I’ve never gone to see a lighthouse before, but on my recent trip to Michigan, I saw my first. This is Big Red. Or officially Holland Harbor Light. According to the Holland Convention and Visitors Bureau, this Michigans most photographed lighthouse.
We had stopped earlier in the day to spend time on the beach. While we were under a red flag warning, it wasn’t really too bad, and there were plenty of people still enjoying the water. Since it was the middle of the afternoon though with nearly no clouds in the sky, it was a terrible time to photograph (generally speaking). So, I made a trip alone around sunset and decided that “blue hour” would make a nice scene. I enjoy shooting blue hour, more that magic hour almost. There are generally less people, and there is a nice serene feel to everything.
In this image, I dragged the shutter to a few seconds to smooth out the water. There was just enough movement to give it the painterly feel to the water. Since it was blue hour, there was still enough light left to keep the overall exposure good without blowing out the highlights in the light tower. I did do some selective masking to bring up the detail a bit on the breakwater, and to manage the plain sky a bit. Nothing crazy here, just tweaking things a bit.
I’ll have another lighthouse photo soon. We visited two, and the second one had a surprise for us. So stay tuned for more.