While on the recent roadtrip along the Oregon coast, we stopped at Honeyman State Park. This happens to be next to the Oregon dunes. The first day we were there it was very windy. I asked the park ranger about getting to the dunes and he suggested his favorite way. However he said if I went up there now I would get a mouth full of sand (guess what my camera would get). The next morning I noticed the winds were gone and I could see stars. Given the shot I had in mind, I knew this may be my best opportunity (clean wind swept dunes at sunrise) so I hike out into the dunes up near the top of a BIG one. Need your morning exercise – climb a dune – a real thigh burner.
It was a beautiful morning with patches of fog. I found the shot I had imagined, the first image, and started to wait. It was peaceful and quite splendid to be up there before sunrise. Beautiful images and sites started to appear all around me – ones I didn’t even see earlier due to the fog. The sun started touching a far dune with shadows through trees behind me forming wonderful lines that highlighted the dune’s form (2nd image). I repositioned my tripod and took several shots (I knew had sometime before my imagined image took form).
The last shot is actually the one I shot first as this tree island reminded me of the island shots I taken at Sunset Bay just days before (see Making Lemonade blog entry).
