Lighthouses - II
Apr/29/10 10:38 Filed in: Photo
shoots
Photographing the Portland Headlight in Maine.
One of my last photo shoots before the big move across the ocean brought me to Portland, Maine. The destination was the Portland Headlight, a lighthouse built in the late 1700's in a dramatic setting. The shoreline surrounding the lighthouse is cliffy with steep rocky beaches. Absolutely beautiful.
The weather was, well, mediocre at best as we (Ian and myself) arrived on a mid Sunday morning in Portland: bland, cloudy skies with dull light. "Great" I was thinking, "three hours of driving for nothing - or at least nothing great".
We started our morning by scouting out the area. After a while of walking around we found a good view of the Lighthouse complex with a long and wide stretch of cliffy shoreline and the rough Atlantic Ocean as foreground. Brilliant. We found a way down to the steep cliffs. I would recommend that If you ever go there, bring good shoes. The rocks are extremely slippery and a fall does not look like something you want to experience. A tripod in one hand, and the camera in the other I made my way down. Just as we reached a really nice spot, the sky broke open and immersed the Lighthouse complex in beautiful, warm, soft light. The clouds started to show shape and contrast. That was indeed a gift.
To create the photo shown above, I used a grad ND filter to darken the sky. This was enhanced in Photoshop to give it a more dramatic look and feel, describing better how I actually felt when I released the shutter. I like how the rock formation forms lines pointing towards the Lighthouse tower itself, letting the eye wander from the foreground to the background with the clouds leading the viewer to the writing on the rocks. This is how most viewers told me how they experience the photo.
The Portland Headlight is one of the many lighthouses guiding the way into Portland harbour. Most of them were built in the late 1700's, with this headlight built in 1790. The writing tells about the British Vessel Anny C. Macguire which stranded at that rock at Christmas eve in 1886 - despite the lighthouse doing its' duty. All passengers and sailors were rescued that night.