As you can see by the linked video above, I recently went and tried to photograph the Peter Iredale shipwreck in Warrenton, Oregon. This was a planned spontaneous trip. That’s completely contradictory but let me explain. I had a 3 day window to make this trip happened so in that sense, the trip was planned. Other than that, I had no idea when I was actually going to go because there were specific conditions that I was looking forward to photographing. In this blog, I’ll lay out the things that I considered and maybe that’ll help you out on your own adventure.
When it comes to timing my photography, the attached screenshot pretty much says it all. Tide schedule, sunrise/sunset times and cloud coverage. These are the 3 most important environmental factors that I consider when doing landscape photography. Realistically, the tides only come into play in some scenarios because they only have a big effect when photographing near large bodies of water. The other 2, are hypercritical. Nevertheless, I’ll cover all 3 factors and how they effect my photography.
First, the tides. Again, this is only something to consider when photographing near large bodies of water. Since the Peter Iredale sits on a beach right next to the Pacific Ocean, the tides can have some drastic effects on the composition. For this location, I knew that I wanted a composition with high tide. I’ve seen photos of the Peter Iredale in low tide and it’s not exactly the prettiest site. The Peter Iredale has been shipwrecked for over 100 years. Spending all that time in salt water did not treat the ship well. It is completely rusted over and there is very little left of it. In low tide, I think it just looks like large scrape metal siting in the sand. However, the rising tide really provides a whole new prospective to the subject. The tides provide a surface for reflections and adds some movement to the scene. It just makes the entire location so much more interesting. Because of this, I had to make sure that I was photographing near one of the high tide times, 11:16AM or 10:48PM.
Next, I had to align the high tide times with sunrise or sunset. This should be obvious. Most photographers would say that the best light is going to be around sunrise and sunset. These times provide that soft light that just seems to make any subject look better and, of course, once in awhile we get some fantastical colors that can really only be seen around these times. I typically am a sunrise shooter and never go at sunset unless I’m already at the location. If it’s a planned trip, I almost always go at sunrise. This is simply because there are going to be much less people around. At sunset, most people are going to be awake and exploring. This just means that tourist attractions like the Peter Iredale are going to be flooded with people. People who will walk into the composition and interrupt my work. I’d rather just avoid this and go at sunrise when very few people are going to be interested enough in anything to actually make the effort of waking up that early. However, to me, the Peter Iredale is a sunset location. If you track the sun movement pattern at this location, you will see that the sun rises over land and sets over the ocean. Considering that I’m looking for high tide, it’s going to be much easier to stand on land, shooting sunset over the ocean than standing in the ocean and shooting sunrise over land. It’s also important to note that most of the crazy colors that we see during sunrise/sunset is going to be near the sun. So in this case, it just makes sense to go at sunset because the sun and possible crazy sunset colors will be over the ocean, which happens to be the direction that I was photographing to capture the high tide. See? It all comes together.
Lastly, cloud coverage. Clouds contribute to the overall lighting but most importantly on this shoot, sunset conditions. Getting those fantastic sunrise/sunsets are tricky. The conditions have to be just right or you’ll just get the very typical yellow sunrise/sunset. A big determiner is the cloud coverage. There’s a lot that goes into this so I’ll try to make it as simple and straight forward as possible. There are various types of clouds and they sit in different sections of the sky. Some clouds offer a better chance of a great sunrise/sunset than others. For the sake of simplicity, let’s just consider that there are low, medium and high clouds. Low clouds are generally bad for sunrise/sunsets. Low clouds are low in the sky and sit near the horizon. This is also where the sun rises and sets. So if there is a lot of low clouds, the sun will be blocked and there will be no fantastic sunrise/sunset. Ideally, we want medium and high clouds but there is a thing as having too little or too much of any. On the day that I photographed the Peter Iredale, there were no medium or high clouds, just a lot of low clouds. Believe it or not, this was actually the most favorable forecast for the days that I could go. On other days, there was predicted 100% low cloud coverage so I knew that there was no chance of a sunset. Still, predicted 88% low cloud coverage isn’t ideal and that really effected my images negatively.
And that’s just about everything that I considered in terms of atmospheric conditions for this shoot. The things that I’ve laid out can effect most outdoor photography situations so it’s helpful to understand them. Next time you go out, take some time to look at the various condition forecasts. Take note of what they are and how they effected your photography. After some time, you’ll be able to understand what everything means and what to look for. All of that being said, it’s more important to just get out and shoot. Get the practice in. Don’t get caught up in planning for the best conditions and prevent yourself from going out on a possibly bad condition day. Remember that the forecasts are largely predictions and estimates. Conditions constantly change. You never know when that crazy sunrise/sunset is going to happen. So get out as much as possible.
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