Ahhhhhh living just 30 miles east of the South Haven lighthouse, which I seem to be photographing on a weekly basis of late, I've just got to second Bud's opinion!!!!

To be honest, I don't have a clue how many lighthouses that I've seen. I've hit all but a couple on the US Pacific Coast, one or two in Hawaii, probably about 50 here in Michigan, a number each in Ohio, PA, NY, Wisconsin, all of NC lights,and various lights in Florida, SC, VA, and Maryland. Obviously lacking are those in New England, which I'll remedy in part later this year. I've also seen a couple in Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Sweden. Not nearly any significant number of Finland's 58 (if I remember correctly) lights, most of which require a boat trip to see as they're scattered among the various islands in the Gulf of Bothnia. On the other hand, in Finland in the summer, you can visit them and photoghraph them about 20+ hours a day, which helps!

In terms of the number of frames I've run through my various cameras over the years, I'm well ahead of John's total number of posts on the HL forum! At present, there are in excess of 525 of these images that I liked enough at one time or another to digitize from my slides to put into my screensaver here at home. It's becoming the ultimate disk hog, currently occupying >600 Mbytes of hard drive space!

What really got me started on this lighthouse odyssey was a spring break camping trip while I was in grad school in 1973 to the Outer Banks. Bodie, Hatteras, and Okracoke are the guilty lights for getting me wound up and I've been aiming one camera or another at them for nearly 30 years. Going through a full blown gale with enough oomph to blow over travel trailers that spring at Bodie probably can be credited for getting me started in photographing them during gales and storms! The only thing left standing in the morning in the campground was the concrete block shower room where about 20 of us spent the night and had a great time!

Gary


[This message has been edited by lighthouse_photo (edited 02-17-2002).]