I've visited this lighthouse for 6-7 times in the last 7 years and only recently have I discovered the where and when to photograph this Florida icon which has been shining its light since the 1880's.
You have to go to the beach and forget the areas around the light unless you want to get distortion on the light or powerlines, parking lots; barbed wire, etc.
Now the interesting thing here is that the light can be shot at dawn to one hour after sunrise and then only between 20 minutes before sunset until 30 minutes after sunset. (Of course you can always do a nighttime shot too, but that's for another day).
But anyway, last weekend, I finally got my chance to photograph the light at dawn, at sunset (which I managed to do last year), and at dusk all from the beach or just outside the dunes at Lighthouse Park (which interestingly enough, the lighthouse is not contained within lighthouse park).
You really need a 70-200 telephoto to frame your landscape shots with the lighthouse since 1) you are not allowed to climb on the sand dunes and 2) you cannot see the lighthouse from the edge of the sand dunes. Also, with the telephoto you can compose your image without human elements in the image.
If you're looking for a wide view of the area, then the spot is best from atop of the lifeguard tower, but that's for another post.
So anyway, this image, was taken around 5-10 minutes before actual sunrise and is illuminated solely by the ambient dawn and possibly some artificial light on the lighthouse from it's own lighting.
Canon EOS 7D
Canon 70-200 2.8L @ 190mm
ISO 200
f/14
1/25 second
I added a touch of noise reduction and cropped to 8x10 dimension.
Hey Michael,
At f14 I would expect the light to be sharper....not sure why???....even the SS looks OK. I like the way you composed this w/ the light betwen the grasses and the curves of the dunes but I would prefer the tops of the grass blades to be in. I think you need to revisit this one in PP'ing.
I checked the raw file and did a conversion with DPP, but I think dan me be right, me wonders if I should have set to f/22 instead of f/14 on this lens given the 1.6 crop....hmmm and upping the iso to 400.:confused:
Hi Michael, I think you have the right combination stated above. I assume you used a tripod so slower SS wouldn't have been a problem. DOF can be alot trickier with a longer telephoto than a WA.
I like the way the image is composed and agree on the grasses...