The last day of my trip to Oregon and California started off at sunrise on the beach at MacKerricher State Park near Ft. Bragg, CA. It was overcast and gloomy at the hotel but by the time we arrived at the park, the skies looked promising but the light show that followed was totally unexpected. There is a great line of posts planted along the beach that provide a wonderful graphic element and when you are lucky to have an incredible sky….

Along this same stretch of beach is the remnant of a large tree stump. I had to work between incoming waves that surrounded the stump but it was worth photographing this beautiful piece of wood. If you would like to see more, my gallery of images from this trip can be found at this link.

A walk through a redwood forest is a unique experience. The coastal redwoods that range from southern Oregon to central California are the world’s tallest trees, standing up to 320 feet in height. These images are from the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park outside of Crescent City, CA. This park contains some of the most often photographed redwoods along the Stout Grove Trail.

The beauty of the moss covered tree below was highlighted by the early morning light and fog.

Bandon State Park in Oregon offers incredible landscapes featuring an amazing variety of sea stacks. It’s just one of those places that makes you think of alien worlds. The morning that our workshop photographed there was very special. It included one of the most magnificent skies I have ever seen.

Bandon beach offers enormous opportunities for compositions throughout the day and is a highly recommended stop for any photographer.

Looking in areas marked as tidal pools on maps, we were coming up empty for marine life, but traveling along Highway 101 near the coast we spotted huge fins in the ocean which turned out to be a pod of Orca whales migrating south. We pulled over to watch them and noticed a grouping of rocks in front of us where a large number of harbor seals were resting. To get a closer view of the seals, we scrambled over some rocks and ran smack into the most amazing tidal pool I have ever seen, filled with sea stars and anemones everywhere you looked.
(workshop guide info)

In the Cape Perpetua area of southern Oregon is a coastal rock formation known as Thor’s Well. At high tide it is fascinating to watch as it fills with seawater, spouts and then sucks the water back down with each incoming wave. If has become a hot spot for photographers to catch the spectacle. The shot above was taken during sunset. It was so incredible to see, that we returned to the well the following morning to shoot it again where I captured a different perspective below. (Safety warning: if you visit in person, take care as the rocks are slippery and sharp, large waves could potentially knock you down!)
(workshop guide info)

I just returned from an awesome workshop along the southern Oregon and northern California coasts, starting in Eugene, OR and ending in San Francisco, CA. One of the first stops along the Pacific was Seal Rock Wayside where we photographed the beach at sunrise.

Things were off to a great start and I’ll be posting more images over the next couple of days from the trip.