We took a trip at the end of August 2011 to Cannon Beach with the Morisseau clan. Had a pretty nice place right near Haystack Rock and got some decent shots of it. The house going up right across our street was JUST being built, so it’d knock out our nice view of the rock next year.

The hot tub was pretty nice. It got cold, but the kids thought it was a pretty great bath tub. We got a game (I think a full one?) of cornhole in with the boards Pete hauled over. We took a trip to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for Mills 2nd birthday. Man, there’s a lot of cheese there…

We roasted marshmallows one day at the beach, dug some pretty deep holes in the sand and found some sand-shrimp thanks to the tireless efforts of Derek, but it was pretty much filled-in by the next day.

All-in-all the kids had a really great time. The wind got blowing out on the coast, so they got a bit sandy, but a fun time nonetheless…

This photo here is a 180 degree shot from the house in front of us one night when the clouds were particularly poppy…

This shot really made me mad – Photomatix has been letting me down lately as I’ll edit the photo how I want it, and when the process comes in, the shot is very dark. I’ve tried to compensate by brightening the photo before I process it, but I’m just not as happy with the program lately – another sign I spend too much time trying to perfect it. So it is…

I wasn’t going to keep this one in the mix to process because the whole point of getting the post of the fence in the picture was to be able to get the texture of the grain in it, but I under exposed the shot and wasn’t able to pull any of the texture or color out of it. I’m a fan of the barbed wire shots and it’s clearly cut into 3rds, and was easy enough on the eyes that I decided it could still fly anyway, here you be…

When we were in Bend earlier this year, I remembered that I had a bunch of photos that I hadn’t processed from the LAST time we were there. I remember I took a handful on the golf course. Jay and I played with these guys that were very into the game, but very horrid at the game. They had bad tempers.,

We also have some shots of the windmills along the Columbia River, and some snapshots at Grampa’s house. Lilla and Chloe and their rabbits. I don’t remember what they named them, but one was like “Lollipop Johns” or something.

One shot in there is a an abandoned house I found. I want to say it is of this one HERE, but I’ve been wrong before…

I always like stumbling onto these trees – the downside is that it is usually on the highway somewhere and I’ll need to pull over fast or else turn around at the next exit; either way makes Heather ask what the hell I’m doing. To my side of the story though, I don’t ever do it if there are cars right on my ass behind me. This is along highway 97 also just past the Shoe Tree (that is no longer there because some chump burned it down) – it’s not got any shoes in it, but still makes for a pretty dramatic shot.

If you are a watcher of any of my shots, I really like to photograph old rundown barns and structures. This one I think was outside of Shaniko around HERE somewhere. Heather wanted to get home quick, but we’ve driven by this place like 283 times without stopping. Thought it’d be a good stop; think it was.

Heather’s dad always said that he wanted to stop by this gas station and shoot a couple of shots of the old gas pumps. I thought I’d do that for him; coincidentally the site had a few other really good shots in it. Again the bane of my existence is photo processing. There always seems to be one more thing I want to change up, or a color I’m looking to find, but I think I found most of the big ones in here on these shots.

This is along the Columbia River, right about HERE. I was thinking of hacking off the right side of it, but the pillar was supposed to be a key piece of it, but the clear days make for some crappy halo’ing effects around it. The left side of the photo is far more interesting anyway, right?

Another shot of the old abandoned church in Grass Valley, OR. You can see it from the highway HERE, look in the back-middle of the Google map to see it. .

We’ve driven by THIS old abandoned church 3 or 4 times and finally decided to stop and take a few shots – will post more later, but this one was my favorite from the mix and is one of the first I’ve used Adobe Lightroom for. It’s definitely a program that I’m going to keep in the arsenal going forward – Thanks Christine!