To take this photograph, I stood on the rocks at Burns Beach in near darkness while the waves pounded the rocky shore below me. I attached 0.6 and 0.9 grad filters to hold back the sky and hoped that the long exposure would bring out some interesting foreground colours while giving the ocean a silky, smooth appearance.

As the only light came from the dim afterglow of sunset, I used a torch to work out my composition, carefully tracing the light around the rocks while looking through the viewfinder and ensuring all of the small rock pools were in frame and not cut in half. I placed the long pool of water in the centre of the frame so the eye was drawn in and taken on a journey down the rock ledge towards the horizon.

I’d been at this location on the previous night and liked the way moon had briefly appeared through the clouds and was reflected onto the wet sand, but on this occasion I was lucky that everything fell into place at exactly the right time. Fortunately, my composition meant that the glowing moon not only brightened a rather dull area of sky, but was reflected back onto a small pool of water and brought life to the foreground.

During the thirty second capture, waves poured over the rocks near the centre of the image, giving them an ethereal, milky quality as they flowed over the ledge and into the channel. When the shutter finally closed, I was delighted to see that it had exposed the subtle shades of pink, orange and yellow reflected in the wet rocks from the clouds above.

This is a limited edition print with a print run of 100.

Ref: ALE41

Date: 18/05/10

Location: Burns Beach, Perth, Western Australia

See the Stock Photography section for details on licensing this photo for editorial or commercial use.

Purchase this print:

Limited Edition 45x30.50cm - AU$750.00 Limited Edition 90x61cm - AU$950.00