I was visiting the Olympic Peninsula in Washington in April and got up early on my first morning to try to go to a lighthouse in the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, on the Dungeness Spit. I walked through a path in the dark and down these stairs on the hillside that lead to the spit just as the light was coming up. I had come in the night before and it was raining heavily so I didn't even know there were mountains here. As I was making my way along the spit, I turned around and was stunned at what I was seeing. I've never seen the sea alongside snow-capped mountains before.

After much hemming and hawing about color vs black and white, I decided that black and white better captured the feeling of the moment, the contrast of the snow and the beach.

Shot handheld with the Fujifilm X-T5 and the XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR lens