Lighthouses - III
Jul/09/10 23:13 Filed in: Photo shoots
The Portland Headlight - one more photographic approach.
This shot stayed untouched, yet very often looked at and thought about in my photo library for about six months. And after this time it took me several months worth of editing and re-editing to come up with this final photograph. Why? Here is the story...
Of course I did not work for three months straight on
this photograph. But, over the course of the last
three months I edited it, deleted my edit, re-edited
it, deleted it again and so forth. You get the
picture…
I am asking myself now, why I hesitated so much? And I found there to be several reasons:
First, despite this lighthouse photograph being a total cliché, I absolutely love this shot. I had a vision how it should look like in the end. Not being sure about my skillet and wether or not it would be good enough to edit this shot in the digital darkroom was one reason for the hesitation.
Second, shooting this scene I ended up with probably fifty or so images taken from the same spot over the course of maybe thirty minutes. With the wind pushing the clouds and making the sun breaking through every so often, the light conditions changed quite dramatically during that time. In addition to that the waves were playing there game breaking at the rocky shore. It became clear almost initially that the final photograph would be a blend of several images to capture the mood I felt properly. Studying the photos after uploading them to my computer made a selection process not necessarily easy. Although I picked my three favourite ones fairly early on, I was not sure wether or not to proceed with them.
Third, there were the technical issues: mistakes I made during the photo shoot. Can you believe that I came home from this event and realised, that my camera was set to JPG mode instead of RAW? Also, the ISO setting was way too high. What was I thinking? Nothing I suppose. Excitement simply took over when I reached the Portland Headlight in Maine. This certainly limited the options I had in the digital darkroom - again, I was not sure on how to touch the image.
In the end I am very pleased with the end result. This shot will finish my lighthouse trilogy. I will have to visit more locations to get more photographs. It most likely won't be in Maine or New England - Old England will have to do….
I am asking myself now, why I hesitated so much? And I found there to be several reasons:
First, despite this lighthouse photograph being a total cliché, I absolutely love this shot. I had a vision how it should look like in the end. Not being sure about my skillet and wether or not it would be good enough to edit this shot in the digital darkroom was one reason for the hesitation.
Second, shooting this scene I ended up with probably fifty or so images taken from the same spot over the course of maybe thirty minutes. With the wind pushing the clouds and making the sun breaking through every so often, the light conditions changed quite dramatically during that time. In addition to that the waves were playing there game breaking at the rocky shore. It became clear almost initially that the final photograph would be a blend of several images to capture the mood I felt properly. Studying the photos after uploading them to my computer made a selection process not necessarily easy. Although I picked my three favourite ones fairly early on, I was not sure wether or not to proceed with them.
Third, there were the technical issues: mistakes I made during the photo shoot. Can you believe that I came home from this event and realised, that my camera was set to JPG mode instead of RAW? Also, the ISO setting was way too high. What was I thinking? Nothing I suppose. Excitement simply took over when I reached the Portland Headlight in Maine. This certainly limited the options I had in the digital darkroom - again, I was not sure on how to touch the image.
In the end I am very pleased with the end result. This shot will finish my lighthouse trilogy. I will have to visit more locations to get more photographs. It most likely won't be in Maine or New England - Old England will have to do….