Vampires, Werewolves And A Dreary Sunset

For the first time in my professional career, I had a chance to spend some time photographing the Pacific Northwest. It was an amazing two weeks filled with many photo ops, but also long days and often bad weather. Flying into Sea-Tac, I met up with my close friend and business partner, Ian Plant. After picking up our super effeminate baby blue PT Cruiser, not our choice, really I swear, we hit the road for the long drive to the Olympic Peninsula. First stop, Forks Washington home of all things logging and Twilight. After checking into a super expensive, and shitty hotel we had an equally shitty dinner in one of Forks many fine restaurants, all three that is! Then, it was off under crystal blue skies heading for Rialto Beach and the hopes of catching some seriously sweet light.

I immediately knew things were turning south for us as we crossed over the treaty line separating the Vampire safe zone and the shape shifting werewolf native American reservation of the Quileute Tribe and noticed one of the those forest service fire danger signs. This one, however, was nothing of the sort, and in fact was a Vampire danger indication sign and guess what the threat that afternoon was extreme. But to my surprise, as we approached within a couple of miles of the beach I soon found out that the vampires were not going to be my photographic demise, but rather the thick marine layer that had settled in over the coast blocking all chances of any light at all. In any event, we made our way out to the beach at Rialto with the gloom of twilight and thick clouds all about. In my state of disappointment and utter exhaustion from a long day of travel, I focused my attention on creating a more intimate and moody portrait of the beach. In the image below, I choose a section of beach with small stones and ran a long exposure of receding waves. I used my head lamps warm light to paint the small rock in the frame adding a little warmth to an overall blue twilight image. As you can already see, the notion of twilight has already sunk into my mind and would permeate much of my decisions while shooting the coast over the course of the next twelve days.

More images to come, so stay tuned!!