Olympic National Park is the place to go if you ever want to visit a national park covering a little bit of everything. Within an expanse of almost 1 million acres, you’ll see beaches, forests, and mountains veined with a network of clear, cold streams, rivers, and waterfalls.

Because of the size of this national park, I made not one, but two trips this year from my home in central Washington. I didn’t get to all the places I’d intended, but I've covered enough territory to present you with another Armchair Photography Guide which you can use for fostering your own photographic adventures along the Olympic Peninsula.

If you are new to the Traveler or new to this photography column, I created these Armchair Photography Guides for those of you who cannot, or do not want to, hike long trails or deep into the backcountry with a pack full of camera gear. I believe you can achieve amazing images from pullouts, view areas, and along short trails with your smartphone, point-and-shoot, or SLR camera using tips and techniques I provide in these guides.

My January trip was short in duration and coincided with the partial government shutdown. I wrote a previous article for the Traveler about this visit. My recent late-August/early-September trip lasted a week, during which I managed to cover ocean, forest, and mountain views of this national park. Because there is so much to encompass, photographically, I figured I’d focus on the beaches in this article, with subsequent installments for the forests and mountains.

When planning your own trip to the coastal portions of Olympic National Park, be aware that, during the winter, the crowds are generally sparse, but the weather is wet and inclement and beach access might be a little more difficult due to trail washouts and huge logjams from storms. Summer access is considerably easier, with repairs to storm-damaged stairs and cleared paths around beached logs. While there are more crowds during the summer, early mornings and very late evenings are great for good lighting conditions and fewer people.

Kalaloch Beach

Let’s start this trip along the peninsula traveling south to north, with the first stop at Kalaloch Beach, below Kalaloch Lodge.

While there are no sea stacks here, there are rocks onto which waves crash for dramatic shots. To freeze the motion of a crashing wave, use a fast shutter speed and the “burst method” of holding your finger down on the shutter button for 4-5 clicks. Since fast shutter speeds (fps) mean less light going through the lens, you’ll want to open your aperture to maybe f/4-f/6.3 and/or bump up the ISO anywhere from 250 to 1250, depending upon the time of day you are at the beach. SLRs and some point-and-shoot cameras have manual and aperture/shutter priority settings. If you are using a smartphone, touch that little white shutter button several times in succession for at least one clear shot. Use your telephoto lens or zoom setting on your point-and-shoot or smartphone to get really close to those waves (without getting wet and being pulled under by riptides).

To capture the full spectacle of ocean motion and stormy skies (especially prevalent during the winter months), set your camera on a tripod and make use of either a circular polarizer (CPL) or a graduated neutral density (grad ND) filter to darken the horizon and delineate cloud texture. For those of you not familiar with CPL or grad ND filters, check out this article I wrote for the Traveler.

Tide levels change with the season, and summer mornings can produce very low tides at this beach with plenty of rocky tidepools to explore. Use your CPL to remove glare and reflections when photographing through the water. Smooth, ripple-free tidepool shots of anemones’ floating tentacles are best in the morning. Mornings are also great for mirror-still reflections of sky and scenery in pools of water along the beach during low tide.

Turn your camera away from the ocean and concentrate on outcrops. Make sure your settings are adjusted to account for the darker exposure of the trees and shrubs populating the high bluffs. Or capture a shot of the gulls flocked on the ground or in the air.

Mornings along the Olympic coast produce light pinks, lemony yellows, and pale blues coloring the sky westward, with maybe a little bit of fog, too.

While at Kalaloch, you should definitely view the famous “Tree of Life,” a Sitka spruce holding its own over a bluff undercut by stream erosion. Drive north from the Kalaloch Lodge to the Kalaloch Campground’s day-use parking lot. Hike down the steps to the beach, turn right and walk about 50 yards. You can’t miss it. Sure, there are a gazillion photos of this natural oddity, but the photo you capture will be your own, taken with your own camera.

Beach 4

The beaches around Kalaloch are numbered and, in my opinion, Kalaloch Beach 4 is one of the best of these, complete with a parking lot, restrooms, and a well-maintained trail ending at a bridge over a outcrop of tilted and overturned sedimentary rock layers through which runs a clear stream out to the ocean. You’ll have to do a little clambering down to get to the beach, but it’s not difficult, even for those of you with short legs, like me. I sat down on my rump and slid my way to the sandy ground. Before you do that, though, get some leading line shots of the trail and the bridge. The leading line technique guides your photo audiences’ eyes from one part of the photo to another. This technique also creates a sense of “where” and “what,” as in “where will that trail/bridge/road take you” and “what adventure awaits at the end of the trail, or across that bridge, or down the road?”

Ruby Beach

From Beach 4, it’s a little over 4 miles farther north on Highway 101 to Ruby Beach, famous for its rock islands (sea stacks) such as Abbey Island. Arrive there early on a summer morning prior to 8 a.m. or later in the afternoon, around 6 p.m., when low tides allow for exploration of the tide pools up against Abbey Island.

Rialto Beach

From Ruby Beach, head north on Highway 101, turn left onto 110, and head toward the community of La Push. Turn right onto Mora Road and drive to Rialto Beach, with its large parking lot and very easy access. Depending upon your time of arrival, the atmosphere might be hazy and you’ll need to use your CPL filter and adjust your settings for the bright, flat light. If you use your smartphone, tap on the brightest spot you see in the viewfinder and your phone should adjust its exposure accordingly.

Use your wide-angle lens or wide-angle point-and-shoot setting for shots of the beach, bluff, and sea stacks. Hunker down closer to the ground for a different perspective of the landscape. You might also get lucky and capture pelicans cruising the currents or riding the waves, so have your telephoto lens or telephoto setting at the ready.

A 1.5-mile trek over a mostly pebbly beach with areas of packed sand will take you toward tide pools and sea stacks with such names as “Split Rock” and “Hole-in-the-Wall.” As you walk along, look up to the treetops lining the bluff where you might just see a bald eagle, or two. Consult a tide chart before making the trudge out and back, as you don’t want to get caught during high tide.

In truth, you could spend your entire trip simply touring the beaches within Olympic National Park, including Shi Shi Beach way up north on the peninsula, the beaches around Ozette, and beaches south of La Push. There’s plenty of scenery to explore and you are now armed with tips, techniques and gear suggestions for great Olympic coast photos.