the heel press

Probably the best beach on the Olympic Penninsula, Washington's Ruby Beach didn't disappoint as four of us headed home to Portland (after visiting Wolf Creek Falls and Sol Duc Falls). Though I was aching in several places (most of them related to my darn feet), the light at this beach quickly put a spring in my stop and I fired off frame after frame with both Nikon and Pentax.

This particular image is a composite of two separate pictures, one metered for the foreground (the textured logs were amazing) and one for the background, then blended in Photoshop.

I've been thinking a lot about light lately, probably because I'm reading Galen Rowell's <i>Mountain Light</i> book. Most recently, I had finished a section in which Rowell talks about the limitations of cameras compared to our own eyes. In this scene, my eyes could fully comprehend the detail in both the shadowed logs and the bright sky. My Nikon, however, could not be made to meter for both. In retrospect, I'm sure there's an ND filter I could have used to adjust for the differences in the camera, instead of manually merging the two images into what my eyes perceived. Something to think about indeed.

This was my second time to Ruby Beach, and my first sunset there (though we could not stay for the entire thing). It's an amazing place... a little out of the way for us Portlanders unless you overnight it, but definitely worth the time and energy.