Tag Archives: cannon beach

A Tree Trunk Supporting Sea Life

The Pacific Northwest shorelines are strewn with tree trunk. Whether they have been washed in to the see or are strays from the logging business, doesn’t matter. There are tons of them everywhere. This one was on Cannon Beach. I have no idea where it originally came from but it had washed up here at some point and got quite established in the sand. The surface of the wood had become the home of a multitude of sea creatures. It was festooned with them. I wonder how much they depend on it staying there or, if it gets washed out again in the next storm, they would be in trouble.

Mist In The Distance Along The Shore

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While the weather could be quite nice during our winter visit to Cannon Beach, the steady wind and the waves meant there was a lot of water in the air. With the length of the beach, this meant that things could look quite misty as you stared in to the distance. This look makes for quite an ethereal feel to the scene and it was something that I found appealing yet hard to capture in an image. I tried some wider shots and some tighter ones to emphasize the effect. Not sure what works better.

Patterns In The Sand

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Another repeat of a previous theme. Water flowing over the sand on a beach creates some interesting patterns. The sand on Cannon Beach included a lot of very dark grains. These made the visualization of the movement of the sand easy to do. It also allowed you to see where the water was flowing deeper or shallower which helped when walking through the water running across the beach.

Backlight For A Seastack

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During the evenings at Cannon Beach, we could see lots of lights out on the water. Fishing boats were out at work and their lights were very bright. I am not sure whether they only fish at night or not. During the day, it would be hard to spot them without the lights giving you a clue since they were generally quite far out. However, one boat was closer in than the others. It was right behind on of the sea stacks near Haystack Rock. With a lot of mist in the air, the light from the boat was diffused and provided a backlight to the rock. It wasn’t lone before the boat came out from behind the rock and the effect was lost.

Cannon Beach Black Bunny Population

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We were walking through Cannon Beach back towards our hotel when we saw a couple of black rabbits eating grass by the road. They didn’t seem easily spooked by our presence and we walked on our way. A little internet searching when we were back in the hotel explained that there is a population of black rabbits in Cannon Beach that are descended from rabbits that people have released. They are big rabbits compared to those we see around here.

I decided to grab the camera late one afternoon to see if I could get any photos of them. I didn’t have long to look but figured it was worth a try. I had walked about ten meters when I saw my first rabbits. There were a bunch of them within a block of the hotel. I saw some on an open area of grass and one that was closer to me did run away towards a bush. It them leapt up on top of the bush and stayed there chewing on the leaves. Never seen anything like that before!

Haystack Rock

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Cannon Beach is well known but one of its most famous landmarks is Haystack Rock. This sits on the shore just a short distance from where we were staying so we walked by it a few times and could see it from our balcony whenever we liked. It is a sizeable thing! It sits right at the tide line so, at high tide, it is in the water but, when the tide retreats, you can walk out to it. However, it is a protected site so no climbing.

On gray and stormy days, it looks pretty bleak. When the sun is out and illuminating it with that nice low winter light angle, it looks totally different. I suspect, if I stayed there longer, I would probably photograph it a hundred different ways and still not be satisfied with what I got. I won’t be alone, of course. It has been photographed more times than anyone could count.

Cannon Beach

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Cannon Beach was quite a way north of where we were staying in Oregon. However, it was on our route home so we stopped off to wander along the sands for a bit prior to hunting down some lunch. We were not the only ones enjoying a sunny day on the beach but, given the expanse of sand available, there was plenty of space for everyone to spread out so it wasn’t crowded.

The huge flat sands were most impressive and the rocks that sit out in the water look very cool. It is hard to gauge their scale when they are out like that as they are so separated from the people that you don’t have enough of a reference to work with. It is safe to say that they are pretty big though. There was a bit of sea spray in the air which made everything take on a slightly more misty look when you were looking south towards the sun. Looking north this was a lot less apparent. I could see why a landscape photographer would come here to spend some time in the early and late hours.