As I topped the rise, I finally got my first glimpse of something that at many points during my journey seemed like an unattainable goal. The mighty Pacific Ocean. Its pull had at times felt almost magnetic, drawing me onward further and further, through Utah,  Idaho, and finally into Oregon. That morning after I left Bend and began following US Route 20 to its western terminus, the knowledge that barring breakdown or injury I would be seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and on a motorcycle no less, seemed incredible. Only 6 days prior, when my chain flew off its sprocket and wrapped itself around my rear axel, the Pacific Ocean felt much further away than its actual 889 mile distance.

Riding down that last hill and into the town of Newport was exhilarating. The nagging fear of a breakdown stranding me short of my goal was gone, as I could now see glimpses of the ocean and walk to it if I wanted. A stiff and surprisingly cold wind brought me out of my reverie, and I noticed that whereas fifteen minutes prior I had been roasting under the unforgiving western Sun, I was now bordering on being chilled by an overcast sky and a damp, cold sea breeze. Looking down the street to my left, I saw the reason for my sudden chill. The wind was blowing sheets of fog up from the water and through the intersections, like some sort of west coast answer to the tumbleweed.

As I turned off of NW 3rd St. and onto the aptly named NW Coast St., I had only one more turn to make before I could finally claim to have ridden a motorcycle cross-country. I guided the bike onto NW Beach Dr., found a parking space, and for what seemed like the most momentous time, put the kickstand down and thumbed the kill switch. The engine obediently went silent, and the raucous calls of gulls and the pounding of the surf filled my helmet.

Beaches have long been a photographic foe of mine. How do you create original compositions in one of the most photographed landscape settings? While eliminating simple mistakes (skewed horizons, unwanted distractions, unnoticed intrusions into frame) is a good start, you can be left with simply a photo of the beach and the ocean. Even when I fall back on my training (take a low angle, utilize the rule of thirds, find interesting subject matter and subtract what is unnecessary from the frame), the majority of my beach compositions have still felt empty, cliched, and lacking in soul. Essentially, they have all felt to me like they are short something. This day however, I realized almost immediately that I had my missing ingredient. Atmosphere.

Shifting my camera out of the way of the pelting sand and damp wind, I knew that I had an abundance of atmosphere. Armed with this new tool, I began to scour the beach looking for interesting compositions. Looking to my left, a group of gulls caught my eye. When I looked past them and into the background, I saw the two groups of three people and I knew I had to try to make a picture before the people were lost in the gloom. I crouched low with the wind and the blasting sand at my back, and waited for everything to align just so that nothing would be touching. If two of the gulls overlapped, or the people went from three distinct figures into one blob of friends, I wouldn’t be taking the time to write about this photo and would instead most likely be describing an image of a mountain sunrise or a waterfall.

In photography and motorcycle riding, attention to little details can make all the difference in the world. Noticing something seemingly small and insignificant, such as a few pebbles strewn across a turn in the road, a little too much slack in your chain, or something beginning to creep into your field of view can be the difference between an awesome day of riding or closing out your day in a hospital. The same holds true with photography, though with admittedly less dire consequences. With photographs, its often the small things that are what can elevate a photograph from one of the countless images we take only to delete later when our cloud storage is running low to being one of your favorite and most memorable images.

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ISO 640, f9.5, 1/1000th 6:30PM PT