Oregon Coast with Bob Harvey

This used to be home for me.  In my heart, it probably is still home.  While I lived there I walked so many trails, got to know so many bird call, learned the trees and many of the smaller plants, built my life around the tides, and came to know what location works in each weather situation.

This photography adventure is timed to coincide with both great low tides – and the morning light you need to execute stunning tidepool photography.  The tidal variation will be great (the number of feet between high and low tides) which supports dramatic waves.  It’s early enough in the season that everything will be lush from the winter and spring rains, but late enough we’ll have low chances for rain interruptions.  The temperatures will not have risen inland and sucked the marine layer tightly to the shore.  A great time for sunsets.  A great time for morning fog in coastal forests.

The southern Oregon coast is the most dramatic part of Oregon’s coast.  Here, the Siskiyou Mountains crash into the Pacific Ocean.  There are offshore sea stacks, sometimes boldly visible and other times playing hide and seek in fog – always beautiful.  Rivers plunge into the ocean with short estuaries.  The Douglas fir forests of the Cascades gradually give way to a more mixed forest with the northernmost redwoods – giant trees, all of them, which earn your respect and demand to be in your compositions.

Come walk with me in this paradise.  We’ll slip along trails that few others know and visit other, better-known dramatic landscapes.  We’ll plan each day around the weather and the tides, seizing opportunities rather than locked into a rigid schedule.  That will give us the most dramatic waves, the best sunsets, the richest tidepools, and the most haunting forest photography opportunities.  We’ll find landscapes and fauna.  We’ll go in close on drops on leaves and patterns in the sand.  I’ll be there with suggestions and assistance.

I’ll send you home with a new love and respect for the geology and ecosystems of the southern Oregon coast – and some new photographic skills as we navigate dawn and dusk, soft light and harsh light, deep forests and dramatic sunsets.  Please join me!