After having seen many photos of the fabled 'Dragon's Head Rock' down on No.16 Beach along the back beach stretch in Rye, I finally decided that I should take a trip down there to see it in person. It was a completely impromptu decision, as I had seen a good picture of the Dragon's Head a few days before (see the picture below) and just made a spur of the moment decision that I would head down to Rye that night as I wasn't doing anything else. After about an hour of driving I finally made it down to the No.16 beach in Rye. For those wondering exactly where that is, I've provided a map at the bottom of this post (additionally it's literally like 2 minutes further down the road after the Peninsula Hot Springs).
After getting to the location I got out all my gear and headed down to the rocks. There is an actual beach where you can swim/surf (evidenced by the few kids that were surfing when I got there), but the rocks take up a vast portion of the shore and that was where I was headed. There was one other guy there who was also taking photos when I got there. There was still about a half hour before the sun was about to set so I took that time to explore the area. The rocks are all coated with a sort of bulbous seaweed which makes the rocks very slippery and I had to walk very carefully to ensure that I didn't slip and lose all my gear.
After exploring for a little while I reached the edge of the rocks where the ocean waves were crashing against the rocks. I decided that I would set up here as it had a great view of the setting sun in addition to the interesting foreground elements of the rocks and crashing waves. It was lucky that I got to the beach when I did as once I was set up the sun started setting very rapidly. Whilst it was a cloudy day, there was a break in the clouds near the horizon which made for an absolutely spectacular scene when the sun finally broke through the cloud and illuminated the ocean with an intense orange glow. As I was positioned on the edge of the rocks right next to the ocean in order to get the best shot and the tide was rising my shoes ended up getting completely soaked by the incoming waves, but it was well worth it to get the photos that I did. Eventually as the sun dipped below the horizon I moved around to a few different locations and took photos at different angles in order to get a few different shots. Finally, as it was starting to get really dark I decided to head back to the car, making my way back slowly over the slick rocks as I didn't have a headlamp with me. All in all it was a great experience and I got some really good shots.