The Chasm and the Blowhole

[AlanLichty]

I posted an iPhone shot of the blowhole at Cooks Chasm a couple of weeks ago from a previous visit to Cape Perpetua and decided to get an updated version when I was down there a week ago. The swells were high from a storm that had cleared out that morning so the blowhole was quite active given the level of churn in the chasm. I was shooting with my mirrorless camera set up for 30 frames per second at 1/2000s so I could capture shapes in the foam and freeze the wave action when I grabbed this frame of a wave crashing into the basalt and setting off the blowhole.

Lots of shadow recovery using DxO Photolab 8 and Photoshop to alleviate the harsh sun angle for this shot.

C&C always welcome.

 

[JimFox]

Very cool Alan! It's amazing how fast our cameras can shoot today. I can imagine this was a really hard scene to process, but it's looking good, and that spout is sure spouting off!

Another nice thing about this angle is you get the rock wall behind it, so that the spout doesn't get lost in the sky.

 

[AlanLichty]

Very cool Alan! It's amazing how fast our cameras can shoot today. I can imagine this was a really hard scene to process, but it's looking good, and that spout is sure spouting off!

Another nice thing about this angle is you get the rock wall behind it, so that the spout doesn't get lost in the sky.

Thanks Jim - processing this was an interesting exercise since the original was pretty much a B&W scene with everything but the water and the sky being black and the sky looked washed out. I was a bit surprised at what Photolab was able to recover from the RAW original. Most of the time people shoot from a lower viewing angle down on the rocks in the foreground but I found the view of the blowhole mostly obscured by the rocks so I went back up the steps to get a better view of the water action and that also allowed the rock wall to give a better backdrop to the spout.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice timing on this - shooting @ 30fps definitely helps to capture the right moment.

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice timing on this - shooting @ 30fps definitely helps to capture the right moment.

Thanks Jameel - you are correct about the frame rate. It's a bit surprising how much difference there is between the frames that are only 1/30 of a second apart. From the time a wave enters the mouth of the chasm until it hits the spot shown here is less than 4 seconds.