First Beach Storm Clouds 1

Last weekend I lead 2 clients on an Olympic National Park Photo Tour. The conditions were challenging, but conducive to instruction. Anyone can shoot the sunset at the iconic beach locations, which we did, but my goal was to help them see the world more creatively and refine their composition skills. Four afternoons in the chaos of the rainforest followed by overcast conditions at sunset tested even my proficiency with a camera. I created this dramatic image during one of our sunrise shoots on First Beach. You can see that there was not much of a sunrise, but the ominous rain clouds on the horizon still yielded effective pictures. Whenever I photograph waves, I anticipate them crashing against the shore and then shoot an exposure of 0.5 second or longer as they recede in order to capture their turmoil in a artistically pleasing manner. This involves a lot of trial and error since I do not know how any individual image is going to result, but when reviewing them I look for the same strong lines and overall presence that I photograph in a non-dynamic scene.