Grant’s Point is one of those places where the plan is fairly simple. Walk the coast, keep your eyes open, and see what the rocks are up to.

That’s how I stumbled across these two.

They looked like a pair of old sentinels sitting above the shoreline, covered in bright orange lichen and surrounded by smaller boulders that looked like they’d been tossed around for a few thousand years.

The foreground had a nice patch of kelp and shallow water moving through the rocks, which immediately got me thinking about a layered exposure.

I decided to shoot it in two parts.

For the sky, I used a 16-stop filter and let the exposure run long enough to smooth the clouds into streaks moving across the frame. That gives the sky a bit of movement while simplifying the composition.

Then I switched to a 3-stop filter for the foreground. That kept just enough motion in the water as it flowed around the rocks and kelp without losing the texture.

Both exposures were later stacked in Photoshop, blending the long cloud movement with the softer water in the foreground.

Sometimes scenes just fall into place like this. You head out planning to explore, and the rocks do the compositional work for you.