Shore Acres State Park is one of the best locations on the Oregon coast, possibly on the entire west coast USA, for nature photographers. Giant waves crash on the rugged rock cliffs during storms, wind and waves have eroded sandstone to intriguing shapes, there are miles of trails with multiple coast views, and on calm, overcast days there’s always the beautiful gardens.
The weather on this day created great wave action and a beautiful sunset. The scene contrast was extreme, so I took a bracketed series of images, planning to blend them together in Photoshop. And I carefully timed my exposures to catch the peak of wave action. The histogram for one frame showed just moderate clipping in both shadows and highlights, so I decided to see what I could get out of that one RAW file. This is the result.
The setup: Nikon D750, 24-85 Nikkor at 29mm. I bumped the ISO to 400 to get a shutter speed of 1/200 in order to freeze the wave action. An aperture of f/8 was enough for depth of field at this distance and focal length.
Processing: Lightroom Classic CC with lots of adjustments for highlights, shadows, vibrance, clarity, etc. I finished with a touch of On1 Effects‘ HDR Look filter. HDR can easily be overdone (and it often is), but I often find this preset useful, and I almost always dial it back from the default so as not to produce an overcooked and scrunchy image.
Are you interested in a photo workshop on the Oregon coast? Shore Acres is just one of the spectacular locations we cover in my southern Oregon coast workshop. Check for dates and details at https://gregvaughn.photoshelter.com/p/workshops
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