FOr those who haven't seen the Lighthouse DIgest for February 2003 there is a beautiful photo on the cover of the St. Joseph's Pier Lights in Michigan by none other than Gary Martin. Really great shot. Congratulations Gary on a job well done.

Bert

Thanks, Bert!

Gary

it would be interesting if people who post shots of lighthouses on this site or in magazines would give us the details of how the shot was taken. Was it by boat, plane, ground, what type of camera, etc. This helps the novices get experience for their one pictures.

Detail is easy: Nikon F5, Nikkor 300 mm f4 AFS lens; the shot was taken from the top of a sand dune over looking the lake to give me some elevation to contrast the spray from the breaking waves against the dark water of the lake rather than against the bright sky so that the spray would be more visible. The camera was in autofocus mode set to film advance at 4 frames/sec. For this type of shot, I normally use Shutter priority mode (S) with a shutter speed of 1/800th of a sec using Fuji Provia 100F professional slide film. The cover shot was one of a series of 7 photos in a sequence of that particular wave breaking over the outer light there on the north pier at St Joseph, Michigan. I happened to chose this as the one photo from that particular sequence of shots to send in to LH Digest's annual photo contest as one of my entries in the Storm Swept Lighthouse category.

There are several galleries of photos of storm swept lighthouses, including GIF animated sequences, on my website. You can get into the storm animation galleries from the following link:

http://www.coastalbeacons.com/Storm_animation.html

The cover photo and the animated sequence that it came from are at the following URL:

http://www.coastalbeacons.com/Storm_animation3.html

Hope the above helps some.

Gary

thank you for your quick reply

Here's a great place within the Forums to go to get an answer to many of the questions you might have on Lighthouse Photography. Go back and check out some of the earlier threads.

http://www.lighthousekeepers.com/forums/ultimatebb.php?ubb=forum;f=40

Dennis

That cover is definately suitable for framing! It looks so beautiful and clear I can almost feel the cold spray!

Mine came in the mail yesterday! It's a great picture! Well Done, Gary!!!!

Gary's cover and web site are excellent. Has anyone any tips on using a digital still camera to photograph lighthouses? Would the techniques be the same or similar to 35 mm photography

Looks great Gary... I have a calendar with some of your work in it... I love your pictures!!!

Gary,

When I pulled the magazine out of the mailbox I knew immediately who took that great photo. Well done!!!!!

Keep up the fantastic work.

Mary and Jeff

Great work, Gary! The wave crashing on the ice-covered outer light looks really nice!