If you have never traveled the northwest coast of the United States, it’s something that you should absolutely do! Every year I try and make a trip out that direction and this year was no exception.
A few days ago, we arrived at our beach accommodations in La Push, WA. After many hours of driving we unpacked, settled in, and my dreams of nightly sunset photography had begun.
The first evening in La Push I scrambled out to the beach to try and capture what would end up being the only sunset shot captured this trip. The weather was ideal for lounging on the beach, but cloudless evenings foiled my hopes of spectacular sunset shots.
Being rushed typically does not lead to good things in photography, and unfortunately this was a theme for this trip. The image below I find pleasant enough, but with a little more time and thought the composition could have been better. Being there ten minutes earlier would have allowed for the camera to be placed lower and made a more interesting shot with the horizon visible through the hole in the stump. This may sound trivial, but you would be surprised just how large of an impact something like that can have!
Day 1; Bright and Sunny!
My first destination was Second Beach. After about a one-mile hike through the forest, a wide sandy beach that stretches a mile and a half awaits you. Sea Stacks just offshore and other rocky formations provide plenty of interest and under the right conditions plenty of photographic opportunities are available.
The image below is one of the few where I really had as much time as I wanted to compose and work the scene. The blue-bird skies, heavily polarized, really make the sea stacks “pop” and the polite sea gull on the foreground rock added a nice addition to the scene.
Day 2; Bright and Sunny (again)!
This day was a trip to Third Beach, a place I had been to in previous trips, and knew I would be shooting in the evening. Third Beach is also reached after about a mile hike through the forest and offers a view of the “Giants Graveyard”, a large collection of sea stacks off in the distance.
On this day however, I made a critical miscalculation on how much time the good light would be available and as a result, I was racing against the setting sun to get set up and compose my shots.
Had I arrived an hour earlier, I believe I would have walked away with much better images. As you walk along the beach the position of the closer stacks changes dramatically in relation to the stacks in the background. I really needed that extra time to properly arrange the stacks for the best effect.
Having only minutes to get my images, some of the technical areas of photography were also missed resulting in foreground focus misses and I did not have time to wait for sea swells to add to the images. I did the best I could, and the results were not horrible, just not a good as they should have been.
Below is a panoramic of the “Giants Graveyard” followed by a tighter shot of a select group.
Day 3; Bright and Sunny (with an amazing twist!)
My destination for day 3 was Rialto Beach, a little over two and a half miles of beach with sea stacks, tide pools, and the famous “Hole in the Wall” all at the north end.
The day started out sunny as expected and after hiking up over the sea wall at Hole in the Wall and waiting for the tides to recede enough to make the tide pools accessible I was disappointed with the images I had captured. As I started to make my way back an amazing fog layer appeared almost out of nowhere and things got really interesting!
Running back towards a prominent sea stack, now surrounded by a swirling fog, I set up shop and waited. The bright mid-day sun would briefly pierce the fog layer and light up bits and pieces of the scene.
After several minutes, light broke on a sea swell as birds were flying through the scene. The fog on the sea stack in the background provided an epic backdrop. Sometimes it just all comes together!
I know I tend to be impatient - that’s a killer in this profession. As I review and harshly critique, my work; I keep reminding myself to arrive early, slow down, and have time to relax and enjoy not only the activity of photography but even more importantly the environment that you are a part of.
Perhaps on my next trip I will heed my own advice :)