An outtake from the Landscape II challenge. I was originally going to enter this for that one, but my wife talked me out of it. Luckily, we know that turned out all good. Had a new entry for Free Study IX, but too many people thought this was too strong to leave out. Perhaps there will be a Best of 2005 for my other entry...
This is also from Ecola State Park overlooking Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach. The natural framing of the tree seemed to take the picture to the next level.
The quote is from Jacques Cousteau although I took the liberty of slightly restating it. Those French say things all funny don't they? The original quote is "The sea, once it casts its spell, holds on in its net of wonder forever." I wonder if I'll catch grief from the short title crowd. Never thought of using a quote before, but I liked this one and couldn't come up with a title for this after some thought.
The center brightness is not dodging, but rather mist and sand blowing from the beach. This was taken about 30 minutes after sunrise. There is little altered in the picture except basic editing stuff. I cloned out a chunk of sensor dust in the center and cloned some buildings on the darkest hill by the beach. (manmade stuff? not in my landscapes...)
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This picture really captures the feeling of either a winter foggy morning or an incoming storm. I love the placement of the tree and the feeling of wind it evokes.
There's obviously a truly beautiful photograph to be made at this location. However, this one is not it, I'm afraid. I think that the tree is an intruder obstructing the grander view behind it. The completely black blob at the bottom-left corner weakens the composition too. As for the exposure, and this is only a matter of personal taste, I would have tried to darken the sky a little bit while still retaining some more detail on the foreground rocks by using a soft egded gradual neutral density filter, or certain exposure blending techniques (I believe it's legal in advanced editing to get multiple frames with different exposure adjustments from a single RAW negative and blend them in editing software).
I'm reminded of Canon Beach and coming from Astoria, this picture invokes a homesickness like no other. Many a night I've seen the storms on Haystack Rock. 10
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