I took this photo from edge of a small cliff overlooking the beach at Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu, California. As I sat watching the waves crash, again and again against a large rock, the idea of an eternal and seemingly futile battle occurred to me. I decided to see if I could capture the story in a photo. And as it turns out, that was almost a futile battle as well.
There were a number of challenges that led to a large number of failures, and since the tide is always changing, my time was limited. One challenge was that not every wave landed the same way. Some swallowed the rock whole, passing over it without a crash. Others landed before it then continued quietly into the beach. Only a few landed at just the right point to create the image I was looking for. And I needed more than just a few to learn exactly which camera settings I wanted to use. In the end, I walked away with only one picture that really worked for me, but one was enough.
