How I Shot “That Special Place” — A Photograph Years In The Making

There are photographs you shoot every day. And then there are photographs that live in your head for years before you finally shoot them.

For me, “That Special Place,” photographed at Natural Bridges near Brookings, Oregon, was the second kind.

I first visited this place probably six years ago, and I knew almost immediately that there was an extraordinary photograph here. The problem was that the photograph I saw in my mind required everything to come together at once.

For years, it never did.

A Place That Doesn’t Quite Look Real

Natural Bridges sits along the southern Oregon coast near Brookings. The first time I saw it, I understood why photographers keep coming back here.

It’s a truly magical sight.

Massive dark cliffs rise out of the Pacific below the mountainside. A huge rocky island sits offshore, separated from the mainland by a narrow ocean canyon that seems to continue toward the horizon.

Teal-green Pacific water surges through this channel and crashes against enormous dark basalt formations.

Above it all are wind-sculpted coastal evergreens growing impossibly close to the edges of the cliffs. Beyond them, additional forest-covered headlands gradually disappear into the distance.

Described is a rugged and very unique Pacific Coastline in Southern Oregon. Standing there, it feels almost prehistoric.

And from the first time I visited, I had a very specific image of how I wanted this place to look in a photograph.

I wanted drama in the sky.

I wanted clouds with enough separation to catch the first color of sunrise or last rays of sunset, to paint the clouds with some warm colors. I wanted the dark cliffs, green water and mysterious channel leading into the distance underneath that sky.

I’d seen photographs made here under beautiful conditions.

I knew it could happen.

It just never seemed to happen when I was standing there.

Six Trips and Years of Waiting

Over the next several years, I returned to Natural Bridges at least six times.

The problem with Brookings is that it’s not exactly around the corner from Las Vegas.

This isn’t a location where I can look at the weather forecast on my app, throw my camera bag in the car and be there two hours later.

It’s roughly a 12-hour drive.

That’s 12 hours if you basically keep moving. Add fuel stops, food and bathroom breaks, and the trip gets even longer.

So every attempt is a commitment.

And every time I made that commitment, the Oregon coast seemed to have another idea.

Sometimes the sky was completely overcast.

Other times there wasn’t a cloud anywhere.

Neither was what I had envisioned.

I’d make photographs anyway. I’d come home with perfectly decent images of an extraordinary place.

But they weren’t the photograph that I wanted!

I knew what I wanted this image to be, and once that picture existed in my head, I couldn’t really settle for something else.

One Trip Cost Me a Lens

About three months before I finally made “That Special Place,” I tried again.

This time things actually looked promising.

There appeared to be good clouds developing, and I remember getting excited as I started setting up my tripod.

In that excitement, I made a stupid mistake.

I forgot to zip my camera bag.

One of my better lenses fell out.

The glass was scratched.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the promising clouds that had gotten me excited in the first place started disappearing.

So after yet another drive to Oregon, I came home with more basic photographs—and a damaged lens.

That one hurt a little bit, I still use the lens though, the scratches aren’t that terrible and photos come out ok. But I still wasn’t finished with Natural Bridges.

One More Weather Forecast

Then came another weekend.

I started looking at the weather along the West Coast, I was in Los Angeles and there was not a single cloud in the sky on West Coast within 500 mile radius. Except one place. Brookings.

The app showed clouds Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Normally, that would be exactly what I wanted.

But I’ve learned something after all these trips to the Oregon coast: clouds in Brookings can mean anything.

And most often it means a solid gray blanket covering the entire sky.

I’d seen that movie before. In fact I was just up there less than two months ago and the sky was full overcast, its not the end of the world, but getting some sunset color is always most desirable. I wasn’t expecting this trip to be any different, but deep down inside there was a whisper of hope — maybe it will be ok, perhaps this time it will happen.

After a few moments of debating, whether I should go or not, I put the camera bag into the trunk and took off. I left LA at 1pm on Friday and headed north as fast as I could.

Two Hours of Sleep

My goal was to make it there Saturday morning by 6am for sunrise. GPS shows 12 hour travel time from LA to Crescent City. From there there is another 40 minutes. I drove through the night. Hour after hour.

The goal was simply to get as close to Brookings as possible before I couldn’t drive anymore.

At around 3:30am, I finally made it to Brookings — I was 15 minutes away from Natural Bridges. When you drive for a long time, your brain starts buzzing and its hard to fall asleep right away even if you’re tired. I stretched on the back of the car and was able to sleep for about two hours.

The alarm woke up at 6, I had 20 minutes to get to location. I grabbed my equipment and headed for Natural Bridges. Getting to the cliffs isn’t necessarily a walk in the park either.

You have to descend a brutally steep hillside from the parking area toward the cliffs. After driving through the night and sleeping for only two hours, I could feel it.

My legs were shaking. I was a little dizzy from the lack of sleep.

And carrying 50lbs camera bag with tripod while trying to get down what, at that particular moment, felt like the steepest hill known to man. Luckily there wasn’t much time to think about being tired.

Sunrise wasn’t going to wait for me. I needed to get down there and get the tripod set up.

That Special Place

Lord’s Blessing

When I finally reached the cliffs and looked toward the horizon, I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The clouds were perfect. Not just good enough.

Perfect.

After years of either blank skies or complete overcast, there was finally the kind of dramatic cloud structure I had imagined over Natural Bridges. They also weren’t some regular clouds, they looked like they had some layers and ripples — exactly the kind I was yearning for.

As the first sunlight began breaking through along the horizon, soft pink and lavender tones started appearing in the clouds.

Below them was everything I had remembered from that first visit years earlier.

The dark basalt cliffs.

Coastal pine trees clinging to their edges.

The teal-green Pacific moving through the channel.

The massive rock formations rising out of the water.

And that long channel through the canyon pulling the eye toward the distant horizon.

For a few minutes, everything came together. It was nothing short of a blessing.

Ten Minutes

That’s about how long I had. Maybe ten minutes. The beautiful soft color appeared, intensified and then began disappearing. Soon the harsher sunlight started taking over. Years of imagining the photograph.

At least six trips. Thousands of miles. A damaged lens. Another overnight drive. Two hours of sleep.

Shaking legs going down the hillside. And after all of that, the moment I had been waiting for lasted perhaps ten minutes. But ten minutes was enough. I knew I had it.

The Photograph That Had Been Haunting Me

There’s a strange feeling that comes when you’ve been chasing a photograph for years and finally see it appear on the back of your camera.

It isn’t simply excitement.

It feels more like relief.

For years, this photograph had been unfinished business.

Every unsuccessful trip reinforced the picture in my head. I knew what Natural Bridges could become under the right conditions, and I knew I hadn’t captured it yet.

That morning, I finally did.

I feel like I closed this chapter of Natural Bridges photography with this image.

And I really like the artwork that came out of it. Not simply because I think it’s beautiful. I’m proud of what it took to make it.

While the story is certainly somewhat embellished. The truth is, landscape photographers are just a special type of crazy people. A 14 hour drive may seem a lot, but when you drive that much every weekend its really not that big of a deal anymore, because the thrill of getting amazing photography trumps all the hardships, high costs of gas, sleepless nights and even sometimes coming back home pretty much empty handed — no good photos to show for, that is.

Why I Called It “That Special Place”

When it came time to name the finished artwork, “That Special Place” seemed almost obvious.

Northern California/Southern Oregon Coast has a special place in my heart. I think that’s where I would want to retire. There is just something magical about that area, it has the cleanest rivers, redwood forests, Pacific coastline and nearly perfect weather.

I’ve been to many places, yet nature in this region feels like home. Especially in summer. Thus after all the trips coming here, all the miles, all the disappointing skies and all the years of imagining what this scene could become, Natural Bridges wasn’t simply another photography location anymore.

It had become that special place.

The place I couldn’t quite get right.

The place that kept pulling me back.

The place where I knew there was a photograph waiting for me, even though I didn’t know whether I’d ever actually get the conditions needed to make it. And then, it finally happened.

Nature Photographs Have to Be Earned

Landscape photography can occasionally give you an extraordinary photograph on your first visit. But that’s usually a matter of luck. Most of the time you have to keep on going back over and over. Its not a big deal if you’re close to the location. But if its in another state or its some 15–20 hour driving distance things become different.

“That Special Place” made me work.

But it was totally worth it. While I’m done with Brookings for a while, I’m sure I will visit it again fairly soon. There is something very very special about that coastline that is different from the rest of the Pacific coast. Let this artwork be a reminder of it. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you go visit Natural Bridges at Samuel Boardman Park yourself to see this natural beauty in person.

Cheers

— Eddie Jongas