Second Beach, La Push

• Prize
  Silver in Nature/Sunrise / Sunset
• Photographer
  Nicholas Dunn

Second Beach sits just south of the Quileute village of La Push on Washington’s Olympic coast. For the Quileute Tribe, this shoreline is living homeland—canoe landings, salmon and clam harvests, and stories of Q’wa·ti (the Transformer) who turned wolves into the first people. The beach became widely known through the Twilight saga, which set key scenes in La Push (many film shots used stand-in beaches), but the real Second Beach remains Quileute country. Visitors should tread lightly—respect closures, drift logs, and tribal sovereignty.

Nicholas Dunn began photographing at age ten, inspired by his father and grandmother. From the Kansas plains to landscapes abroad, he developed a style rooted in abstraction, where nature reads like drawing or design. By eighteen, his work earned international recognition, including multiple honors at the International Photography Awards with a second place in Architecture/Historic. Through fire, water, ice, and land, Nicholas seeks to reveal the patterns and fleeting visions etched by the earth itself.