Sunset on Ruby Beach

coscorrosa · November 25, 2008

I took a three week break from taking any landscapes and decided to end the drought with a trip to Ruby Beach (part of Olympic National Park in Washington State) last night (forecast said 50% cloud cover, those are good enough odds for me!).

I've shot there a few times, but this was the only time I've done it at low tide which offers a whole different set of compositions, and I lucked out with a great sunset.

#1:

#2:

#3:

#4:

#5:

#6:

#7:

Aspire · November 25, 2008

Wow I cant stop looking at #1

so beautiful, #5 & #6 are also my favourites. You were definitely in the right place at the right time! If you don't mind me asking what lens was used and your technique? Beautifully captured!

a110p0 · November 25, 2008

Wonderful Photos
Ron,
Wonderful set of images. Your efforts to be out there shooting paid off
handsomely.

Beautiful!

Alvin

Cato · November 25, 2008

:jawdrop Don't know what else I can say...

clemensphoto's · November 25, 2008

Great photos

R.Jay · November 25, 2008

#1 and #5 are my favourites - fantastic reflections in both of them.

anwmn1 · November 25, 2008

#1, #4, #5, & #6

black mamba · November 25, 2008

Hi Ron,

This is a very well done set. You were given a fantastic array of scenes to work with, but knowing what to do with such an opportunity is everything. You excelled in this case.

Tom

Dwayne Oakes · November 25, 2008

All photos rock ! I like photo 3 the best, thanks for posting.

Take care,

Dwayne Oakes

vietnam_dgriner · November 25, 2008

Wow fantastic work
i love all !!!!

thumb

Abiciriderback · November 25, 2008

Yep you got lucky. Every time I hit my accounts in that area it is either foggy, rainy or grey. One of these days I'll get lucky at Ruby or second beach hopefully. Glad to see your work back on Dgrin.

Ray Still

bryanj87 · November 25, 2008

Geez Ron, these are terrible.

Terribly good!!!! That sky, man you got lucky! Great work as usual.

torags · November 25, 2008

Awesome.

With that quality of work you should get out more often...

Cuong · November 25, 2008

You sure know how to end a drought with a flood. Being lucked out doesn't hurt either. Fantastic series.

Cuong

Elaine · November 25, 2008

Ahh!! Stunning! Tried to choose a few faves and ended up with nearly the whole list. If I had to choose just one, I think it would be 5...or 1...or 6...or 2.

coscorrosa · November 25, 2008

Aspire wrote:

Wow I cant stop looking at #1 so beautiful, #5 & #6 are also my favourites. You were definitely in the right place at the right time! If you don't mind me asking what lens was used and your technique? Beautifully captured!

Thanks! The lenses were the Canon 24-105 and 16-35.

My technique:

1) Live within 4 hours of an awesome beach
2) Drive there on an impulse, even if there's a 50% chance you won't come away with anything
3) Get extremely lucky with the clouds and the low tide and the sunset
4) Take off the lens cap

Because of the low tide, I knew that I could get a lot of cool reflections in the thin film of water on top of the sand. I had a polarizer filter (which is on my lens about 95% of the time when taking landscapes), this really helped draw out the clouds in the reflection (especially on shot #1 which was angled almost 90 degrees from the sun). It's also a good idea to have polarizer to act as protection against the sand (which I can keep out of my camera but always drives my tripod crazy). Even though a lot of these shots were parallel with the sun (where a polarizer is least effective), it still helps to cut out the light that's bouncing off of other elements in the foreground.

On some of the shots I used a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter to bring down the highlights. I'm more interested in the shapes of the sea-stacks and the colors around them than the actual detail in the seastacks themselves so I intentionally under-exposed some shots.

Here's some info on each shot:

#1: Single exposure with the polarizer rotated for maximum reflection. I was really excited about those clouds which is why I made the horizon line so low, but not too low so as to remove the reflection. This was shot at a wide angle to emphasize the clouds and the sky. Taken about 30 minutes before sunset.

#2: I wanted to get as long as an exposure as I could to smooth out the water (even if it meant blowing out some highlights, 1-1.5 stops over exposed). I also dropped the white balance to around 5000K to give it a cooler color to make the colors match the softness of the water. This was shot at 105mm with a 3-stop GND filter.

#3: This was three exposures, two stops apart (doesn't need to be, but I usually bracket anyway "just in case", and sometimes I'm able to achieve a better result going from HDR->LDR even if the dynamic range of the scene doesn't require it). The middle exposure was underexposed to make the rocks silhouetted.

#4: Pretty much the same as #3. This is well after sunset (about 30 minutes), and there was no one left on the beach at this time. You can see a star in the upper left and its reflection. The long exposure was around 25-30 seconds.

#5: Same as #3/#4, unfortunately because it was sunset and low-tide, there were foot-prints all over and it's a little distracting in this photo, I might try and remove them later.

#6: I was looking for some more compositions and as I was jogging down the beach I noticed this pool, so I dropped down the tripod for a lower POV. Another blend of three exposures withe a split ND filter.

#7: On the way back to the car, a single exposure deliberately under exposed to make the trees silhouetted.

Although I have shot at Ruby Beach before, I've never done it this late in the year (when the sun is setting further south), nor at low tide. So it was a completely new experience and I got some shots I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

The bad part is there were quite a bit of people out there (this area has a lot of tourists now because of the "Twilight" books/movie which apparently is set in Forks, WA about 30 miles away), and because of the low tide, a lot of them (and their footprints) were in between my camera and the water, and I couldn't do all the shots I wanted to. That is one problem with ocean sunsets on the west coast, you have a days worth of footprints to contend with.

This isn't a problem at high tide when I'm usually right on (and in) the water.

Anyway, it's a great beach for photography, and I lucked out with the clouds.

coscorrosa · November 25, 2008

Abiciriderback wrote:

Yep you got lucky. Every time I hit my accounts in that area it is either foggy, rainy or grey. One of these days I'll get lucky at Ruby or second beach hopefully. Glad to see your work back on Dgrin.

Ray Still

Foggy, rainy and gray could be the motto for that part of the state

I checked the forecast (using the national weather service's hourly weather graph, which has the cloud cover, wind, etc. graphed by an hour so you can usually get a good idea of what's going to happen), so I was reasonably confident that it wouldn't be completely gray.

Here's a link to the NWS:

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Forks&state=WA&site=SEW&textField1=47.9506&textField2=-124.384&e=0&FcstType=graphical

grimace · November 25, 2008

Beautiful work!! I really like #5 & #6.

coscorrosa · November 25, 2008

Thanks for the comments
Thanks for the comments everyone!

I really did luck out with the clouds (some photographers are hesitant to admit the role that luck plays in the end result, not me!). But you have to actually be there for the luck to even matter though.

I took three weeks off from landscape photos because I was exhausted from shooting during the Fall, turns out, the real problem was I was exhausted from work, so next time, I'll just mentally check out from work for three weeks instead and see if anyone notices

Tango · November 25, 2008

bravo.........

> long silent pause <

simply bravo

schmoo · November 26, 2008

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!

This set gives me chills. In a good way. The clouds just dance over the rocks like that. Sigh.

I've long believed that the Pacific NW was where I wanted to settle if I was going to stay in the States. But moving is such a pain. You're not helping!

dlplumer · November 26, 2008

Beautiful work, as always Ron. I particularly love # 6

Arvan · November 26, 2008

the 6th photo is the best sunset photo ive ever seen! So darn fantastic!

Awais Yaqub · November 26, 2008

Wooohooo ! amazing photography just refreshed me

coscorrosa · November 26, 2008

schmoo wrote:

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!

This set gives me chills. In a good way. The clouds just dance over the rocks like that. Sigh.

I've long believed that the Pacific NW was where I wanted to settle if I was going to stay in the States. But moving is such a pain. You're not helping!

What's this "in the states" business? I would have thought all people with expat tendencies would have already decided to leave sometime in the last 8 years

I'm very cognizant of how awesome the PNW is for landscape photography, you're far more likely to run out of time than locations, though things are a little more mellow in the winter.

coscorrosa · November 26, 2008

Arvan wrote:

the 6th photo is the best sunset photo ive ever seen! So darn fantastic!

Wow, thanks!

Sunset on Ruby Beach

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