Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Posted by Don Smith (California, United States) on 29 August 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, located 27 miles north of Santa Cruz, stands against a twilight sky on a rare fogless summer evening along California's Highway 1, the Cabrillo Highway. The lighthouse was built in 1872 and stands 115 feet making it not only one of the tallest, but also oldest of all the lighthouses on the west coast. This image was captured on an unusually calm evening made even better with the company of my friends and colleagues, Mike Hall and James Guillory. Our day had started with an early wakeup call to arrive at HP Pavilion in San Jose to do a lighting setup and photograph portraits of some 150 staff members of the San Jose Sharks. This lasted until noon, and after lunch, we spent the day visiting a couple of local camera stores and then it was off for some scouting of the lighthouse and a dinner at a cool little restaurant in Pascadero (none of use had ever been there before). We chose this angle for a couple of reasons. The lighthouse had lost one of its support rings and a cyclone fence had been set up around its perimeter. This eliminated the option of shooting it from the other side. We also felt that if the fog held off, we would get a nice twilight wedge (which we did) as we chose a location 90 degrees off axis from the sun This allowed for our polarizers to pull out even more color in the sky than our eyes could see. We also liked the sweep of the coastline which leads the eye to the lighthouse. The buildings in front of the lighthouse are Hostels. This image was a 5-exposure blend in Photomatix Pro 3.0 software. Our new beta version has a noise reduction feature. HDRSoft just keeps making this software better and better. If you are interested in purchasing this software, please type in my code at checkout: donsmithphotography and receive a 15% discount. As always, please visit my website at: Don Smith Photography .

Comments (18)

Eleftheria! from Athens, Greece

Fantastic shot!
A beautiful good morning from me! :-)

29 Aug 2008 7:46am

Josh from Vancouver, Canada

Nice! Nice camera too.

29 Aug 2008 8:47am

San G. from Encino, California, United States

This is an absolutely fabulous shot. The expanse of the sea leads the eye straight up to the lighthouse - perfect! The sky is such a beautiful color. I also appreciate all the information you're giving us. Maybe I can visit there one day.

29 Aug 2008 8:51am

Marta from Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal

Great shot, beautiful

29 Aug 2008 11:09am

bm from Budapest, Hungary

great composition and the water is just breathtaking, like a silk scarf

29 Aug 2008 2:08pm

Don Smith from California, United States

Good morning to all,

Thanks everone for all your comments - this was a fun evening!

29 Aug 2008 2:57pm

Marie Le Corre from Voiron, France

Composition and colours are realy splendid. Great shot for me.

29 Aug 2008 3:10pm

Ana Lúcia from Leiria, Portugal

Wonderful long exposure! Marvelous.

29 Aug 2008 3:54pm

Rick Trautner from Greenbrae, CA, United States

Don,
Very nice shot, particularly in composition and color. Has the HDR software completely obviated the use of split ND filters for you now?
Rick

29 Aug 2008 4:01pm

Don Smith from California, United States

Hi Marie, Ana and Rick,

First off, thanks for the positive comments. Rick, it's funny you ask that question as I was with two other photographers yesterday evening on a location shoot in San Juan Bautista and that topic came up. I wouldn't say I've completely illiminated split grads. They still work well with even horizons and they do save a lot of post-production work. But the Photomatix Pro software has improved to the point that I tend to think more in bracketed exposures. I try to visualize how I want the finished image to look and that dictates more-or-less how I go about capturing it. I really don't relish sitting behind a monitor for hours on end. In the last two days I have invested six hours to produce five finished images - to me, that is a lot of time. However, I remember reading that Ansel Adams would spend weeks on one print, so I need to put it into perspective. I'm going for the best finished image I can get. If I can get that with splits, great, more time to do other things. With this particular image, I would not have gotten the range of detail and tones had I not gone HDR. I will be posting two more images from this shoot over the weekend and both are HDR, the next post will be a 9-exposure blend!

29 Aug 2008 5:07pm

paulski from Muncie, IN, United States

this is gorgeous; poster quality all the way. the blends are just amazing. i might need to check this software out...

29 Aug 2008 5:53pm

michelle from peoria, United States

simply stunning!!!!!!!!!

29 Aug 2008 9:49pm

DarkElf from Perth, Australia

fantastic photo! i enjoy your HDR shot as they retain a lot of natural colour and feel, while they achieve exactly what you intend - a certain mood that is uniquely associated with each photo... great work indeed!

30 Aug 2008 4:54am

Don Smith from California, United States

Hi Paulski, Michelle and DarkElf,

Thanks for the positive feedback! Your comment DarkElf regarding the color is on the mark because when you properly expose an image, you retain its correct chroma. This is accomplished by the bracketing sequence. The software is taking parts of each correctly exposed image and blending, thus the overall look is eye-popping color - more closely matched to our vision system. You will really see an example of this in tomorrow's post. I rarely add saturation when doing HDR's.

30 Aug 2008 2:20pm