This is a collection of my favorite images landscape photography images from 2015.  The images you see here were taken in Washington, Oregon and Montana.  It was a great year and I can’t wait to see what next year will bring!

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So Rialto Beach and I have quite the history and I should have known that making the trip back there could only have ended poorly. I started the trip out there at around 11am and I was hoping to make it down to the haystacks by around 4:30pm for the sunset. I rolled into the parking lot at around 10 till 4pm. Not good. I checked the tide and the high tide coincided with the sunset. Double not good. To say that getting down to the stacks during high tide was difficult would be an understatement. Most of the trip involved scrambling over massive piles of driftwood while dodging waves and hauling some serious ass down the beach. I ended up missing the majority of the good light but managed to snag some moody twilight shots as the stars started to come out.

I got all of my gear packed up and turned around to head down the beach when BOOM I got nailed by two consecutive sleeper waves from behind. Luckily my camera gear stayed dry but I was completely SOAKED. Water filled my boots and the extra layers I had on absorbed the water like a sponge. Awesome. So then I had to try to figure out a game plan for getting back since I really didn’t want to have to scramble over the driftwood in the dark even with a headlamp.

I decided that I was already wet so why not cut my loses and stick to the beach. I played dodge the wave for a good part of the time until I had to make the river crossing. Doing that crossing in the daylight is a cake walk. Doing it at night in soaking wet boots and clothes is a different story. Let’s just say that it probably looked like a scene right out of Jackass when I slipped and fell placing the log squarely between you guessed it. Good times!! At that point I just had to laugh. I mean what the hell else was I supposed to do ha! I finally made it back to the Jeep and made the executive decision to skip camping out in Mora and head to Forks. That hotel room bed never felt so damn good!

Rialto Beach, La Push, WA

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This photo comes from the first chaotic night on the Washington Coast with some friends.  For those that have been to Rialto you’ve seen the impressive first set of haystacks right near the parking lot. They are pretty damn cool and make for some awesome photos, but we decided to dig a little deeper for the goods. We bucked it up and moved fairly quickly down the beach toward what looked to be some pretty epic haystacks toward the very end of the beach.

A small memo for beach goers; objects may appear closer than they really are. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. I don’t know how far we hiked down the beach to reach these things but it must have been a ways because by the time we got there the sun was well on its way down and the light was fading fast. We ended up hiking a few miles down the beach to shoot these awesome haystacks, arriving just as the sun was sinking below the marine layer off shore and well to keep this short we lost track of time. Before we knew it the tide was coming in and it was dark. Small footnote here; I forgot to leave the girls in our group with a flashlight (in the doghouse for sure). We packed up our gear and moved as quickly as feasibly possible down the beach only to be slowed down by two older guys who not only didn’t have headlamps but were also high as hell on something other then life. We decided to help them get through some of the more difficult sections; you know the river crossing and such, and finally made it back to the car. I drove like a crazy man to get back to the tent site (by then it was dark) to discover that NO ONE was there. To say that I lost it was a bit of an understatement. Horns blaring, shouting at the top of our lungs and finally they came running out into the road.

Turns out that they moved down two tent sites (for a number of reasons) and were a-okay, they even had the tent set up. Apart from the anxiety attack they gave me and their cousin it ended up being an okay night. Solid start to an epic trip.

Rialto Beach, La Push, WA

Prints: cwexplorationphotography@gmail.com

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Fine Art Pacific Northwest Landscape & Nature Photography

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