When you have a bucket list item, a lot of the time the item on the list turns out to be less than “life changing” when you finally mark it off the list. A lot of my “bucket list” items are like that.I have done a few of them over the years and some will always impress you more than others. The redwoods are on the short list that color me impressed.

Nothing can prepare you for the grandiose scale of these trees. I live in the south eastern United States so for me a tree that is 4 feet in diameter is a VERY large tree. The redwoods consider that a juvenile… seriously.

A little back story probably helps. We went on a short getaway vacation where we drove down the coast from Washington. Across Oregon is incredibly beautiful along the coast as well. There were places in particular that I liked more than others but wow… Oregon is amazing.

Towns like Astoria and Newport should be on your list. I did some low light photos in Astoria and wished we could have stayed a couple more days just in the town. The photography was just that good.

I found myself looking more at the scene and coming away with something different than what most people look for in a photo. I stopped looking for the classic vacation images of the big landmarks, but rather the little things that made the trip more special.

I think this is a point in every photographers journey. The one where their real creativity starts to bloom. You can see it in the photos sometimes. Like in the night photos above. I had the chance to walk around town after dark and get some photos of the lights in town. It was incredible what I found, but needed a different time to get the actual images I wanted. This one would have been better if there were some people in the foreground and it had been at blue hour so the sky would have a little color in it. I still like this version, I just think it could have been better. The only way to improve this would be to stay in this town longer so I could spend more time chasing the photo I wanted.

The Elliot hotel was very cool and would have been way better had it not had that car in the left side of the image. This is why you want to come back multiple days to the same location. If I had been able to do that, I no doubt could have gotten this photo without that car and it would have been more symmetrical that way. Symmetry is really good in these photos and I wished it would have been like that…haha Also, the Elliot photo is out of level…I guess I could have fixed that before making the blog post…

These are the kinds of things that start to go through my mind now. Not if the settings are right or if I have the right lens for the scene, but rather “what would make it better"?” Sometimes, you simply get handed a winner too. The photo above was the sunrise on our first morning in Washington before we started down the coast. I just happened to be outside with my camera and this was what I was greeted with that morning. Literally just put the camera up and snapped the photo… This will get printed at some point too. This one is that good to me.

Back to the trip. We drove down the coast and stopped in several towns along the way to spend time and take photos. I really enjoyed the slower pace of the trip to be honest. It was not this hurry up and get to the end kind of trip that we normally seem to be focused on. But rather a longer road trip kind of thing. When you slow down, things start to appear that you would not normally notice… This deer walking along the water’s edge is one of those things. The world has so much to offer if we just slow down a little to notice it.

The trip culminated in northern California just across to state line from Oregon. We stopped in the town of Crescent City and stayed over night there before heading back to Oregon to the airport to come home. This is where the giant redwood trees are mostly located too. We found them quite easily and it is a simple drive to get to them from town. We did hike a couple of the shorter trails as it was afternoon and we had to get out before dark.

At the end of the day though, these kinds of trips are about the memories more than the photography itself. Yes, i wanted good photos but at the end of the day, it was about spending quality time with Teresa that mattered the most. That is what life is about in the end. Spending time (your most valuable resource) with the people that mean the most to you.