Travel Photo Essay: Haystack Rock, Oregon

Robert Landau is a Los Angeles-based photographer with a global archive of travel and location images. As an ongoing feature to this site, Robert will be contributing outstanding photos from his collection along with brief stories about the location and what went into getting the photo.

On a recent trip to Oregon, I was interested in exploring some of the more remote and out-of-the-way coastal scenery of which there is plenty.

Nonetheless, there are always the “famous places” that can’t be ignored and attract photographers in droves, usually for good reason.

On the Oregon coast, that place is Cannon Beach and the iconic image is Haystack Rock, a large pinnacle jutting out of the beach. Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, there is Haystock Rock in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

So, the challenge is to find a fresh way capture the scene.

When I first arrived at the beach at mid-day I noticed there were some interesting tide pools forming around the rocks. I didn’t know if this was the usual occurrence, or a tidal oddity; I decided that I would return toward late afternoon when the light would be softer and reflections more pronounced and shoot the rock in relation to the patterns of the tide pool. If they still existed.

I was hoping for a fabulous colorful West Coast sunset that would bath the rock in warm colors and light up the pools with magnificent reflections. What I got was a fairly ordinary slightly foggy day’s end, but the results were still worth the time and planning invested.

Click on a picture to see it full-size.

Check out Robert’s previous photo essay: Where in the World Is Peter Greenberg?

You can find more of Robert’s work online here.