363 - Cannon Beach
*Note: This adventure also features an in-field vlog.
The shoot was straight up NUTTY at Cannon Beach. Started off photographing a dead animal and ended with some misty shoreline vibes.
First off, as a side note, I want to give a huge shoutout to reddit for making my Tree of Life photo go viral as shit on both r/natureismetal and r/earthporn. Both personal records for me in terms of the amount of karma points I've ever gotten from a single photo. Hoooooly shit.
OK, now back to the actual shoot.
We started the adventure photography session at Ecola State Park, to get an overview of Cannon Beach from above. I wanted to see it from a distance, and had heard great things about the place. I've been using this app called Explorest to find places. No, I'm not sponsored by them.
So let's just say Ecola State Park (e-coli?) lived up to it's name, and then some. The drone shots I got were INCREDIBLE. Check out the vlog if you wanna see those...
After filming that intro, we drove down to the actual Haystack Rock and prepared for the baller sunset that was starting to emerge. Surprisingly, we didn't have as much time as I anticipated. It took a HARD MINUTE to find parking and actually arrive at the beach because it was so crowded. By the time we actually started shooting the sun had like 20 minutes until it would disappear behind a cloud.
I ended up settling on this composition of a MASSIVE dead jellyfish, mainly because I found it shocking and also because I didn't have any other options. The sun had just set behind a cloud, and the colors were fading RAPIDLY. I snagged the shot with like 50 focus stacks:
“Peanut Butter and…”
Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-29mm f/2.8
ISO 50 ~ 17mm ~ f/13 ~ 1/4s
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I actually stumbled upon ANOTHER extremely grotesque photo after this shot, it was a birds wings that had been ripped off from it's body somehow. I used it in the foreground essentially the same way I used the jellyfish. However, I went to edit it and realized I messed up the focus stack, so some parts just didn't work well. Oh well. It was probably too fucked up for social media... I'm not entirely sure what their policies are on decomposing animals.
Haley approached me after sunset and basically told me she didn't get a single good photo, so she wanted to come back for sunrise the next morning. I was all about it, because I really didn't want a dead jellyfish to be my only shot of this iconic place.
Annnndddd... we barely got any sleep. We parked in the street parking right in front of the beach, but got told to move by a cop at like 1AM. Blehhhhh. We had to relocate outside the town on the spot, while still waking up at 5:30am. Jesus fuck.
Well... It wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It was bad, but the conditions were good enough that I quickly forgot how tired I actually was. It was pure fog, but just enough that it created atmosphere and not too many depth problems. I snagged this Instagram shot right off the bat, and added those birds in for effect:
“Sacred Abyss”
Sony a7rIII + Zeiss 24-70mm f/4
ISO 1000 ~ 24mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/40s
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
See, I do have some moral dilemma with adding birds in, but at the same time there WERE massive amounts of birds there. I'm essentially recreating what I saw via digital art. Ya dig? Also that sand texture is fucking fire...
I did the same thing with this shot of birds here, which was pretty fun.
“Spectrum Rock”
Sony a7rIII + Tamron 17-29mm f/2.8
ISO 640 ~ 17mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/80s
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
I mainly got that shot in case my parents wanted a framed shot of the place, because Cannon Beach was pretty iconic to them while I was growing up. We used to vacation here all the time. I knew they'd be pissed if I only had a dead jellyfish.
ANYWAY... that's the shoot. I slept basically the rest of the day.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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