[/caption] You can drive from Portland to Astoria and spend the day without having to get a hotel but there are so many things to do that you might want to stay for at least one night. In fact, you can get some great sunset views if the weather is nice. If you’re planning only a day trip I would leave early and stay for the sunset. You will just need to drink plenty of coffee for you drive back to Portland. Astoria is considered the little brother of San Francisco, CA and looks very similar but only in a much much smaller scale. It’s a great city to visit and probably offers the most to do compared to any of Oregon’s other coastal towns. The park that surrounds the Astoria-Megler bridge offers several photo opportunities and the walking/biking pathway in the city travels the entire length of the town and parallels the Columbia river. In this photo you can see the hotel in the bottom left, which used to be one of the old canneries from days past. There are several old buildings along the banks of the Columbia river that offer great photo opportunities.
Tag Archives: Astoria-Megler bridge
Astoria-Megler bridge
[/caption] What a difference a day makes. I took this shot on Sunday. My previous two posts were taken on Saturday when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. However, Sunday was much different. The clouds had moved in from the Pacific which made for some great backdrops when photographing around the piers. I wasn’t able to get as many shots of the ships steaming under the bridge as I would have liked. I’m sure a lot of this had to do with the fact that it was Sunday. This shot really shows just how massive the Astoria-Megler bridge is. It completely dwarfed all of the ships that traveled under it. Again, I was blessed with great light. I was able to set my Exposure comp./AEB setting to between 0 and 1. I used my warming filter and PL-CIR to ensure that the exposure and composition were perfect. The only time I really had to increase the exposure was when I was directly under the bridge. I never had to use my tripod, which allowed me to cover a lot of ground along the piers and also allowed me to take a lot of photos.