Oregon Coast | Ben Coffman Photography

The seventh wave recedes, Cape Kiwanda

Stars emerge over the ocean along the Oregon coast. — “The seventh wave recedes, Cape Kiwanda” Click to view larger. Prints available (use the contact me form below to inquire).

It’s summertime at the Oregon coast, and the sun set 20 minutes ago. The horizon still glows warm, a perfect soft breeze blows your hair from your eyes, and churning waves drum at the base of the sandstone cove where you’ve watched the sunset with friends. Somewhere around the seventh or eighth wave you hear a heavy, hollow ka-whump, and a six-foot wall of water jumps vertically, just an arm’s length in front of you, only to crash straight down. These are the sandstone bluffs of Cape Kiwanda, a strange juxtaposition of tranquility and chaos.

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Star party at Cape Kiwanda

Star party at Cape Kiwanda

A group of beachgoers sits around a bonfire under the Milky Way, Oregon coast.

Terence Lee and I had been shooting some stars at the sandstone bluffs around Cape Kiwanda when we packed up our gear and trudged out, sand in our shoes, and saw a group of about 20 twenty/thirty-somethings gathered around a bonfire, having what seemed to be a great time on the beach.

I walked up through the darkness to the edge of the group. They still hadn’t seen me because they were focused on the bonfire itself, and I did my best not to freak everyone out when I announced my presence by asking if I could take their photo.

A handful of them said something that sounded like “sure,” so I positioned myself in some grass farther inland so that I could shoot at them with the Milky Way behind them.

The conditions were challenging, to say the least. I had some wet grass very close to my lens, and the dynamic range between the center of the fire and the moonless night had to have been roughly 3,000 stops of light. The shot above is three bracketed exposures: one for the foreground, one to control for lens flare, and one for the night sky. I had to do a little dance in post-processing, but I eventually got the job done.

After I had packed up, thanked everyone, and started walking off, someone in the group asked if I wanted to shoot them playing with their sparklers. I really didn’t, but several folks insisted that I did, so I got my gear back out and took the obligatory sparkler photo (below) shooting back toward my original position. You can see Terence still lurking like a ninja in the background on the left.

Until next time!

A group of beachgoers plays with sparklers in front of a fire, Cape Kiwanda, Oregon coast.

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Yaquina Head lighthouse

I’ll admit it: I’ve done a terrible job of photographing the Oregon coast’s rare but spectacular starry nights. I realized this oversight mid-summer but was unable to correct it until September, when I headed to Astoria and Cannon Beach for some of the best night photography I had ever experienced. (You can see some of those images in my “Oregon coast” gallery.) Since then, I’ve bided my time, waiting for clear skies.

A recent super-cold snap provided such a night, and my friend Savya Saachi accompanied me to Newport, specifically to Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area. The temperatures weren’t extreme–maybe around 20 degrees or so–but the wind at the head was often brutal, and we both battled numb fingers and toes. The humidity was somewhere around 50%, and this may be the first time I’ve ever been out shooting in which I was hoping for higher humidity, so that the rays of the lighthouse would be better defined. Oh well. Next time.

This is a 5-image pano. (In other words, I should be able to print this thing HUGE.) I took a few exposures that I had intended to use to composite in a non-blown-out lighted area, but I decided against altering the photo after seeing the results. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get the end result to look natural. If the end result had either a) better represented reality or b) looked aesthetically pleasing, I would’ve been all over it. But, for me, it didn’t work. When I looked directly at the lighthouse while it was lit I didn’t see the finer details in the lens area, mostly because the thing was burning out my retinas.

A lighthouse shines brightly in front of a starry backdrop at the Oregon coast. — A clear night at Yaquina Head, the Oregon coast. Andromeda makes its appearance at the top-middle of the photo.

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Airglow at the Oregon coast

I’m going to try out a slightly different format (image first, short blurbs afterward) for my photography blog. So here goes: For those interested, the details are below the photos.

Getting There

The wreck of the Peter Iredale is located in Ft Stevens State Park, along the northern Oregon coast. From the south entrance, drive by the park’s main building (on the right) to a 4-way stop. Continue straight on Peter Iredale Road. After the road curves to the right, take a left and drive several hundred feet to a parking lot by the beach. The wreck’s just out there, and it’s like catnip for photographers. What’s nice about shooting at night is that nobody’s around–that’s pretty hard to accomplish almost any other time of day. I’ve actually shown up there at dawn to shoot and encountered 20-somethings slacklining right in the middle of the thing.

Getting the Shot

These are high ISO images shot on my new Canon 6d with the aperture either completely wide open (f/2.8) or stopped down slightly (f/4). Both are 42-second exposures. And I used my Rokinon 14mm lens for both shots.

It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed that there was some airglow (or nightglow) in many of my photos (particularly the ones facing north). It manifested as mostly greenish areas or even some greenish streaks near the horizon (not to be confused with the orangish or yellow light pollution from nearby towns or fishing vessels). For more reading on airglow, here’s wikipedia‘s take on it.

Getting There

After Ft Stevens, we drove south to Ecola State Park, where we went to Indian Beach. Just follow the twisty, turny road all the way from the park’s entrance and you can’t miss it.

Getting the Shot

Indian Beach was super dark that night after the moon went down, which is a great time for star photography. I’ve been shooting with the Canon 6d for a while now, and I love its relatively low noise in high ISO situations (such as star photography), so I really cranked the ISO for a few shots on the pitch-black beach. The noise handling was incredible. The shot above was shot at 14mm, f/4, 30 seconds at 10,000 ISO!

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Cannon Beach part 2 (now with the Milky Way!)

If you follow my blog or facebook postings with any regularity, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been a on a water kick for a while now. Zoomed out a bit, it’s really a water/rock/stars kick, with a tree or two thrown in here or there for good measure. Last week, on a day that had started very cloudy but cleared quickly just before sunset, I allowed the winds of caprice to push me all the way to Cannon Beach, Oregon for some star photos of the iconic Haystack Rock, something I had been wanting to do for quite a while. It was a new moon (meaning: no moon) and it was clear and cold.

As usual, my first stop was Ecola State Park, which I had almost all to myself.* Most of the sky was deliciously cloud-free, except for a few stubborn ones lying low on the western horizon. The Milky Way was beautiful and arched overhead from west to east.

* This isn’t exactly true. While taking some long exposures at the overlook, I could see a few people with flashlights down on Indian Beach, which kind of freaked me out when I later went to Indian Beach. Did I mention just how dark it was out there?

I shot a handful of photos at the overlook before heading to Indian Beach, which was especially creepy in the dark. I took a few more photos as the surf crashed, and then I hiked back up to my car.

Some clouds had rolled in, and after warming myself for several minutes in my car, I very nearly headed back home (it was, after all, about 8:30 pm at this point, which is nearing my bed time). Instead I decided to make the short drive to Cannon Beach to check out the lay of the land.

I was glad I did. By the time I parked, the clouds had cleared entirely, and I had Cannon Beach to myself on a 38-degree night. Eventually, some clouds rolled in low on the horizon again, and I saw a dozen or more shooting stars (but somehow managed to not catch any on camera). I did, however, manage to take an unintentionally super-creepy self-portrait (see the last image below)

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Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock

Clear, starry winter nights in Oregon are about as rare as legitimate Bigfoot sightings. Earlier this week the weather forecast seemed to indicate a parting of the clouds, and so, one evening, I took a chance and headed to Ecola State Park and Cannon Beach in the hope of a little seascape/star photography. I encountered a couple of stars (see the first photo below)…and a whole lotta clouds.

The tide was incredibly low, which exposed a number of tidepools and rocks that are normally hidden by water. In fact, walking to Haystack Rock would’ve been easy, but because of its status as a protected area for nesting birds (and the fact that it was rather dark) I stayed away.

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The slowest draw at Pistol River State Park

Welcome, photo friends. We’re going to try something different–I’m actually going to post something here. The inaugural entry details Pistol River State Park in southern Oregon.

One reason I enjoy night photography is the long, sometimes super-long, exposures. In particular, I enjoy the way movement is portrayed. Lights, clouds, and water all serve to add interest to these types of photos, which makes the Oregon coast a kind of wonderland for long-exposure photography. Churning water turns into something resembling cotton candy. Stars rocket toward the horizon. Clouds smear overhead. The effect is surreal, but the process of making these images is a lot of fun, even if it requires a lot of standing around while the camera does its thing.

Thanks for checking out my very first post, and enjoy the images below.

-Ben