The Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000

“Buddies!” Twenty seconds ago Alex was taking a nap in the rear seat of my Explorer. Now he’s perched between the two front seats with his arms around Josh and my shoulders. He cackles a little, looks around and once again exclaims, “BUDDIES!” The three of us had been driving northbound towards Seattle for several hours. It was the third day of a mini road trip that took us down the Oregon Coast and over to Portland. We dined on yak burgers in “Come as You Are” Aberdeen and ordered breakfast from a cracked-out, coffee spilling waitress at the Pig ‘n Pancake in Astoria. Having last seen each other at the World Series of Beer Pong in Las Vegas, there was plenty to catch up on. More importantly, the six months that had passed gave Alex plenty of time to develop a fresh lexicon of nonsense. The latest burst of comradery repeating from the back seat is as sincere at is sarcastic—in other words, it’s vintage Alex.

The photo above is from the Astoria Column in Astoria, OR. I used a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens with a polarizer and cranked the saturation up in the NIkon D300′s vivid mode. I further adjusted contrast using curves in Photoshop.

The town of Astoria is nestled along the south bank the Columbia River and its neighborhoods wind their way up bluffs along the water. Once we saw this view we pulled over to grab a few photos. Pictured here is the Astoria-Megler Bridge which connects Oregon and Washington.

After bumming around Astoria for a few hours and checking out the Goonies house, we jumped on the 101 and headed south to Cannon Beach. Even though Mouth, Chunk and Data were able to make it to Haystack Rock rather quickly on their bikes, it took us a good 40 minutes in the Explorer.

Since I was fumbling around with camera equipment, I ended up a couple hundred yards behind Josh and Alex. I dialed the 18-200mm VR to 130mm and grabbed this shot of Alex and Josh in front of Haystack Rock.

For this shot of Josh, I used an off camera Nikon SB-600 through a LumiQuest II Softbox for fill light. I used TTL to set the flash power and triggered it wirelessly using Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS).

I can’t believe I actually talked Alex into jumping. We started out by taking a few portrait style shots of Alex in front of the rock, then I half jokingly asked him to jump. Alex started bouncing on command. It was hilarious. He even inspired a few imitators. One older gentleman (in a Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt) started mimicking Alex by jumping along the beach. Slightly annoyed with this old guy making fun of him, Alex yelled, “hey, hey! You know that movie the Goonies? I’m Data!”

For fill light, I had Josh stand a few feet to the left of Alex holding a Nikon SB-600 with an attached LumiQuest II Softbox. I triggered the flash using CLS. I used the D300′s pop-up flash as the commander, which was surprisingly reliable, even in the bright midday sun. I dialed in ISO 200 and put the camera in shutter-priority mode at 1/250th of second, which is the D300′s max sync speed. For EXIF data and camera settings on any picture, click through the Flickr page and select “More properties.”

More picture of Astoria and Cannon Beach are in my Flickr set. You can also watch the slideshow below.