By Sea Grant Interns Dustin James and Catie Michell
On July 14-16, Catie and I had the fortune of working alongside Justin Meyers of Myers Imaging Company and Erik Urdahl of Urdahl Photo as they completed their shoot of the South Coast for our Wild Rivers Photo Project. The Wild Rivers Coast Photo Project is a Travel Oregon funded project to get professional images of Oregon’s South Coast. These images will be used for tourism marketing purposes and will focus on outdoor recreation, natural scenery, in-town hotspots, and local wildlife. Justin and Erik had come down mid-June to shoot the areas of Bandon and Port Orford and on this particular weekend they were focusing their shoot on Gold Beach and Brookings. In total they will be shooting approximately 200 photos for this project.
We met up with Justin, Erik, and Dave Lacey of South Coast Tours LLC at 6:45am on Friday. They started their shoot doing an early morning paddle-boarding session at Secret Beach, and the day just took off from there. Throughout the day, we visited spots like the Chetco River’s Elephant Rock, the Brookings port, and various restaurants. We concluded the day with photographs of sunset at Samuel Boardman State Park. On Saturday, Justin and Erik took photos of Catie and I paddleboarding on Hunter Creek near Gold Beach. We then went tidepooling at Harris Beach State Park, followed by some ocean fishing and eventually a few visits to breweries and other businesses. The eventful day was concluded with late afternoon paddle-boarding at Secret Beach once again. On Sunday, I joined Justin up in Port Orford as he took a few street biking photos along the Elk River.
The photos will be used for free by communities along the Wild Rivers Coast to help market to visitors. The community official destination management organization (DMO) will be able to access images through a service provided by the Oregon Coast Visitor Association (OCVA) who will manage the images.
To see more of Justin’s and Erik’s work, check out their websites at http://www.myersic.com/ and http://urdahlphoto.com/.
