The night before Shelley and I drove from Cape Kiwanda to the south of Yachats, Oregon, passing by Devil’s Punchbowl and Yaquina Head. We intended to drive back to the north the next morning to Devils Punchbowl and then south again to see Yaquina Head. This went as planned. Weather, on the other hand, did not fully cooperate with my plan. Instead of scattered clouds, we had scattered rain showers.
Devil’s Punchbowl
We arrived at the parking area for Devil’s Punchbowl around noon and were met with gusting winds and light rain. It was a later start than I had hoped for, but with the overcast skies diffusing the sunlight the time of day did not matter.
Devils Punchbowl
For this location, I found that there were really only a couple of compositions from the top. And with time being short Shelley and I did not have the time to fully explore how to access the beach to find compositions from inside of the punchbowl. I shot this composition at ISO 100, 26mm, f/5, at 1/125 of a second.
Yaquina Head
After seeing Devil’s Punchbowl mostly from the trail along the top Shelley, and I headed back south on US-101 to New Port, Oregon and the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. The off-and-on rain stayed with us all of the way from Devil’s Punchbowl to the just north of New Port, giving me hope that we would at least be dry while walking around the lighthouse. As we parked near the lighthouse, we were greeted with yet another brief shower. Shelley and I picked up our bags and once more dawned our rain jackets. Within a few minutes, the rain stopped.
Yaquina Head Lighthouse #1 – Newport, Oregon
I chose to photograph the lighthouse with the path off to the right side of the frame and from a slightly lower angle for my first composition. This allowed me to incorporate more of the cool looking cloud layers that you see in the final photograph. I bracketed multiple exposures to give me the ability to bring back more detail in the photograph without having to adversely affect the final photograph. The settings that I used to make this photograph were ISO 100, 24mm, f5, at 1/250 of a second.
Yaquina Head Lighthouse #2 – Newport, Oregon
For my second composition I walked around to the backside of the lighthouse. I used mainly the same concept as above, except that I moved in closer to the lighthouse. For this one, my settings were ISO 100, 24 mm, f4, at 1/500 of a second.
Tides of Mist – Yaquina Head Lighthouse from the Beach – Newport, Oregon
For my third composition, I walked down along the beach made and found a spot to look up at the lighthouse. While setting up for this composition, I wanted the waves to form into a mist that would be seen as flowing around and over the rocks in the water. For this to happen, I knew that I would need to slow down the shutter speed. I slapped on my 10-stop neutral density filter and was able to achieve an exposure of over 122 seconds. The other settings for this photograph were ISO 100, 29mm, f/25.
Please check out the corresponding video over on my YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVEf9aXoQMPTAVTztNkNIxg.
