March 4th, 2012
My wife and I recently took a quick day trip to the coast. I find the beach relaxing, even the cold, rainy Pacific Northwest Coast satisfies my need to be at the beach and manages to relax me. I grew up on the East Coast and my family always went to the warm southern beaches for summer vacation. Eventually they brought a home on the North Carolina coast and I ended up living there until we moved out West 17 years ago. So I feel like I have a close connection to the beach and it represents a feeling of both freedom and security to me.
If you’ve ever been to both coasts, you know how different they are from each other, not only in their geology but in how they’re dealt with commercially. The West, specifically the Northwest, is wilder and less developed. The East Coast still has some less developed areas but for the most part it caters to tourism and commercial interests. You’ll be hard pressed to find a high-rise hotel on the West Coast unless you travel further South to California.
That’s what I like about the “Great Pacific Northwest” it still has that element of wilderness and even a kind of “magic” about it. First thing that I noticed after I moved here is that the light is different from what I was used to, hard to describe exactly – you have to experience it. But as a photographer I noticed it almost immediately and therefore wanted to capture it and portray what I saw and how I felt about it.
Which brings me to the images that you see here, I feel like I’ve been able to capture those feelings and that special light. Normally, I'm happy to produce one image from an photo outing that I really like – this time I got three. Of course I “tweaked” them a bit with some post-processing to bring out and intensify what I was experiencing (I always do in some way, unless I’m just “recording” an event or subject).
DCF
