[#13] Windy Lighthouse
Dec 10, 2020
The wind had picked up after two days of torrential rain and the cold front was pulling down the temperature to the forty’s quickly. As I shut the car door, I looked down the tree lined road blocked off to vehicles. I still had about 3/4 of mile to walk and the sun was setting. Carrying a 6 pound lens attached to my camera, I slung the tripod over the back of my shoulder and started walking. As I thought about several images I wanted to capture with the Morris Island Light, I crested the path on the large sand dune before the beach below. I stopped as I knew this would be a great elevated spot to shoot the lighthouse. Little did I know it would be a once in a lifetime moment.
I setup on the side of the path so others could easily get by my. Extending the legs fully, I tamped the three inch spikes down into the sand to be sure it was stable. Using a long focal length requires absolute rigidity or the image will be blurred and no amount of post processing can fix that - the shot is ruined. The straps on my camera were dangling beside me because with a lens this heavy, I carry everything using the strap mounted to the lens which keeps the camera mount from breaking.
This high up there was nothing blocking the wind. I mounted everything on the tripod using the bracket I screwed to the bottom of the lens and tightened everything down. I tried to shake it back and forth settling everything just a little more down into the sand. Then, I turned it all on and looked through the viewfinder.
I was using my mirrorless camera so setting things up was much easier. My old SLR’s and my medium format have optical viewfinders and I always use a focusing screen with a grid to get things leveled and centered well. This camera uses an electronic viewfinder, so I let it overlay a grid, but also put the leveling line in view so I could move things around until it was framed the way I wanted, but also perfectly level. I set the exposure and begin focusing.
The lens mounted was a 280mm lens built in the 1990’s that is corrected for color, meaning every color is crisp and focused at the same point. I’ll talk about APO in another Coffe Talk episode. This time, I also added a 1.4x extender meaning I was using a 400mm lens at about f/3.5. Talk about a narrow depth of field! I wasn’t sure I could get the top of the lighthouse and the dock area all in focus, but I wanted it to really pop out of the background. So, my camera also zooms in when I am focusing a manual lens and I did the best I thought I could. I took an image to see what would happen.
The strips of blue sky behind the lighthouse were nice and the lighthouse was still in the shadows of the storm front. Everything was sharp, which meant my tripod and focus were good and the shutter speed was high enough. But everything was a little dull. I looked behind me and figured I’d get some color maybe in the clouds but I doubted the sun would show its face.
Then the strangest thing happened. The light poked through some slit between the cloud layers. The lighthouse was bathed in golden setting sunlight and nothing else was! I could suddenly see the bright crests on the waves coming in. This area leads to the Charleston harbor, so the waves only crash the lighthouse for a brief period and then go around it. I could see the wind whipping the wave crests and leaving a trail like a comet going towards the sun. Then waves began splashing up the side as they crashed into the eastern base of the lighthouse.
I adjusted my exposure to compensate for the brightly Iit lighthouse and waited for a wave to hit the base. I snapped a few in succession as they got close anticipating what might happen. You see, no matter how good a digital camera is, there is a delay between pressing the shutter and capturing the image. I’ve shot film for so long I can press the shutter and instantly get the photograph - it’s all mechanical and spring driven. Here, I had to anticipate what might happen.
In the end I got about 25 images before the light faded back into the clouds. I like to paint with the light, and these all ended up looking like an oil painting. In all my years of shooting photographs, I’ve never had nature’s perfect spotlight and wind mixed with the timing of the tide. All three things put together - and being there setup ready to go - were the best 1-2 minutes I think I’ve ever had. Sure, I’ve had great light, great weather and great tides. This was a lottery ticket wining, and I grabbed the prize.