How I Shot It - "Rialto Beach Study No.1"

The Olympic Coastline in Washington State has some of the most rugged and wild scenery along the entire length of the West Coast.  Little houses, no resorts, few access points, thick forests extending down to the high tide line, it's a landscape photographers paradise.  My good buddy Patrick (see his work here) and I had been photographing the parks interior for most of the day, along the Hoh River Valley, which is equally wild with the thickest vegetation outside the Brazilian Rainforest's.  Rialto Beach faces almost directly West, and we knew the Sun's setting angle and thus decided to head here over some of the other spots.  There are so many seastacks along this stretch of coastline I could get lost for months photographing them.  We jumped out of the car and knew we were in for a treat, the sun was 45 minutes from setting and we had to hike about two miles to get to the spot we wanted.  For those of you who have seen Washington's Coast you know how rocky it can get, this place was no exception.  None the less we strapped our gear and started humping it up the beach.  We rolled onto the scene and parted ways, as we usually do, which makes shooting together so enjoyable. We each have our own vision of what the scene can offer.  As the sun set I made several exposures of some surrounding seastacks, but wasn't satisfied.  As I walked further on this seastack, which from the side was shaped something like a huge upside down 'V', turned out to be quite narrow when viewed head on.  The sun had been set for over 30 minutes and so I was beginning to chase the last of the light.  I wanted the color to be soft and shift cyan and so loaded color negative instead of chrome film in my camera back.  I also wanted the water to soften quite a bit, to really focus all attention of the shape of the seastack.  I used a 3 stop ND filter to lengthen the exposure time which ended up being close to three minutes with reciprocity.  The sky was a nice surprise.  I didn't notice that it was flowing parallel to the shore, reinforcing the attention to the rocks.  This has consistently been one of my favorite images I've shot.