Cannon Beach

I had the privilege of showing the Portland area to a fellow Poynter alum this weekend, and although I still consider myself a tourist in this city, I’m pretty sure yesterday was the perfect cap off to popping someone’s Oregon cherry.
After sleeping in, watching NFL all morning and early afternoon, we bounced over to Cannon Beach to see Haystack Rock and clam chowder at Mo’s.
The sun was far from shining, but since nobody was on the beach I finally was able to get the panoramic of Haystack I’ve wanted to for quite some time. It’s nothing special (if anything, I oversaturated another photo!), but I tried a technique I’ve heard of before: The name avoids me at this time, but I took three series of photos at separate settings and merged them into one photo.
And, voila:
 
Click on the photo to view it larger

Photo Editing

Oh God.

I just discovered something that will probably have me obsessed with Photoshop a whole lot more. Whilst buried in a PS2 NCAA Football ’09 match, I half-heartedly typed “photo editing techniques” on Google to see what happened between plays.

Low and behold, a nice little video popped up. So I listened/watched a bit while reenacting the UO-BSU game (that’s a whole other can of worms) from last night on my TV.

After the game I decided to tinker.

Normally, all I do is adjust brightness/contrast and vibrancy, more often than not just over-saturating the image. But the video showed me a few more things to play with. I’m sure most photographers can whip through these settings like I do a beer, but it was still pretty sweet to do it myself.

Anyway, here are a few edits of my gorgeous fiancée from the Oregon Coast I did just a bit ago. The originals are on the left (obviously). I’m not sure if I like the “cinematic” black bars yet. I think they can grow on me, though. And I’m digging the vignette on the bottom edit.

Cannon Beach

Yesterday’s photo of Haystack Rock was from my Blackberry (in fact the past three posts came from my Storm, thank you MMS blogging!). However, I also took my Cannon Powershot S5IS. So, even though the lighting was really bright and I have no UV filter (and my camera was covered in sand) I got a few cool pictures.

I can’t wait to go back over with the sole intention of taking beach photos. Cannon Beach is only an hour and fifteen minutes away, so it’s easily a day trip – after all, Holly and I went yesterday with the sole intention of having lunch on the beach.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to get a panorama of the rocks at sunset, but that will have to wait for another day. Of course, next time I will have to scout vantages free of power lines.

Oregon Coast staycation

Today the misses and I had a spiffy little picnic on Cannon Beach next to Haystack Rock. This was our first trip back since April Fool's Day when I proposed, and the weather was waaaaaaay nicer: Instead pf spring's horrendous wind and rain we basked in sunny 70-plus degree warmth.

It's no Lake Coeur d'Alene, but I guess the Pacific Ocean is a close second...

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