On my scouting trip to the Oregon Coast with Jeff Clow last week, we actually hit one evening where we had that elusive magical light that had abandoned us on the other nine days of the trip. If I could have picked in advance just one place for this to happen, it would have been here. We had just arrived in Bandon, which I will now refer to as Oregon's sea stack heaven. It had rained off and on during out drive and we had just checked into our hotel. We decided to check out the beach as it began to clear up. Once there, the evening just started getting better and better. We hadn't planned on staying there long as we were both pretty hungry, but as we shot the scene from the overlook, I turned to Jeff and said, the light is too good, I am heading down to the beach if you don't mind. He didn't, so off I went.
One of the sea stacks that I wanted to shoot was Wizard's Hat, pictured here. Each of the sea stacks have their own names, such as Face Rock and Howling Dog. If it were not for the hotel clerk that checked us in, I might not have found it easily. The reason is that when looking from the sea stack from the south, it resembles a howling dog. When looking at it from the north, it resembles a Wizard's Hat. Since I approached its stack from the south, I might have looked for another sea stack had she not informed me of that fact. Anyway, the light was great, the clouds were amazing and no matter which direction I shot it from, it was going to be a good shot.