A Warm Sunset at Bass Harbor Lighthouse

A Warm Sunset at Bass Harbor Lighthouse.

 

The Bass Harbor Lighthouse is one of those locations I like to get my group there really early, but when doing an excursion close to prime time for tourists, you accept you may not be in a prime spot. Now bear in mind, there aren’t really “bad” spots but there are some that are better than others. I had 7 participants with me and encouraged them to get an area lower and to the left of my position. It is a better spot and allows you to capture more of the front of the lighthouse. I tried to get the others close to the area I was located on the edge of a rock. Its not a really good place because you are inches from an 8 foot drop to a certain visit to an ER. Once we all settled in, we waited for the light to happen, and when it did we fought the occasional person who stood in front of everyone. I think all in all, even with all the people (probably 70-100 one who hadn’t figured out how to turn off their flash…), everyone got some nice images. I am glad to have had an adventurous group! Thanks again Out of Acadia participants for sometimes working out of their comfort zone!

 

For the image I chose a fairly shallow depth of field, f4, which should help people to see that you don’t always need f8 or f16 for landscape work. I eliminated the first 50 feet of foreground due to people so the area of focus was fairly shallow, f4 was plenty for the image. Also this more shallow depth of field allowed a more subtle transition while using a Graduated Neutral Density filter.

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD G2 lens on a Nikon D-800E, Manual Exposure mode, f4, ISO 100, 3 stop Graduated Neutral Density(ND) filter, shutter speed of 1/10th of a second, Sirui W2204X waterproof tripod and K20X ballhead, filters carried in a Sirui Urbanite WP, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronUSA, #TamronLensesUSA, #TamronImageMaster, #Sirui, #SiruiUSA, #SiruiProfessional

Portland Head Lighthouse closer to Sunrise

Portland Head Lighthouse closer to sunrise.

As a contrast to yesterday’s image, this is the Portland Head Lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth just before the morning sun lit up the landscape. You can see how different a scene can be with light changing the mood completely. I wanted to have the nice soft appearance of the waves in the foreground so I used a Sirui ND 1.8 filter. This allowed me to keep the exposure around 8 seconds. I can’t emphasize enough how critical it is with ND filters, Neutral Density filters, that they truly be neutral in color. If they aren’t they can easily change the color cast of the scene. Sirui’s are perfectly neutral and make it a pleasure to use them knowing you don’t have to fight color cast in post processing. The quality of them is spectacular and top notch.

Tamron SP 24-70mm Di VC USD G2 lens on a Nikon D-800E, Manual Exposure mode, f11, ISO 100, Sirui ND 1.8 (6 stops) filter, shutter speed of 8 seconds, Sirui W2204X waterproof tripod and K20X ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronUSA, #TamronLensesUSA, #TamronImageMaster, #Sirui, #SiruiUSA, #SiruiProfessional, #SiruiFilters

Portland Head Lighthouse before Sunrise

Portland Head Lighthouse before sunrise.

 

Just a quick post tonight. I am beat. My journey started at 5:45am yesterday morning. I always get up at 5:45am, except on workshops, then it is about 4am. I did my post Saturday, watched the birds, then spent the day with Evelyn and trying to get some rest. I caught the redeye out of Atlanta at 10:20pm to Boston, landing at 12:30am Sunday morning. I had forgotten my jacket so I drove to Freeport to LL Bean to pick up a cheap fleece, then down to Portland Head and Cape Elizabeth for sunrise. I was the only one there for about 30 minutes then a few other folks showed up. I wanted to do a few long exposures with the Sirui Graduated ND filters to see how well they did with the sky. I think they passed with flying colors! Or in actuality neutral colors!

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD G2 lens on a Nikon D-800E, Manual Exposure mode, f5.6, ISO 400, Bulb shutter for 103 seconds, Sirui 1.2 Graduated ND filter, Sirui W2204X waterproof tripod and K20 ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronUSA, #TamronLensesUSA, #TamronImageMaster, #Sirui, #SiruiUSA, #SiruiProfessional, #SiruiFilters

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse.

 

It has been fun going through the images I made last year as we worked our way up the Maine Coast heading to Bar Harbor. Pemaquid Point was one of those places I wished we had been there for better conditions, i.e. sunrise or sunset, but we made the best of what we were offered and captured a few images that I am happy with the results. One of these years I will spend a week or so just driving the coast and capturing the lighthouses in perfect light. We created images of 5 lighthouses in a 24 hour period! I look forward to my trip to Maine next month even if I will only see a couple of lighthouses. There better be some lobstah’ left!

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure mode, f11, ISO 100, shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, Sirui Circular Polarizer, Sirui W2204X tripod and K20X ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronUSA, #TamronImageMaster, #Sirui, #SiruiUSA, #SiruiProfessional

Creating Fog

Creating Fog.

 

This image is similar to the one I posted the other day and was made within a few minutes as well. The immediate question some folks will have (that remember the previous one) is how come this image has fog in it? Did a front move in so quickly to cover the coast with fog? I used an old portrait photographer’s trick to create fog, I “breathed” on the front of the lens lightly. On mornings when it is fairly cool and crisp, simply breathing on the lens, lightly at first, can give you the feeling and perception you are on a foggy coast. The “fog” goes away within a few seconds and you can make it lighter or heavier after reviewing the image.

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure mode, f11, ISO 100, shutter speed of 4 seconds, Akoubian fog filter, Sirui W2204X waterproof tripod and K20 ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronUSA, #TamronImageMaster, #Sirui, #SiruiUSA, #SiruiProfessional

Portland Head Lighthouse

Portland Head Lighthouse.

Keeping with my theme of things to come in the near future, here is the Portland Head Lighthouse from October of last year. We landed in Boston and decided to drive up the coast to Acadia visiting several lighthouses along the way. This was our 2nd stop on the trip. We did a sunset and sunrise there which turned out to be incredible, as you can see. I am doing a similar route this year, but have a much more limited schedule on the drive. I may only hit one lighthouse and this will be my sunrise location, although it is going to be hard to beat the conditions we had last year.

For those that live in or near Atlanta, please come by the Roswell Adult Recreation Center tomorrow night, September 5th for my presentation “Bird Nirdvana” – Finding Peace in being a Bird Nerd. It starts at 7pm, but there is a social starting at 6:30pm. Thank you again to the Roswell Photographic Society for having me out to do my presentation.

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure mode, f16, ISO 100, shutter speed of 8 seconds, Sirui Circular Polarizer, Sirui W2204X waterproof tripod and K20X ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronUSA, #TamronImageMaster, #Sirui, #SiruiUSA, #SiruiProfessional

Perfectly timed Fog

Perfectly timed Fog.

 

When we photographed the Portland Head Lighthouse on our drive up the Maine Coast, I looked at the scene and thought…”wow, what would this look like with fog”? So I conjured up some fog to roll into the scene. I did an old wedding photographer trick and “breathed” on the front of the lens. Warm air hitting cool glass…fog on the lens!

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure mode, f11, ISO 100, 5 second exposure, fog by Me, Sirui W2204X tripod and K20X ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronImageMasters, #SiruiUSA

Bass Harbor Lighthouse and the Moon

Bass Harbor Lighthouse and the Moon

 

We shot at the Bass Harbor Lighthouse on several different days and in different conditions each time as well. One of my favorites though was our morning session with clear skies. We arrived very early of course and set up with a reflection in a tidal pool in front of us. The scene developed nicely and we captured many wonderful images. This was one of those mornings though that the early birds did get the worm. We had some folks show up a little while after us and were upset we got “the spot” so they were going to purposely set up in front of us. We actually mentioned to them that they would be in our frame, we were told “that is what Photoshop is for”… After they realized the rocks were very slippery, they came over back behind us. We made space for them even after the comments earlier. Today’s lessons, if you aren’t the first ones there, be nice, most photographers will understand and actually help to work you into the area. The main lesson is get up early if you like worms.

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure mode, f11, ISO 100, shutter speed of 15 seconds, Sirui W2204X tripod and K20X ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronImageMasters, #SiruiUSA

Pemaquid Lighthouse

Pemaquid Lighthouse

 

The 3rd stop on our drive up the Maine coast for our workshop was the Pemaquid Lighthouse. To me, it was the most challenging of the lighthouses we photographed. There were great leading lines in the rocks but there were small puddles with brisk winds making it hard to take advantage of any reflections we might get. After climbing around on the rocks for a while, I finally decided to cross over a larger barrier of rocks before I found an area that gave me a little reflection. It is a beautiful lighthouse and definitely worth the visit regardless of the challenges to get something a little different or unique.

 

Tamron SP 15-30mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure Mode, f11, ISO 100, shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, Sirui W2204X tripod and K20X ballhead, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronImageMasters, #SiruiUSA

Nubble or Neddick, Same thing

Nubble or Neddick, Same thing.

 

The first lighthouse we visited on our trip to Maine was the Cape Neddick, aka Nubble Lighthouse. It was about 2 in the afternoon and definitely not in golden light or blue hour light. There was a nice cloud cover causing bright and even light. I knew the way to shoot it would be with a 10 stop ND filter. Since I wanted a wide depth of field, I chose to shoot at f16. I calculated my exposure simply by counting 10 exposures from when there was no filter on the lens, this is done since you can’t see through the filter nor can the meter accurately see, then made adjustments to get a 30 second exposure. I had to kick the ISO up to 200 to stay at 30 seconds. I wanted to stay at 30 seconds because the camera has a setting for 30 seconds and I also felt 1 minute at ISO 100 would cause too much “cotton candy” in the foreground and I would lose detail in the rocks.

 

Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD lens on a Canon 5Diii, Manual Exposure mode, f16, ISO 200, 30 seconds, Sirui W2204X tripod and K20X ballhead, Tiffen APEX XLE 10 stop ND filter, processed in Lightroom CC. #WithMyTamron, #TamronImageMasters, #SiruiUSA