A few years ago, the day after Christmas, my sister and I made a last minute decision to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway in California to McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur, CA. With an hour long drive ahead of us and only an hour and fifteen minutes until sunset, I quickly packed up my gear, and we hit the road. At that time in my early years of learning photography, my biggest challenge, aside from making it there on time, was properly exposing a bright golden hour sky and learning how to use my new Christmas gift, a Singh Ray Vari-ND filter.

This shot was taken at 31mm, f/9.0, 2 seconds, ISO 400, using a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, RRS Tripod, RRS BH-55 Ball Head.