Crown Point

On Wednesday I was going to drive out to Cannon Beach for some photos and spend the afternoon with Holly. Well, unbeknownst to me, she already had plans – so, I was going to go alone. But after thinking about it, I really didn’t want to. Besides, the coast was supposed to get rainy in the evening and I wanted a sunset photo anyway.

Instead, I waited a few hours until close to twilight and drove up to the Crown Point Vista House, roughly a 30 minute drive from our house. Now, the only reason I even knew about this building and the subsequent stellar view was from this photo on Flickr, taken by one of my new favorite photographers, Andrew Curtis.

I wanted to capture something similar, but alas, the cloud cover would not allow it. Rather, I was able to capture these three little beauties:

I never thought I’d be able to get the clouds look so nice during a sunset. After seeing this guy’s shots of the sunset at Fenway Park in Boston, I really had the itch for it. So, obviously an HDR was the only way to go and I’m fairly happy with my results.

 
A nice little 15-second exposure of the building and moving clouds. The moon was peeking through at moments, but my favorite part of this photo is the red light on the security camera screen. It’s easier to see when viewed large. You can also see some stars poking through in the larger version.

 
This is actually three images merged together. Since I was so close to the building I couldn’t get the entire window set and moon in the frame. I really like the cloud movement in this, but I’m not so sure about the way the building is slightly rotated in the frame. I was on my hands and knees in a parking lot with cars driving close behind, so I didn’t have much safe time to experiment.