Chasing Waves - landscape photography on location #9

Welcome to Cape Disappointment, Washington. This is where the Columbia River meets the meets the Pacific Ocean. Awesome, iconic old lighthouse out on the cape there. So the reason we're here is because we have big surf advisories for today and tomorrow. We should be getting some really large waves tomorrow. They're scheduled to be above 20 feet, which can make for some really cool shots as it crashes against the against the rugged coastline here. So right now I'm set up and I'm pretty much going to be shooting the same composition over and over at this place. I'm using a remote that way I can fire them off and really time my shots because when you're photographing waves it's all about timing. Not only do you have to be ready but it has to happen exactly at the right moment. So you have to be paying attention and you just kind of have to shoot the same composition over and over. So settings wise I bumped my ISO to 320 and the reason I've done that is because I need a faster shutter speed to freeze the action of the waves. So right now my shutter speed is at 1 1 60th of a second and I'm shooting an f11 to make sure that I get both the waves and the lighthouse in the background sharp. So it's just kind of a waiting game now. We're waiting for the right waves. We're getting some nice light. Sky's looking nice. Things are coming together. Hopefully we get some really cool waves with this good light. Every time I turn my back I miss a good wave, but we are getting some really cool splashes. The waves are not nearly as big as they're going to be tomorrow morning, which is really exciting. Definitely getting some cool shots. There's something just so therapeutic about wave watching. You can just sit here and watch waves over and over and over and it never really gets old, especially when the light is decent like it is now. It's really fun. It's getting dark enough to where getting that fast shutter speed is kind of tricky. I'm up to ISO 500 now, f8, 1 1 100th of a second, but I've definitely gotten some really nice splashes. They come in sets. Typically they're like five minutes long and you'll get really great waves for five minutes and then you'll get very mediocre waves for 10 minutes. It kind of lulls you to sleep like right about the time that you give up on the waves and you think, well, looks like the waves are done. A good set comes in and it surprises you and that's also what makes the ocean kind of dangerous is because those rogue waves can really sneak up on you. If you're shooting waves and you think that it's done, you're better off just to wait it out and just wait and see because a lot of times you just can't predict it. So I've got to continuously check my exposure, make sure I'm bright enough, and as it gets darker I need to just keep kind of keep cranking my ISO a little bit. There you go. That's what I'm talking about. Very nice. I'm really liking the glow that's happening kind of back behind the lighthouse. That's going to make sunrise really compelling because if we can get good waves and good light it could be really epic. We'll wait and see. Typically with these big waves comes just rainy, cloudy weather, but if we could get good light too that could make a serious portfolio image. So that's what I'm hoping. I drove all the way across the state hoping for one of these really iconic epic images because really I'm not going to go home with a whole bunch of different compositions. I'm just hoping for one really really good one. So as expected it's much cooler this morning. The waves are crazy. So crazy in fact that where we parked yesterday is just a complete disaster zone. There is just junk everywhere because the waves have come in and pushed these logs up into the parking lot and you can imagine how dangerous this is because if one of these logs fell on top of you there's no saving you without a crane because those are waterlogged logs and they weigh tons and tons. People have died that way quite a few times. Sadly a couple tiny little kids died that way just at the beach close to a log big wave pushed rolled the log over on top of them. That aside the waves are awesome. Really really good. So we had to walk in this morning because the gate was closed. Now I'm going back to grab my car and going to park a little closer and now that the light's coming up a little bit we can start to freeze some of those waves. We also got a little little chance of color back there or at least some sun poking through. Get some backlit waves would be cool. That's the best case scenario but we'll see what happens. Those backlit fan waves are so much fun to shoot especially when they're huge like these. You can see just how high this these waves are. When you're around big surf like this all these big logs turn into death traps. One rolls on you you're just a goner. So earlier I was shooting on a tripod and it was the shot was very much more about like including the including the lighthouse and stuff and and really focusing in on the composition but now I switched over and I'm shooting handheld and what I'm doing is I'm just kind of zooming way in like 300 millimeters and just getting like just wave abstract shots and then we have all these birds flying around which makes it really nice because it gives those whales wave scale and all the textures and stuff in the waves. It's really cool. I disagree with everything you just said. Everything and because the light is changing so quickly I've moved over into auto iso. Oh that's cool. I've moved over into auto iso and that way when I'm shooting a wave that's in the sun. Oh man that is so cool. So cool. That way when I'm shooting a wave that's backlit really hard into the sun with direct light I can expose for my highlights. I've gotten really lucky with light this morning. It's so much fun. Now we're back at Cape Kawanda. We're kind of chasing where we think we're going to get decent waves. We're supposed to get like 20 foot waves and a sign of that is all of this sea foam just showing up on the beach. There's a telltale sign it takes big waves to create all that foam. I'm going to hike up to the top of Cape Kawanda, try to find a good perch, hope that the sky cooperates and we get some light as well. Man this place can be so intimidating. All right so we're set up. I've kind of got this as my comp with kind of a wide angle shot. Big old waves coming. I have to be so careful here because if a wave pushes me this way I'm a goner. It's really really intimidating but we got some big old waves coming in. Oh look at that. This this is spooky. Sometimes you just gotta bail when it's looking dangerous and it was looking dangerous. Yeah oh what a crazy night. So I've been down below and just about the time I was about to give up a rainbow pops out. So I'm lucky that I stayed down there and got that. We couldn't see this sky from where we were so I climbed up here and we don't really have much of a foreground. I mean I've got a cliff and some water and then the sea stack. I'm gonna take a couple shots but got a gray sky just no foreground. But what a crazy crazy night. You can tell how windy it is. It's been windy and rainy and stormy. Got Majeed and those guys way over there on the on the crest there. Blustery, muddy. Trying to climb out of there after it's been raining. It's just a slick of mud. I'm gonna take a couple shots while the light is like this. Thank you guys so much for watching. 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