A landscape photographer's tour
Cannon Beach, OR to Shasta, CA

Keith's travels in California and the Pacific Northwest - April-May 2007

This photo-diary covers a driving trip up the coast from San Francisco in April/May 2007 along the Pacific highway. Now I've returned, I've included some of my travel photography from this trip in the main Gallery, and updated any info that may be of help to people who come across these pages as part of their planning for driving tours of the California and Oregon coasts, looking for places to stay or sites to visit. It's a great place for a vacation, or just a road trip up the Pacific coast to photograph some of the scenery. If you've any questions about the hotels/inns/motels where I stayed, then please do feel free to drop me a line.

Today I've driven back down to Mt. Shasta in California, so not much in the way of scenic images, just a few shots from my journey.

Just in case anyone was wondering how I take the shots while driving... I have a 16mm lens set focussed at infinity, camera set to manual. The field of view is so wide that I can just rotate the image and crop the bit I want - it's more than good enough for web use. There is a slight bit of colour correction needed because of the tint in the car window glass. Not advised for dense traffic, but OK for most use.

Not long after leaving Cannon Beach towards Portland I stopped off briefly in some of the coastal rain forest. It's actually very difficult to get good shots in the forest, but this gives a bit of an idea what it's like (when dry)

lots of moss, rotting logs and green stuff... :-)

Most of the journey is down I-5, so nothing much to look at during the flat bit of the trip.

Here's an RV towing a big car - do these people have oil company shares?

There's also adverts for the lottery...

I couldn't get a clear shot of this, but the writing underneath says

"Lottery games should not be played for investment purposes"

Perhaps there should be a warning like this for the hard of understanding, on UK lottery tickets

There are all kinds of roadside signs to aid and inspire

and just in case you were still hankering after a re-run of the Scopes Monkey Trial, there is this arrant nonsense

If you want to see your house being made, there's a factory tour available (I just missed the shot)

And here's one being moved

To the East there are the volcanoes of the Cascades - These are big volcanoes and are going to cause a lot of damage one day...

Just north of Medford

Further down I-5 it gets quite mountainous (over 4000 feet)

Just over the border into California, there's Mt Shasta (it's over 25 miles away in this shot)

That's another old volcano to the right of it.

I'm staying in Shasta City tonight and will probably visit Lassen volcanic park tomorrow before heading over towards San Francisco, so hopefully some more photos :-)

NEXT DAY