Isolation at the Oregon Dunes

I’m planning another trip out to the Oregon Dunes in the next few weeks. It has quickly become one of my favorite places on earth to make photographs, whether I’m there by myself or with someone who is posing in the photographs. It’s a bit of a journey from Portland which can be a pain, but the road trip is worth it. If I take the long way along the coast the scenery is breathtaking so I really can’t complain.

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Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kodak Tmax 400 medium format film.

This photograph is from a few years ago on my very first visit. It was probably a bit later in the day than I would have liked it be as far as lighting goes, but since it was my first time making the trip I didn’t really know what to expect and I was just happy to be experiencing the Dunes for the first time. I like the way the results turned out anyway. I had my Hasselblad 500c/m with me and only a few rolls of Kodak Tmax 400.

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Oregon Dunes Nbr 12

I absolutely love the shadows at play here. The sun beaming through the reeds of grass the the form of the model laying in the sand. This may be one of my favorite photographs of recent memory.

This image also marks the first time I ever took my Hasselblad outdoor for a photography session. In some ways that feels like a lifetime ago with everything that is going on in the world. I am greatly looking forward to getting outside with some adventures I have planned over the coming months.

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Landscapes of the Oregon Dunes

Life is slowly evolving for me with a lot of new beginnings as the world continues on with a pandemic looming over everything. I started a new job this past week, which will ultimately be a very good thing. In the short term however it means a lot of adjustments in life and it might be a little while until I get a new routine going. Hopefully however, this new job will leave me with more time to do creative things like make more photographs!

So for now I’ll leave this image here on the blog from my trip out to the Oregon Dunes a while back. This image was made with my old trusty Minolta SRT-101 and Kodak Tri-X film. The original negative is very grainy and I was probably using film that was way too fast in terms of ISO for this particular location, but that is ok. I still like the way it turned out.

I’ve mentioned it several times on this blog, but I need to make it a point to get back out to the Oregon Dunes in the very near future. It calls to me sometimes…

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Desert Dreams in the Oregon Dunes

Lately I have been having dreams of the desert. A very specific desert in the southwest quarter of the state of Oregon. I consider the Oregon Dunes to be a very magical place and I wish I could spend more time there. Oregon tends to be better known for its lush forests and heavy rainfall but few know it is also home to one of the largest coastal sand dunes in the world.

Out of all the places I have ever been in my life, I have experienced more solitude in the Oregon Dunes than anywhere else.

Every so often I get a wild notion to use the absolute wrong film for a given situation. In this case I thought it would be a good idea to work with Ilford Delta 3200 film in the bright sun of the desert. I had to work with the film at 1/500th of a second (the fastest a Minolta SRT-101 can go), f/22, and a two stop neutral density filter. Even with these settings the frames still came out a little bit over-exposed.

I thought the landscape of the Oregon Dunes would look pretty cool with the heavy grain of Ilford Delta 3200 film. Turns out I was right about that.

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