If your email in box is anything like mine it’s been completely overrun this week. Every business imaginable seems to be emailing to tell me what they are doing about this virus. Quite a few of these I haven’t heard from for years and some I’ve never heard of. This may sound callous, but I’m not interested in what their measures are. Just do your best to keep going and minimise the impact on everyone.
What I do think important is that everyone stays well and supports each other. I want to play my part in minimising its spread and helping in my neighbourhood where I can.
Given that I’m not venturing out much now, I’ve been spending time looking through old shots. That’s when I came across a series of images, from Cannon Beach in Oregon. The one I’m using for this post is one I processed with the new version of PhotoLab 3.2, which came out a couple of days ago. I also took advantage of the launch to do a short news piece about the features on my website.
I remember shooting these waves, but I had forgotten all about the images. I was using the Olympus EM5 at the time with a Panasonic 45-150 lens at 135mm. The ISO was set to ISO200 and with an aperture of f/6.3 the shutter speed was 1/3”. The camera was on a tripod and I also had a 2 stop ND Grad on the sky.
The downside to using the Micro 43 camera for this shot was that the foreground was too sharp. These cameras are great for creating a large depth of field but achieving a shallow depth of field can be tricky. That’s why I added a graduated filter to the image and blurred it in post-processing. With hindsight, I should have shot the image using a wider aperture, but then I was trying to slow the shutter speed to capture the wave movement. I also didn’t have too much equipment with me otherwise I would have used an ND filter or polariser.
I hope you like the image, stay well and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Yes, I like the colour and that slow spray movement. A nice surprise as I’ve not come across anyone else who has been or heard of Cannon Beach. Our US friends lived there for quite a while and still go down from Seattle. We went many years ago and I was in awe of the photo opportunities and spectacular lighting on the Pacific North West coast and keep planning to go back (not for a while now it seems). At the time I was in a photographic down phase where I had moved to a compact and new APS film Canon SLR away from 35mm. A period I deeply regret from a quality POV. On a positive note, you are right, it is now a time to review my library and examine and perhaps re-process older photos, maybe scan some favourites of my thousands of slides… And an ideal time to finally sit down and spend real effort learning from your tutorials. Stay well.
Thanks Steve. This part of the US is truly amazing for photography or even just for a holiday. Almost all of the images I’ve seen of the area involve Haystack rock (I think that’s what it’s called). It’s so dominant that it draws your attention away from the other opportunities. Hopefully, I can use all this time indoors to be more productive. Stay well.