Hi Taryn,
I actually know this area rather well as it used to be part of my patch when I was a news photographer in North Otago about 20 years ago. The boulders offer a great range of potential for photographs, so long as you are prepared to brave the cold winds that can clock in their from the Antarctic, even in summer!
While I like the decision to go vertical with this image, the one thing that lets it down for me is the dead tree near the middle of the picture. I would be keen to see more of the boulders that make this area noteworthy, but that dead tree is hiding that form.
In an instance like this, I would have looked at alternate options. Moving the tree was probably not an option so I would have tried to find a similar composition that was cleaner while trying to maintain that foreground. As another option though, I would forget about including the boulder on the beach line and instead crop this image to a square. This would give the viewer a better chance at concentrating on the detail in the foreground – particularly if you do a bit of work to increase the range of tones in this part of the picture.
Most of us who own DSLR cameras spend our time looking at the world as either 2:3 ratio portrait or landscape images. But taking an image to square should be given more consideration, particularly as the higher resolution of most cameras now give us the latitude to crop a photo.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Anthony