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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 .

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III 8 seconds F/23.0 ISO 200 38 mm

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