[/caption] A view of the Needles in silhouette, well after sunset, offers a rare cobalt blue view of the beach and sky. A great way to get a very interesting and magical photo along the Pacific Coast is to wait at least 1 hour after the sun has set and then set your shutter priority at around 10-30 seconds and photograph the ghosting of the tide and capture the cobalt colors created in the beach and sky. As long as the horizon isn’t completely obscured by an approaching front you will be able to take advantage of the brilliant colors. This is only one of several that I took but it shows several cool features. You can see the ripples in the sand from the receding tide, the blue colors in the sand and sky, the silhouette of the rocks and the ghosting effect of the water. To get this shot I made sure to use my tripod, bubble level and remote switch in order to avoid any camera shake or blur. I made sure to turn off the IS on my Sigma 17-70mm lens and set the focal length at 32mm. This photo was taken at around 9:30pm which was about an hour after sunset and that’s about how long it takes for the cobalt blues to come out. I removed my ND and CIR-PL filters since it was pretty dark and there wasn’t much brightness left. However, I did attach my warming filter and set the ISO at 100 and the white balance at -0.3. I set the shutter speed at 15 second and since I had the camera mode in shutter priority the aperture was automatically set at F-9.
Tag Archives: Pacific Ocean sunset
Haystack Rock, OR
[/caption] This photo was taken two days from the time of the photo that I posted yesterday on 10/4/10. This was my second trip that I made. The photo that I posted on 10/4/10 was taken last Tuesday and this photo was taken on the following Thursday. I had to return to the coast since they were calling for even warmer and sunnier weather than my trip on Tuesday. I am very glad that I decided to make the additional trip since the sunset was spectacular and the afternoon was near 80 degrees. Each sunset was totally different than each other, which made it even more spectacular. You never want to pass up an opportunity to visit the Oregon coast when they are calling for nice weather in late September or early October. The sunsets are always remarkable and the days are shorter. There are also less photographers and tourists flocking to the beach. During this photo, the tide was very high, so I wasn’t able to get as close to the rocks as I normally do. I again was using my tripod, bubble level and my remote switch in order to ensure a crisp and shake free photo. The photo was taken at 7:14 pm, which was about 20 minutes after the sun had already set. I was able to take the photo without using an ND filter. I was using my 12-24mm wide-angle lens and I had my UV, warming and CIR-PL filter attached. The focal length was at 14mm since I wanted to have Haystack rock and the Needles in the field of view. The F stop was at F-22 and the white balance was at -2. I was using shutter mode and set the shutter to 3.2 seconds. Because the glare was fairly high and the sun had just set, I wasn’t able to increase the shutter speed without using an ND filter and risk causing too much grain to appear against the rocks. There was a fog lingering along the Needles, which did cause them to look somewhat grainy but I tried to darken the rocks to eliminate this. However, many of my photos did come out looking grainy along the rocks. The popcorn clouds really glow with red as the sun had just set and the glare from the sand created a really nice reflection. The clouds in the background as well as the fog also created some personality. These are the type of photo opportunities that you wish you could always have. Sometimes I wish that I could live on the coast so I would never miss sunsets like this one. Just another reason to love the Pacific Northwest.