This was taken last October during the same trip to Door County in which I made contact with the owner of an art gallery in the village of Gills Rock. This photograph and several others of mine will be on display (and hopefully sold) from May through October of this year.
This was taken about 5 o'clock in the morning. The moon was just a couple days past full. Exposure time was about three minutes. The weather was just about perfect. Clear enough to see some stars (six of the seven stars of the Big Dipper can be seen in the upper left), just enough mist to catch the light beam from the lighthouse and a few clouds drifting behind the lighthouse.
The only adjustments I made to this photo (aside from the conversion to black and white) were to remove a telephone pole to the left of the lighthouse and fix a light spot in the lower right corner which was caused when I accidentally shone my flashlight into the lens while checking the time on a small kitchen timer I bring with me on night shoots.
Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.
2 comments:
Absolutely beautiful! Did you use a black card to occlude the lens when the lighthouse beam was shining the "wrong way"? I am wondering how in the world did you manage to get beam seemingly shining in one direction to the right of the frame despite using a 3-minute exposure.
engloy, the light tower itself has a window painted black so as not to shine its light toward the mainland -- I'm sure the folks in the half-million dollar homes along the shore appreciate not having the bright light shining in their windows at night!
So the light beam has a 270 degree range, and I was photographing at the edge of that range, which is why the light appears to be going only in one direction.
It's interesting that I couldn't even see the beam. The camera picked it up with the long exposure.
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