I know that living here in the colder (frigid?) climes is not for everyone on the forum by any means, but at times, living here only 30 min from the South Haven light does have it's rewards. I went out to the lake Monday night, anticipating winds from the southwest driving waves into the south pier where the lighthouse stands. Here in Kalamazoo it was clear blue sky with only occassional puffy cumulus clouds and strong wind from the SW. As I drove toward the lake, it got cloudier and darker. Five miles east of South Haven, I was driving through a heavy snow squall with dark featureless clouds overhead. When you're that close, what the heck... I drove the rest of the way out and the snow stopped a few minutes after I got there, and although the sky was still heavily cloudy, there were features showing. I shot a roll of film on the south side of the channel and then drove around to the north and shot a second roll. While at the north side, there was clearing far out over the lake toward the horizon, the portent of a possibly interesting sunset.

There were periodic openings in the cloud deck through which sunlight streamed. I've always been fascinated with taking photographs of such times although getting sufficient contrast for the sunbeams to show well is challenging. Below is one of the better of such shots from the other night.



After the second roll (temp on the thermometer in my car was 14F and the winds were about 30 mph!) I was cold and sat in the car for a few minutes with the heater running to warm up a bit. TIP: if you go out in the cold to photograph, never take a cold camera/lens into a warmer car or a warm house - your optical surfaces will fog and you're done for the day - so my cameras were in the cold trunk. After about 10 minutes color started to develop as the sun sank toward the bottom of the cloud deck, I got out and loaded a roll of Fuji Velvia slide film into the camera and went back to the beach with the camera and 80-200 mm lens mounted on a very heavy tripod with a cable release on the camera. The image posted below was one of the visual treats that I got in about the next 5 minutes during an absolutely spectacular sunset. For want of a better name for an image such as this - I would be inclined to title this "Pillar of Fire" because of the pillar of red light to the right of the lighthouse lighting the bottom of the cloud deck overhead. Patience is a virtue that I frequently don't possess, except maybe when it comes to my photography. Chance favors the eternally optimistic photographer? In any case, if you've expended the effort to get somewhere to photograph, take some photographs and always wait to see what develops. Sometimes your patience will be reward as I was for the 3 hrs that I spent out in the bitter cold Monday night!



I would also mention, since I'm frequently asked this question - I don't use color enhancing filters of any sort nor was the color enhanced when I scanned the slides. These are accurate colors from the sunset at South Haven on Monday night.

The shot below was taken the same evening, moments before the previous image with just a change in the focal length and rotation of the camera body from landscape to portrait orientation.



A few moments later, as the light and color began fading...



I hope everyone enjoys this sunset adventure. When I got the slides back yesterday afternoon I was quite pleased that I'd perservered when the snow squall started on the way out, and that I'd waited to see what developed in terms of the sunset after I finished shooting the second roll of slides. I also hope that some of these images will encourage everyone who's planning to go lighthousing either here in Michigan or over in Door County in conjunction with Rosemont to bring their cameras and tripods and LOTS OF FILM!

Finally, for those who were wondering what sorts of shots made my cut just prior to the photo contest deadline on one of the other threads on this forum, the third shot in this one probably would have made it as well.

Gary
aka lighthouse_photo

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-06-2002).]

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-06-2002).]

Absolutely gorgeous shots, Gary! Thanks for sharing them.

Bob

WOW!

Excellant work, Gary. As you know I'm planning to visit the Great Lakes Lights later this year (Will miss the ice) and these wonderful photos only make me want to come sooner.
Thanks so much for these views.

Harry

Gary
Great shots of the sunsets. What kind of camera do you use. I have several sunsets I shot on a lighthouse viewing trip on Delaware Bay several years ago but I don't have a scanner to put them in my pc.

Really enjoy looking at your shots when you post them. Have you made any of these into screen savers the rest of us could have.

Hank

Thanks for the comments, all. I'm glad you're enjoying the images I've been sharing on here and I hope that many of you have the opportunity to photograph some of these lights this summer, unless of course any of you are willing to brave the winter weather here to do it sooner! One of the contest submissions in the lighthouse category by a non-gallery photographer shows what it can be like, as did my photo that was on the cover of the LH Depot catalog last month.

To answer your questions, Hank, I shoot with Nikon gear and Fuji professional slide film exclusively. My principal camera body is a Nikon F5 with an N90 as a backup and another F5 body in my future later this spring. Those sorts of purchases, along with the Nikon lenses, probably make my wife wish I was just a dyed in the wool HL collector instead of someone with a passionate love of photography! For lenses, Hank, I most often shoot with either a Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 AFS zoom or a 17-35mm f2.8 AFS zoom lens. Occasionally I'll also use a Nikkor 24-120 variable aperature zoom although my usage of that lens is becoming less and less frequent. I have an assortment of lenses, most of them Nikkor, which range from 14 to 500mm in focal length.

I've assembled some screensavers that are sold locally here in SW Michigan in a few galleries but I'm not adverse to the idea of a small one that could be downloaded from the HL website if John and I can work out the details. The large screensaver on my own PC is >500 lighthouse images and consumes ~500 Mbytes of hard drive space. The ones that are sold locally are smaller, in the 25-50 image range with subjects of the Michigan Lights, Door County Lighthouses, North Carolina lights, tall ships, Michigan's Stormy Side - photos of the gales that frequently sweep in across the lake - that's probably a tip as to one of my contest entries, and I'm building one on lighthouses at sunset/sunrise, and then the Ultimate Lighthouse Screensaver that fills a CDrom for the total junkie. I don't know what could be done for a downloadable for the wackos in terms of size/format, but I'll discuss this with John, perhaps during the chat tonight if he's on or on AIM. I'm usually on AIM most nights as lighthousephoto if anyone from the forums ever wants to chat about lighthouse photography.

For those with a combined interst in lighthouses and photography who've been suggesting a forum, stay tuned......

Gary

Outstanding photos! They look like paintings.

I thought I was fairly good with a camera - Do I have a lot to learn! Absolutely Wonderful pics! Thanks for sharing. - Joe

Gary - Once again, Sensational!

Suzanne

What can I say; other than you will never worry about any competition from me!!!!!!!!

Theses are about the best photos I’ve ever seen anywhere. GOOD JOB

Stephanie

One of the reasons for sharing these is to help all of us get better, me included! Sharing how to do something, for me, helps me to refine my own thinking and proficiency and hopefully that translates to still better pics when I have the opportunity like last Monday provided!

Gary

These are spectacular Gary, thanks for sharing them!

Barb

Congratulations, Gary, on the sale of one of these absolutely gorgeous photos to Casey's art teacher (who doesn't like photography - LOL)! BTW, you never did say if that woman who saw you photographing Monday did give you her contact information to get in touch with her when you got your slides developed.

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Terry (Teresa) Forrest

Great pictures Gary! Thanks for sharing them with us. Even with the cold it still had to be worth it to get those great shots!

Amazing shots. You have a wonderful talent, and you are so nice to share it with us. Keep them coming please!
Terry

For those of you who were wondering what sort of atmospheric behavior was responsible for the visual effect in the photo at the start of this thread that I labeled "Pillar of Fire", these are actually called sun pillars.

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/eyes/pillars.htm
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011107.html

Basically they're caused by light being reflected off the surface of flat ice crytstals high in the atmosphere and they take on the color of the incident light. By reflecting off the surface, you observe a beam or pillar of light rather than the more commonly observed halo or sun dog when the light passes through the crystals. Hence, on Monday night in the photos that I shot, yellows, reds, and oranges. The URL above gives a good explanation of the effect.

Gary

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 03-14-2002).]

Went to the website for this information, Gary, as you know. Quite interesting!

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Terry (Teresa) Forrest

absolutely marvelous!
Thanks for sharing!
chris g

Haven't seen these photos until now...my-oh-my!!! The photos are dynamite, and I only wish I had been standing beside Gary seeing this beauty that God had created...as one of my grandtwins would say "Good job, God!!!"

Derith

[This message has been edited by Nana (edited 02-08-2002).]

I am awe struck! what fabulous pictures. I have seen some good pictures before but nothing like these. WOW I only wish I could have been there to watch you work and to see the real thing. Must have been fantastic.

Thanks for the experience. And thanks for your willingness to share some of the how to's.

Dale

For anyone interested, there is a large version of two of the sun pillar images above over on the photography forum. I just picked up 10x15 lightjet prints of these on Fuji Crystal Archive photo paper tonight and all I can say is WOW!!!!!!!

Gary

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-16-2002).]

Gary, The shot are great and looking forward to April. If we have a picture that looks good can we post it here? Are there any ground rules for sending pictures or should we send them to the gallery?

Chuck

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bigdragon

Chuck,

There's now a Lighthouse Photography forum that would be the perfect place to post photos. One of the threads on there explains how to go about posting a photo to a forum. Don't hesitate to e-mail me with any questions. Looking forward to seeing what you've got to post as well as to having a chance to shoot some of the lights along the California coast with you in April.

Gary