Images of Cannon Beach – Oregon, taken in September 2025.

In 2004, while on a business trip to Portland, I rented a car so that I could explore the Oregon Coast, a place that I had heard so much about from my colleagues. I ended up going to Cannon Beach and Ecola State Park, as they directed me, to see as much of the area as possible in a mere half day. I was blown away by the beauty there and swore that I would someday return to explore further.

Now, 21 years later, after wrapping up a 40-day trip through Canada, I was in position to visit Cannon Beach once more. The town has changed, as expected from over 20 years ago; the small wooden hamburger shack with outdoor seating overlooking the beach and Haystack Rock where I had lunch in 2004 was gone, replaced with beach houses and condos, but the beach and its beauty still remained. Not much anyone but mother nature herself could do to a 17-million-year-old set of volcanic basaltic monolith sea stacks!

I visited the beach for a sunrise and sunset and to check out the tide pools. Unfortunately, the tides were lowest in the middle of the night while I was there, but I still was able to view and photograph some beautiful marine life. I zeroed in on one particular cluster of Ochre Sea Stars on a rock, there were at least nine or ten, but the surf made it hard to get close to them. I took some shots with my long lens, but I wanted to get closer to get an up-close image with my wide-angle lens. I was timing the surf to see when it would be possible for me to run in there and get my shot and even watched a few people successfully do just that. I was finally confident I had the situation timed just right and went in as the surf went out. Only it came right back in as I got into position to take my first shot. Damn, now my shoes were wet! If only that were the least of my worries. The water began to rush back in at a pace I had not seen before. I took another shot, but the water was now halfway up my calf and still rising, time to retreat! However, the rising water made it hard to move and keep my balance, so I grabbed ahold of the large rock next to me. Since it was covered with sharp barnacles and mussel shells, my grip was tenuous at best. The swirling sea water pushed up around my knees before it began to retreat again, and I moved back onto the beach as soon as I could. I was soaked from the knees down for the rest of the day and one of my fingers sustained a cut from the sharp, whatever it was I finally grabbed ahold of, which had to be bandaged so that my bleeding wouldn’t attract sharks. I did, however, get two good images as the sea began to envelop me and my subjects (the third and second to the last images in this gallery) and the good news is that I survived to tell the story, and process the pictures.