July 2023

Twenty-First Century Note in a Bottle
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023

Today the notes are all on our cell phones which wouldn’t be nearly as durable bobbing around in the ocean compared to the classic note in a bottle method of casting messages into the ocean.

Bare Tree #107
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023

This photo is actually turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise from it’s true orientation. From this angle it has a strong resemblance to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

Turbulence
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023

Patterns left in the sand around a lone rock on the beach document the turbulence due to its effects on  the flow of the pulsating waves.

Bare Trees #106
Carl Washburn State Park, Oregon
2023

A light in the forest.

Bare Tree #105
Yachats, Oregon
2023

We visited Yachats for the first time in 2006 and have been back several times since. Every time we go there I end up walking by this tree or root or combination of the two and am always amazed at how little it’s changed since I first saw it. It looks like it should have been washed away in a big storm a long time ago.

Here’s the first photo I took back in 2006:

Yachats, Oregon
2006

Comparing the two images, the wall behind the tree is more eroded and some boulders to the left of the tree have disappeared. The tree itself shows very surprisingly little change and doesn’t seem to have shifted position noticeably. The biggest change evident in the 17 years between the two photos is the position of the photographer. I’ve been debating which of the two photos I like best and have pretty much decided on the old photo from 2006, which I hope doesn’t imply anything about the trend in quality of my work over the years!

Whale Rock
Cape Perpetua, Oregon
2023

It’s real name is Spouting Horn, but it looks like a whale’s exhaust to me. Not only are the visuals quite nice but the waves slamming into the back of the cave sitting below Spouting Horn make an impressively loud and deep whomp every time it spouts.

Bare Tree #104
Yachats, Oregon
2023

Gnarly.

Pompadore
Seal Rocks, Oregon
2023

Well, they were looking for somebody with a pompadour…
–-Bob Dylan (Brownsville Girl lyrics, verse 11)

Sand Spectrum
Seal Rocks, Oregon
2023

Water from inland sources moving across a beach often form interesting patterns in the sand. Generally they are mostly monochrome in nature. This particular instance was anything but however, easily displaying the most color of any I’ve seen. What the color was due to I don’t have a clue. I would be inclined to think it resulted from some sort of industrial pollution except that Seal Rocks is not near anything like that that I am a ware of. So I’d have to chalk it up to Mother Nature somehow.

Post-Previsualization
Seal Rocks, Oregon
2023

Previsualization is a common topic of discussion in photography. Often attributed to Ansel Adams, previsualization is, in short, the idea of “seeing” the final print in one’s mind before a photograph is taken. I think every photographer, even one snapping simple images with a cell phone, uses some degree of previsualization in the act of composing a shot. Obviously some will give more thought, consciously or subconsciously, to what they are capturing than others. I know when I am out photographing I use varying degrees of it–at least on a conscious level (who knows what’s going on behind the scenes in my head).

In the case of this photograph, I was easily envisioning in my mind how this pattern of pebbles in the cracks of the larger rock surface would look in black and white. I was sure the subtle tonalities of gray produced in the conversion to black and white would make for a pleasing image. But I was wrong, no matter how I tweaked the image in Photoshop to try and get it to line up with what I thought I could see in my head, all I got was a drab, bland image compared to presenting it in color. So that’s what I ended up doing, thus proving the value of post-previsualization, a practice which occurs all the time among creatives in order to adjust the realities of what is actually achievable with what was floating around in one’s head.