Oregon Photography Tour: Wine Country to the Oregon Coast

Waking up in Roseburg, I was at a loss as to what to go photograph at dawn. I decided to sleep in and go wine tasting instead. I found a number of interesting wines, particularly at Abacela Winery. Eventually my focus returned to photography and I headed for the coast.

I reached the Oregon Coast near Bandon, in time to check a few viewpoints to find a good spot for sunset. The Face Rock Wayside provided a stirway for beach access, scenic rock offshore, and plenty of flat, wet sand on which to catch the sky’s reflection.
This was my first sunset on the Oregon Coast, and it looked like there would be too much cloud cover and nothing happening. Then suddenly a hole started appearing, and I loaded up my gear, grabbed the tripod, and rushed down the stairway and onto the sand.

I caught some nice shots of the hole opening up in the clouds. I believe the rock to the left is referred to as “wizard hat.”

However before coming down to the beach I had moved things around between a backpack and my fanny pack. I was in such a hurry that somehow I ended up on the beach with no filters. I should have used a graduated neutral density filter for most of my shots, but using a tripod and brackeint exposures I was able to use HDR processing and have the results turn out OK. That was fortunate, because it ended up being one of my favorite sunsets of the trip!

Here are a few of my other shots from the Bandon area.