Good morning
Sorry
So it's the next day now, as you can see
Yesterday I was going to go to the Multnomah Falls
I was exhausted after the whole trip yesterday
But now I'm rested and ready to go to the coast and I spend the whole day there, so let's go
All right, so I made it to Cannon Beach, but it's raining quite a bit.
This is something I was not expecting because according to my weather app, it's not supposed to be raining right now, but it is
So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna keep driving
farther south to two places that I was thinking about going, but I was not sure but since I have this weather here
I'm gonna drive to Garibaldi and Manzanita and probably take a few photos there if I can, and then come back here to Cannon Beach
I'm gonna stop trying to avoid the rain because I'm not very good at it
And it looks like I'm chasing the rain if anything.
It's funny how it works, because it was a couple of weeks ago when I was in Michigan City
it was raining like right now
But I waited in the car for like half an hour 45 minutes until the conditions improved
and then I got this beautiful fog and beautiful conditions to shoot in
I was thinking that the only reason why I did that, the only reason why I waited in the car,
is because I didn't have anywhere else to go, and this is not the case here
There are literally like hundreds of viewpoints and trails everywhere
And I think that's something that I failed at many times in the past
And I'm failing today again because I don't learn, it looks like
Instead of just waiting here at a place and fighting for that shot or that photo that I want
I just keep moving because I want to take photos even if it is in other place
But yeah the amount of places where you can go to and take photos here, in Oregon and Washington
I mean everywhere around here, is just overwhelming and
In some way, that's not a good thing. I think in my time in the Midwest
kind of improved my photography in that way, that I'm more patient even though that's not what I'm showing today
this is the opposite so
but yeah, I think that I learned that lesson though that is just say focus on one thing at a time and
Yeah, just go for it and quit trying to chase the conditions
Yeah, that's what I wanted to say
Okay, so I'm back at Cannon Beach
I don't think there is any escaping the rain today, so I'm just gonna get ready as much as I can
I'm gonna bring my Holga in one pocket
I'm gonna cover the Bronica with a plastic bag so it doesn't get wet
I'm going to leave this digital camera again in the car and record with my iPhone
And we'll see, if it doesn't really rain for a while, I might take a long exposure. That was my idea today
a long exposure of the rock
but if not I'll be taking photos with the Holga at the very least
so let's go now that looks like we kinda have a break
Well so as soon as
I set foot on the beach, it started raining really hard so yeah, I'm all wet
my cameras are wet. I took two or three pictures with the Holga, but that was about it, I had to run away.
It's raining so much. So it's 11 a.m.
I think I'm just gonna drive to Astoria and grab some lunch, and hope that this improves later today because if not
there's not much photography to be done with this weather
Okay, so it looks like the rain is going to give us a break after all
I wanted to show you what I'm doing now
I'm taking this shot of the ripples on the sand, but let me explain how I'm doing it
As you can see I'm using the orange filter, but I'm not using the orange filter to give it more contrast
I mean also
But I'm using it to be able to... so I'm able to shoot at a wider aperture, in this case
f/4 that is the widest aperture of this lens instead of f/8 and
that allows me to have a much narrower depth of field
why I'm doing this... is because most of the people who shoot these kind of scenes
like patterns on the sand or
something like that, they usually focus stack the photos so everything is in focus, or they use like a super
absurd large aperture or small aperture in this case, f/22, f/32, f/64
I don't know, whatever, so everything is in focus. What I'm trying here is to get as little in focus as possible
Because I want to do it in a different way and also because I think it looks better when
you tell... not when you tell, but when you show what caught your eye
In focus while everything else is like more of a mystery and more... it leads to there
actually, I'm gonna focus on different parts of the sand, I'm gonna use different apertures too
I'm going to try to get as much as possible in focus, too
So we can sit down and look at the photos, and see what the difference is between them
Alright, so these images didn't really work the way
I thought they would, I don't really like them
But I think that they are still good examples of what I was trying to achieve so this is the first one
I was focusing on the top of the frame. I shot it at f/4
This wide aperture blurs all the bottom of the frame as you can see this is an effect that I've used before
But it doesn't really work here
It's very confusing and hard to find the main subject of the image.
this next example is a little bit better, it's the same composition
I was still focusing the top of the frame
But this time it was shot at f/8 so the bottom of the frame is less blurred than before
As I said a little bit better but still doesn't really work, it's very confusing
Very hard to see the main subject of this photo
Here just for comparison both photos, on the left shot at f/4 and the right shot at f/8, you can see clearly the difference
in the out-of-focus areas and
how neither of them really work here
Now, we have the same composition, but instead of focusing on top of the frame
I was focusing on the middle-bottom part of the frame. This was shot at f/4
so you can see that in the very bottom of the frame, and very top of the frame of that
It's still completely out of focus. I believe in my opinion that this one works much better
And I think it's the best of them all because not only the the exposure is better
It's brighter in the center leading the eye to that part, but also the blur helps a lot
It's much easier for the viewer to recognize or to see the main subject of the photo that is in the middle
because both the top and the bottom of the frame are out of focus
so same shot focusing is still in the middle-bottom part of the frame
this one was shot at f/8, you can see that the exposure
changed from the previous one, the sides of the photo are brighter
I'm not really sure why, the post-processing on all these photos is the same
But this one belongs to a new roll, to a different roll than the previous three shots
so that might be the reason, I guess
so the middle of the photo not being as bright as in the previous shot that doesn't help
But also you can see that the blur
Doesn't really work as a way to lead the eye to the center that is where the ripples are in focus
I hope you can see that better here in the comparison between the two shots, f/4 on the left f/8 on the right
Try to look beyond the difference in the exposure and see how the blur helps on the left image
To lead you or to guide the viewer to the middle of the image
Lastly, this shot that it was focusing on the middle-bottom part of the frame as the previous two ones
But this time was shot at f/32, so most of it is in focus and this was
The point that I was trying to make here: in this case since the photo doesn't really have a main subject
and everything is in focus, it's
Really really hard. I mean you get lost in this photo because you don't know what to look at and
It might work for some cases, but in this case as I said where there is no main subject or main
thing to look at, I think that the blur in some parts of the frame using wider apertures is a
very useful technique to make viewers look at where you want them to look at
Oh my, look at that
Do you see that? It's a car, in the water
How the hell did you end up there?
Look at this place
Nothing there, nothing there. No, there are no roads
Geez
Here, I tried to capture this boat moving through my frame like I did on this other image from a few years ago
But it didn't really work this time. The exposure was of about
50 seconds which was perfect since it was the time that took the boat to appear and disappear from the frame
But it was moving too fast for the boat to show up
It was in bulb mode
So it's 4:15 p.m. I just realized that the Holga was in bulb mode so
I've taken four rolls with that camera so far on this trip. I have no idea how many shots are going to turn out.
so
stupid
Well hopefully I got half of them at least, I don't know
Anyway, I think that this would be a good moment to call this a day
I've been taking photos for 9 hours now, so
I'm heading back. Oh man. Oh, man. I have to tape that switch. I have to tape it