For the second lighthouse of the trip, we stopped in South Haven, MI. Upon pulling into the parking lot, this beauty came sailing through the channel and into the lake. This is the Friends Good Will, a sloop that sails from the Michigan Maritime Museum. It’s a replica, but you could easily have fooled me. Then again, I know virtually nothing about ships, so it would be easy. My daughter on the other hand, loves learning about ships. So was beyond ecstatic seeing the sails go up.
It was a harsh sunny day, without a cloud in the sky just after noon. Pretty much the worst type of light to shoot in. The sun was at our backs though, which was the one saving grace here. If it would have been the other way around, I wouldn’t be sharing a photo with you. So, I tossed on my big lens and shot some images. I probably should have set the ISO a touch higher, or dropped the aperture down a bit to get a little higher shutter speed, but she wasn’t moving very fast, and the VR on the 200-500 works pretty darn well. I am actually surprised at how well the camera meter handled the bright white masts. It didn’t underexpose really at all. I did bring up the shadows a touch, and toned down the highlights slightly, but really left it be for the most part. I was ready to raise the exposure comp a little, but didn’t need to. Plus, this was accidentally shot on jpeg not RAW like I always do. At some point, I must have spun the dial and changed it. One day, I will take Moose Petersons advice and be sure to always reset my camera at the end of a shoot to a default starting point.
The lighthouse was also cool, but due to the light and the people. was much harder to photograph. I tried a few things with framing around the catwalk structure, but never got something I was happy with. The shot above would have been much stronger if the ship was a little closer, but I’ll take what I can get with the conditions I have.
All in all, it was a great stop. The best part was not the photos that I got. It was seeing the pure joy from my daughter getting to see a tall ship in person for the first time. That was worth the whole trip.