Most of these photos were shot late yesterday afternoon at the South Haven lighthouse. A few were shot during a late November gale. Yesterday, WNW winds were running in the 20-30 mph range with occasional gusts to about 50. The first two images were shot from up on the bluff about a half mile away using a Nikon F5/Nikkor 500 mm f4 AFS body/lens combination on Fuji Provia 400F to allow a high enough shutter speed (1/2500th sec at f4) to cope with the buffeting of that big lens in the winds. The two frames below were back to back of the remains of the same wave.



Shooting from down on the beach with an 80-200 f2.8 at 200 mm, 1/1250th sec at f5.6, gave a little different perspective with good contrast between the spray and the dark clouds out over the lake.



From this location, 300 mm is about perfect for breaking waves at the end of the pier.



Finally, shooting from most of the way out the north pier across the channel at 80 mm you get an interesting view of the waves sweeping into the pier.



Or occasionally breaking over the lighthouse when the winds are out of the SW as the were during a late November gale that I photographed...



Hope you enjoy these photos from Michigan's Stormy Side.

Gary

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-14-2002).]

Nice shots, Gary. How do you like the Provia? Sensia is all I've used so far, I have no way locally to buy any professional film.(there may be a reason for that)

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Bud Schrader

Hi Bud,
The only time I use Sensia is when I run out of Velvia/Provia 100F/400F. I love the Provia 100F for most things but opt for Velvia when I really want COLOR like on those shots of the sun pillar. You might look into ordering the Fuji pro slide film if you get serious about shooting slides. B&H Photo-Video in NYC is the best place to buy it. I order mine from there when I get it.... I usually buy about 20-40 rolls of each at a time.

Gary

Thanks, Gary for the reply. I have the B&H book, thats where I bought my Tamron 28-200 travel lens. I'll probably order some Velvia for my next trip up, most likely weekend of March 2nd or 9th. Thanks!

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Bud Schrader

Bud,
If you're coming up the weekend of the 2nd, let me know if you're out toward this side of the state. Happy to meet you out at the lake. I'm headed your way next Tues/Wed... have to go to Akron.

Gary,

Nice shots. I especially like them because I was there in September. I was at Grand Haven the 10th. Real windy and some nice waves. We were on our way to Big Sable the next morning when we heard on the radio about 9-11 stuff. The docents had a portable tv.
I will never forget where I was that day.

Did get some good pictures, for my beginner skill level anyway. Nothing like yours of course. I realy appreciate the info you are sharing. I think I could get good at this with help from you and the other photographers here. I get lucky every once in a while Like my St. Augustine picture in the forum contest. Wife got me a good heavy tripod for Christmas. Guess I'll have to break out the old RICO. I'll bring some of my pictures to Rosemont. Hope to see you there.

Dale

Hi Dale! On 9/10, my husband and I were with Gary. First he took us to St. Joseph, MI where he and I took photos of the lighthouse at St. Joe's. I got some good perspective shots of the catwalk there and the lighthouse and catwalk; caught my husband in a couple of them as a very tiny person at the end of the photos. He then took us to South Haven to the lighthouse there where we set up our cameras and tripods from up on the bluff to the left of the lighthouse. It was a very warm and windy day and the Monday after a stormy weekend. The waves that day were tremendous and, in many cases, so high that they were over the top of the lighthouse. We both got some great big wave photos, Gary more so because he had his big 500mm lens with the special heavy duty head on the tripod. At times, I found myself quite awestruck seeing those waves break over the lighthouse and the pier and had to remind myself to watch what I was doing or knock my camera and tripod over in my excitement at seeing this happen. Gary remarked then and since then, that he didn't ever remember being there before on such a warm, windy day - during the day - with such great, high winds. I got quite a nice photo of Gary with his big lens sitting in his folding chair in front of it, with the suitcase for this "monster" lens showing in the background. In the later afternoon, possibly around 4-6 p.m. or so, we had gone from up on the bluff to down much closer to the lighthouse. I got a nice silhouetted shot of Gary down there as well as one of my best lighthouse shots of the entire trip (one of my 2 lighthouse shots entered in the contest). After a nice supper at one of the local restaurants, we returned to take sunset and twilight photos of the lighthouse. That's when Gary started introducing me to low light photography and I didn't do all that well at first, messing up a number of shots, but during twilight, I got another of my best lighthouse shots in a very unique way and it became a 2-day Photo of the Day (the first day almost an all-day Photo of the Day from about 1 a.m. on to midnight except for a couple 20 minute periods when a couple other photos were up) on one of the photographic websites. This was the other of my lighthouse shots that I entered in the contest. All in all, it was quite an amazing day.

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Terry (Teresa) Forrest

September 10th and 11th are days that I will never forget where I was because of the tragic events in New York City... They'll end up etched in all of our memories, much like the recollection of where you were when you heard that JFK had been shot.

Sunset the night of the 10th was beautiful, and the first time Terry had tried any low light photography. The new, heavy tripod your wife got you Dale is quite a blessing for such photography. Attached is one of my sunset photos that evening from South Haven since Terry didn't post one.



Hope you enjoy this one and that the URL link to this site works properly. My apologies if the image is a little large reelative to ankyone's laptop monitor.

Gary

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

Gary, I'll keep you posted as to when we'll be coming up. We would be glad to meet you at the lake if your schedule permits.

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Bud Schrader

Both of these images are sized at 637 X 427 pixels, which is about the maximum for posting an image in the forums so that the viewer doesn't have to scroll to see the entire image when their monitor is set at 800 X 600 pixels..
By posting an image (or two side by side) wider than that it causes the viewer to have to scroll the page over to even just read the words of anything posted on that page in the forum.. Actually keeping the image size down to at or under 600 X 400 pixels helps those who still view the Internet at 640 X 480 on their monitors.

BTW they are of South Haven on a much less blustery day....


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

When Gary didn't tell everyone about the particular sunset or actually, twilight, photo that he posted above is that it was a 2-day Photo of the Day on one of the photographic websites. And, Gary, you know from not only having seen my slides from that day, but having scanned the best ones for me, the main reason I didn't post any, is that I didn't get very many at all from my very first attempt at low light photography (but did on another night) and that my very best one from then and earlier in the day were my 2 lighthouse entries in the contest!

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Terry (Teresa) Forrest

OK, Paul... mea culpa. I work on a big monitor with screen dimensions of 1280x1024 because of all of the photo imaging work that I do in association with my photographic interests.

I put up a post that has URLs to some bigger versions of the sun pillar shots I posted last week. Those images will take longer to display if anyone is pulling them down on a conventional modem because of the size of the images, i.e. >130 Kb each. In addition, they'll exceed the dimensions of anyone with a screen display of 800x600, but at the same time, there is enough detail in those images that I felt that there would be people who might enjoy being able to see a bigger version, even if it means having to scroll to see it all.

As for your posts being on a much less blustery day, yep, that would be true! Some of the calm days at South Haven are beautiful...



but you don't get many of them in the winter due to the permacloud here in Michigan. The shot above was taken some time ago during a much nicer time of the year.

Gary

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

Another very vividly colorful image that helps satisfy the "soul" of this "color freak"!!! LOL!!

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Terry (Teresa) Forrest

Another suggestion... after a certain time frame you might want to change some of the images to links... to aid in the thread loading up in a relative short time. I am on a DSL so it isn't a problem for me but a lot of people viewing the forums are still on slower providers.
example your image from above:
September Sunset at South Haven
I like to open images in a separate window myself for better viewing any way... away from everything distracting me from only the image...

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

This is not as "blustery" a photo as the ones that are posted in the beginning of this thread, but this is one of the high wave ones that I took on 9/10 at South Haven after a stormy weekend. Unless I use my 2x teleconverter, the maximum I can get is at 300mm with my 70-300mm lens on one of my Canons.



At times that day, the waves were really coming fast and by the time I reacted, many times the waves were only a little "trickle". This is one of the exceptions! Hope you like it!

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Terry (Only my mother, brothers & sisters call me Teresa) Forrest

Nice one, Terry! As I recall, you have more than a few shots from that day. I know I ended up shooting 4 full rolls of Provia 400F before I quit up on the bluff that afternoon!

Gary

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-21-2002).]

I think I shot about 3 or 4 rolls of slides also from that day, but as you know, Gary, (and I know you won't see this until Thursday when you're back from Ohio after giving your scientific lectures), I've only got about 50 of them scanned from that day --since you're the one who so graciously scanned them for me during the time I didn't have my own slide scanner. So there's still about 60-100 that I need to check a little more thoroughly to see if there are any others that are worthwhile scanning. I did buy a small folding table to set up near the computer the scanner is hooked up to so that I can better arrange my boxes of slides, and so I won't knock them over and make a mess of them. Also ordered some archival notebooks and acid-free pages to put my slides into so I can organize them better.

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Terry (Only my mother, brothers & sisters call me Teresa) Forrest

So Terry, do you now have a slide scanner? Care to share the particulars? In a previous discussion it was mentioned not a good idea to make prints from slides and then scan, but thats how my contest entries got done. Sent the pictures to John, I guess he scanned them , they didn't look TOO bad.

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Bud Schrader

Hi Bud!

Yes, I do have a slide scanner now, a Minolta Dimage Scan Speed which has a slide holder for 4 slides and a negative holder for a negative strip of 4. It was Gary's before he bought his new Nikon scanner and he gave me what I consider as a very good price break on it. I paid him the balance on it while I was there in Dec. to, besides photograph with him again, see an 11x14 matted and framed print of 1 of my lighthouse photos from Sept. hanging in an art gallery's Christmas show from the beginning of Nov.-the wk. before Christmas. (It is also one of my lighthouse entries in the contest.)

The scanner is in excellent condition and while I was there, Gary went over quite a detailed explanation of the scanner, including some little drawings of some of the scanner software's editing features. He shipped it to me after I got back home and I've been scanning some of my slides for the last month or so, probably more. It's fairly easy to use, but like most everything, it is a learning experience. I find that a lot of times, the initial scans are too dark, so I adjust them as much as I can with the scanner's software and then take them into my software, Paint Shop Pro, and improve on what I was able to do with them, getting them as close as possible to what is on the original slide.

This time of year is very busy for me at work so it's mainly weekends that I do scanning, though I have at times scanned only 4 at a time when I've wanted to post something different to either www.photoblink.com or www.shuttercity.com or some of the Community Zero photo websites. (These are all photo websites that welcome all levels of photographers to post their photos.) Majority are a great bunch of people from across the U.S. and around the world, and I've learned a great deal. Photoblink is how I came in contact with Gary and we started becoming friends. I've probably given you too much information (LOL) but please feel free to ask me anything else that I may not have answered for you here!



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Terry (Only my mother, brothers & sisters call me Teresa) Forrest

Thats OK Terry, thanks for the info. BTW do you have Sept. 2001 issue of "PHOTOgraphic"? I was reading a test on Sensia and came across "Eccentric Concentric", a photo by guess who? It's on page 47

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Bud Schrader

You're welcome, Bud re the information. As to Eccentric Concentric, I have the issue of the magazine, a tiny version of it on a note he sent to me with one of his test prints ("test" prints that are better than some people's "real" prints) and it's on the Ultimate Lighthouse Screensaver that he gave me as part of my Christmas present last year. The prints were a thank you for my recommending him as a photographer on a website, where he wound up writing 2 articles illustrated with his photos. The funny thing is that I had both prints matted and framed and hung on my cube wall at work. One of my co-workers loved one of the photos so much that she wound up buying 2 prints from Gary! He's done as much if not more for me.

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Terry (Only my mother, brothers & sisters call me Teresa) Forrest

Terry,
At some point you asked me about the height of the South Haven Lighthouse. It stands 35 feet tall on the pier and would normally have a focal plane of 37 feet... right now, however, the lake is down considerably - near an all time record low - which probably makes the focal plane about 40 feet or so and the top of the lighthouse about 45 feet above lake level. Hope this helps. The URL below will get you to an information page on the South Haven Light.

http://www.lhdepot.com/database/uniquelighthouse.cfm?value=620


Gary

[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-25-2002).]

I suspect the photos I put here came up as thumbnails because I didn't size them right, so I edited them off here. Either that or it has something to do with my not being able to get anything on the chat room screen earlier. Will try again tomorrow.



[This message has been edited by 1of3trees@prodigy.net (edited 03-15-2002).]

Now I remember what I didn't do right! Forgot to enlarge it by clicking on it before I right-clicked to get the URL!!

This is another big wave one from 9/10 taken the Monday after a stormy weekend. I didn't post any of them before before of Gary's "The Wave" entry in the photo contest.



Here's another one, which I called "Over the Sides":



and then there's this one:

What else is there to say, other than, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull."





[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 03-15-2002).]

Great pics! Is that the prevailing wind that causes such dynamic waves to crash into the light? I certainly wouldn't want to drop anchor there for the night.

Bob

I'm in the mood to post a few more of my storm images, so, here's another from South Haven take the same day as those that I started this thread with.



This shot was handheld with a 300 mm f4 lens on Fuji Sensia 400 slide film (I was out of Provia 400F, which I prefer to use when I need high speed slide film since it has much finer grain) and the camera set on Shutter "S" priority at 1/500th sec. It's also probably worth noting that from the top of the lighthouse to the lake surface is about 45 feet, which puts the highest bit of spray throw up that's going out the top of the frame at somewhere in the 90-100 feet above the lake range! The dark object to the right of the billowing mountain of spray is a gull flying in that general direction.




[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 03-15-2002).]

Bob,

Winds out of the SW steady in the range of 20-25 mph are what kick up those waves at South Haven... higher winds = bigger waves! Actually, if you sail up the channel that Jonathan Livingston was flying out over for about 3/4 of a mile, there is a beautiful marina up in there that is isolated from the waves that pound the piers!



[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 03-17-2002).]