Haystack Rock - At Night

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Leia

Leia

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Staff member
I spent yesterday and this morning at Cannon Beach and Ecola.

Was pleasantly surprised when the solid mass of gray clouds broke up and revealed blue skies.

We walked a total of 4 miles (two round trips) from the hotel to the rocks yesterday. I am old. I am really really old. This I know after carrying my two camera bags and Manfrotto tripod rig (8.6 pounds itself) back and forth. I weighed myself at home today with and without the gear. The gear is EXACTLY 24 pounds.

That was like walking 4 miles, in SAND, and standing for a total of about 6 hours, carrying around 3 full gallons of milk.

My back, legs, shoulders and hands felt every single pound....and I would do it all over again. Poor hubbie brought his cheapo tripod and lost a lot of great shots to movement.

I am going through the images in small increments. Tonight I only went through the ones taken with long exposure (going for blurred water) taken after the stars came out.

Then it is off to the couch with more motrin I go. Thanks for looking.


Some spray bursting on a rock...about 30-40 minutes after sunset
View attachment 6216

A very bright moon (99%) was helpful in lighting up the rock and water.
View attachment 6215


The waves coming in caused ghostlike/foglike lines across the rocks.
View attachment 6217



The Constellation Orion
View attachment 6214


And my personal fave...this was my 'potluck' shot taken after we 'stopped' and headed back. No framing done as it was TOO DARK. This was way up from the beach, by the motels and houses.There was a group of young adults having a bonfire next to us here.

View attachment 6218

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We never could figure out if that bright light off in the horizon was Tillamook or ?
 
Very nice. I can't say any one is better than the others. I really like #3 because I'm partial to a tighter crop but the last one with the stars... awesome.
 
Thanks, Sam. :)

I thought I would try the shot of the bonfires. You can see the kids moved a lot.

Also, you can see other fires up the coast. More picture tomorrow. My hand is swollen. Time to step away from the computer.

And as a note, I had a LOT of noise in this shot. I tried to denoise the clouds and it didn't work so well. If I recall, I tried shooting this one faster so I wouldn't get star trails and upped the iso 2 or 3 times what I had shot everything else at. I DID get better cloud detail...but again, very noisy. Yuck.
 
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very cool, Leia... worth the sore muscles. your body will be back to normal in a day or two, but these images will last a lifetime! i really like the way the lights from the town are reflected on Haystack Rock, though there are some odd bright spots that probably ought not be there. love the long shutter effects, too! looks like there was a ship out there - that bright light on the horizon?
 
Thanks, Rocky.

The bright white squares at the bottom is some signs on the rock. Should they disappear? The moon was 99% last night on top of having the lights from the city. The small white dots are seagulls. ALL over that rock. At 100% of image size pre-edit I was looking for the puffins too.

George said he thought the brilliant orange glow at the south horizon might be Tillamook. I was thinking a freighter.
 
whatever the light on the horizon was, it moved... if you notice in the first shot,it's behind one of the Needles, in several others, it's between them. and it's much too intense a point of light... light from cities is usually a diffused glow in the sky, not a bright spot. the sign isn't that obvious, but the spots on the rock are a bit distracting, especially the really bright one at the bottom...
 
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR FEEDBACK!

I see what you are saying. I will go with my first guess and say freighter. He had almost convinced me that the light moved THAT much because we were moving up and down the shore a lot (and we were)....but yeah. The light is moving.

You are right about the birds and signs. Sometimes what is there, might not be something you want to see. If I was doing this in B&W in my old darkroom, I would burn the rock in to kill off the birds.

Instead, I just fired a GIANT PHOTOSHOP SHOTGUN and scared them all off...:D :eek:

Better?
 
better! ;) as for the light, Tillamook is not right on the coast, and it's not that big a town, so you'd probably never even see the light from Cannon Beach. the light in these shots is well out to sea, and far too bright and localized to be a town... moving on the beach could appear to make it move, but its position appears to have changed more than could be accounted for by you moving up and down the beach a bit...
 
Very cool shots, well worth the pain. Okay, easy for me to say. But I can tell you I appreciate all that you went through. Thank you. These are awesome.
 
Nice pictures Leia, but where's the night shots? Oh, those ARE the night shots? WOW... ;)

Very cool, and incredibly bright too. Love the mist effect on the water. Really neat stuff.
 
Leia these are wonderful, some long exposures here, my favorite is
The Constellation Orion
 
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squirl033 said:
better! ;) as for the light, Tillamook is not right on the coast, and it's not that big a town, so you'd probably never even see the light from Cannon Beach. the light in these shots is well out to sea, and far too bright and localized to be a town... moving on the beach could appear to make it move, but its position appears to have changed more than could be accounted for by you moving up and down the beach a bit...
Click to expand...

I would totally agree with Rocky. It's too far out, and too bright, also as he mentioned Tillamook is a bit inland.

It could be a fishing vessel, they often us very bright lights at night. Your guess of a container ship is also reasonable, though they do make fairly decent progress. Not real fast, but fast enough to be noticable over a short period of time.

Sounds like you made it to Ecola after all, glad you did, that's one of my favorite locations on the coast!
 
You have some truly sensational images here, Leia! I love the bonfire shot, even with the blur, it conveys life and movement. You really hit that magic time where everything lights up sooooooo smoothly. Gorgeous! I concur that at at least on my end, it was well worth your pain! ;)

If you get the chance, I would love to see the exif data for these. This set of images is very inspiring!

Shots of the week, in my book :)
 
Thanks, guys.

Hoedad, is there a particular shot you wanted to know on? Most were shot that night at 30 seconds, and between F2 and F12 depending on the time of night and moonlight (behind clouds or out). Most were 160 iso.

I was letting my husband use my 10-22mm lens on his Canon so I used my Sony exclusively. If I had the Canon, I would have increased the iso and the aperture.

Also, on many shots you see online, as well as here, you can save the image to your desk top and right click on the properties to see the SUMMARY info there (then delete). ;)
 
Because increasing exposure time beyond 30 seconds results in unwanted trails. In fact, even at 30, I got them starting. :(

I didn't want dashes. I wanted dots. :)

Now of course SOME day I want full circles. But again, no dashes.
 
Leia said:
Because increasing exposure time beyond 30 seconds results in unwanted trails. In fact, even at 30, I got them starting. :(

I didn't want dashes. I wanted dots. :)

Now of course SOME day I want full circles. But again, no dashes.
Click to expand...

OK, fair answer... You're right, it's amazing how quickly stars become "star trails"!
 
Leia said:
Thanks, guys.

Hoedad, is there a particular shot you wanted to know on? Most were shot that night at 30 seconds, and between F2 and F12 depending on the time of night and moonlight (behind clouds or out). Most were 160 iso.

I was letting my husband use my 10-22mm lens on his Canon so I used my Sony exclusively. If I had the Canon, I would have increased the iso and the aperture.

Also, on many shots you see online, as well as here, you can save the image to your desk top and right click on the properties to see the SUMMARY info there (then delete). ;)
Click to expand...


Hey, Leia. I think I get the gist of it. I've just never had much luck properly exposing stars while still capturing the foreground like this. I'll have to give it a shot.

I'm thinking I want to try some similar things up at a favorite high Cascade lake of mine.

Great stuff :)
 
Hoedad, one of the helping factors in getting the foreground lit up is that there was a city behind me. Also, there was a large moon that kept peeking out from behind clouds. However, I normally prefer NO moon as it causes the lesser stars to be harder to catch.

DO go try that lake!!! :D
 
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