No trip to the Portland area is complete without visiting Multnomah Falls. Here is a lie; there was nobody here when I took this shot. In fact, to get this, I had to elbow my way through layers of Instagrammers holding phones aloft with their backs to the falls. I should have known better, it was July 4th, but I went anyway. I Photoshoped all the people off the bridge except for one. In the end, this edit is not far from the scene I imagined in my head. If I did have the place to myself, I would have taken more shots, but I like this shot, so maybe that would have been a waste. Anyhow, when I go back, even if it's winter, I'll come early to try my luck again. But it's all good; I ended up hiking to the top to see even more waterfalls and a lot fewer people. It ended up being an excellent day, for Instagram and me.
I took this about five years ago on one of my visits back to where I grew up. But as they say, home is where the heart is. Never in a million years would I have imagined I'd end up in Florida. But here I am, and the longer I'm out here, the more I need to go back to the Pacific for little trips to recharge. Maybe I miss the mountains and evergreens which we don't have in the sunshine state. This image is my favorite from that trip, but I waited until now to process it. For whatever reason, it needed to age like a good California wine.
Waves washed in on this remote stretch of beach. Then egressed, and wash back out into the oncoming storm. My idea was to use a wide-angle and capture the motion. To do that I used a small aperture to get a long exposure; about one-quarter of a second to get this effect. One little tip about shooting waves at the shore is tripod legs sink when the water washes over. So, if the exposure is too long, objects get blurred. Another tip is to wash off the tripod legs in freshwater as soon as possible. A couple of helpful pointers for you photo bugs.
