Peninsula Point Light Tower, near Stonington, MichiganDoor County is a narrow peninsula of land that stretches north and east into Lake Michigan, forming Green Bay to its west. Correspondingly, two peninsula stretch south and west toward Green Bay and Door County from the upper peninsula of Michigan. These two peninsula form Big Bay de Noc and Little Bay de Noc, which were named by French settlers after the Nocquet Indians who lived along their shores.
On a narrow spit of land dividing the two bays, the Peninsula Point Lighthouse was built in 1864 to help ships loaded with lumber avoid the rocky shoals just offshore. Replaced in the 1950s by an automated light set on the shoals, the point became a hangout place for local teens, who may have started a fire that destroyed the keeper’s dwelling in 1959, leaving only the tower standing.
What was once a necessary part of the commerce of the region is today a lonely outpost. Lonely in the human sense, that is. The area teems with waterfowl and each October, hundreds of thousands of monarch butterflies use the area surrounding the lighthouse as a resting point on their migration south.
Wanting to capture a nostalgic feel for this lonely tower, I pasted a black and white version of the photo as a layer over the original color version in PhotoShop, then played with the opacity level until I got what I felt was an antique colorization effect. The full color and b&w versions are included here for comparison.
Click on pictures to enlarge. Photographs © 2006 James Jordan.
4 comments:
Love the effect of the muted colours - I think you got it spot on! :)
jem, thank you!
I've never seen the style of post processing that you do applied to lighthouses before and I must say it's incredible! It makes me wish we had some around here.
andy, I have to admit that a lot of my post-processing is inspired by your great photos at Blue Hour. And here all along I've been jealous of the landscapes you have down by you!
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