls and the clouds above it. Using a one second shutter speed I was able to give motion blur to the ocean and falls as the two prepared to collide. The ocean water didn't bother me too much, until I finished shooting and had to make the 3 hour drive to Portland where I was staying the night to catch a flight home early the next morning.

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