Heceta Head Lighthouse

Author's Comments

The classic photograph is taken from the pull-off on 101, and there is good reason it has been made ten thousand times. The headland falls away to the Pacific in a single long curve, the lighthouse stands white against the dark conifers, and the keeper's house catches the late sun like a small bright thing on a green shoulder of rock. It is a postcard. It is also genuinely beautiful, and I have stopped resenting the fact that everyone makes the same image because the image is honest. What I have learned, after enough visits, is that the pull-off shot is a fifteen-minute photograph and the headland itself is a three-hour one. Park at the day-use area below, pay the fee, walk the half mile up. The light through the trees on that approach is its own thing, especially in late winter when the sun comes in low and sideways through Sitka spruce. From the lighthouse base you lose the iconic composition entirely and gain something more intimate - the lens housing, the catwalk railing, the way the white paint has weathered against the salt. Golden hour here in October or February is when I would tell you to come. The summer fog can swallow the whole headland for days, which is a different photograph and worth making if you have the patience for it, but the clean shot wants clear air and low sun. Stay for blue hour. The lighthouse begins its rotation as the sky goes cobalt, and the beam sweeps out across the water in a way that no daytime photograph can show you. That is the image that took me three trips to make and is still not quite the one I am after.

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