I had this concept in mind for a while, but I wanted to wait for both a very sunny day (for high contrast) and a day on which I was really pressed for time. The location is Crescent Park, which is only about five-minutes from where I work, so it's perfect for those days where time is short. The stairs lead from the parking area down to a sandy beach. Prior to Hurricane Carol in 1954, there was a large shore dinner hall in this location. The wooden pilings that held the hall above the water are still there, although they're all crumbled at this point. At high tide, as it was today, the water laps up almost to the bottom of these steps, which meant I had to take this photo from a landing instead of at ground level. All in all, though, it worked better this way, and I was able to get the contrast I'd wanted.
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted color sensitivity sliders, adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, boost black, boost white, and details. A levels adjustment was added in PSE.
