As I look at the pictures of this month’s blog, I have to ask myself, has something changed?  Is this growth, evolution, a different side of me… a darker side?  If you follow my work, you know that these are really the first black and white images I’ll be adding to my portfolio.  I’ve been advised in the past to do black and white, but I really had no desire to pursue it and most of my compositions were filled with bright colors anyway, but there was just something about these scenes that cried out to be processed this way.  Give this blog a read, and let me know what you think.

It feels so good to be back at it again!  I’ve been exploring the coastline as I have seriously neglected it and with the news of some extremely high waves I headed to Shore Acres State Park to catch some ocean explosions!  Check out the short video clip on my Instagram feed if you want to see some sweet slow motion action: https://www.instagram.com/jeffbarnhartphotography/.  To give you perspective, in the image below you can see a few pixels that make out a guy standing on the cliff to the right.

I also wanted to get a close up of one of these monsters as it was forming to give you a sense of their power.  Take a look and try to hear the sound of the water smashing against the rocks.

Next I ventured to Thor’s Well for some sunset action.  The drive there this evening was absolutely gorgeous, with Stratus clouds blanketing the mountains creating fantastic light rays across the valley!   I almost pulled over a few times, but I was in a time crunch, and I’m glad I didn’t stop because I would have missed this shot if I had:

As the sun set the lighting changed and a few photographers finally joined me.  I would have been quite happy with the classic composition above, but I took a look around and found something I liked even better!

While I stood here there were a few waves that crashed up behind me and to the side of me, one of which shot up and seemed to pause in mid air.  As it peaked I was sure that I was going to get soaked, and I braced to absorb the impact of the ocean wave.  I’ve felt the impact of a wave before, and last time it damaged my gear, so I leaned over to protect it this time.  When the wave unpaused it crashed a few feet in front of me, only misting my gear and I.  The light was quickly fading and didn’t look like it was going to rebound, so after that I called it and drove home.

My last adventure was to Olympic National Park.  For our Christmas gift my parents gave my wife and I a 2 night stay at Lake Quinault Lodge up in the Olympic National Forrest.  I was estatic because I had wanted to visit Ruby Beach and Shi Shi Beach for years, and was going to make an effort this year.  Ruby Beach was only 30 minutes away, but the river was fierce, the tides were high and the skies were gray, so I struck out this time around.  Shi Shi on the other hand, was awesome.  My wife and I walked across the rocks at Point of the Arches and found several sea Anemones and Star Fish.  Every time I found a large one I would say, “Look!  An enemy!”  She would reply, “ANEMONES!” and I would say, “right.”  As the sun started to set, I got serious and my wife got cold, so she started to walk back to the car.  The colors in the sky weren’t as colorful as I had hoped, but the clouds did have these fantastic lines that mirrored the lines the rocks, so I thought that a black and white was more appropriate here.

When I realized the light wasn’t going cooperate, I shut it down and headed back.  As I headed back I saw that the colors on the horizon were pretty sweet, so I stopped and found one last composition before kicking it into high gear and catching up to my wife.

The next day we took the beautiful drive around Lake Quinault before heading home.  I can’t wait to return and check out Second Beach as well!