On my last sunrise of a three-day adventure on the Northern Oregon Coast, I was out to capture a gallery shot of the Peter Iredale Shipwreck in Fort Stevens State Park. As I hiked out on the beach, the cloud formation looked very promising. A big color started happening in the southeast, and I raced off the beach into the dunes to capture it, but then it started moving toward me. I had to sprint back to the beach and north past the shipwreck.
I was so happy with my first images, featuring light pink and blue tones in the sky behind the Peter Iredale. Then the color came on fast and hard, enveloping the entire sky. The color was so intense that I was trying to contain it by switching my color palette and lowering my white balance. I was glowing! This was by far the most intense sunrise I had seen all year, and I was thrilled to capture it reflecting in the sand as well. I needed no foreground; the reflection of light was my foreground.
I was using a 2-stop graduated split neutral density filter to balance light from sky to ground, and it was working to perfection. The sunrise went on and on but finally started to fade into an orange tone, then softened, and then back to blue-grey tones. A cloud must have knocked out the sun off to the east.
It is a sunrise I will never forget and topped off an amazing three days on the Northern Oregon Coast. This image now hangs in both of my galleries, and I selected it for the cover shot of my 2027 calendar. Definitely one of my favorite shots of the year!
