This is the historic light house at Mountauk point built in circa 1796. This shot was made at around 5:30 in the morning. You could see that the lighthouse is still beaming light at this hour. In the good old days around mid 1800 they used to use lamps powered by kerosene. I wonder what they had before that ! They also used to have something called a 5th order frenel lens to focus the light beam over long distances.
Apprently this lighthouse used to be managed by only one person at any given point of time. The stairwell is so small that only one person could climb up or down the steps. I wonder how he used to manage going up and down with kerosene lamps throughout the night.
Once could get a glimpse of the history of the lighthouse for a small fee. It is well preserved in the house next to the lighthouse.
In reality, the weather was quite cloudy and the color and contrast were fairly average in the orginal picture. I had to bring up the contrast/fill light and remove the strong blue color cast to get it to this shape. I am still quite new to photoshopping but I am really happy to be able to successfully bring out what I saw through my eyes in this picture.
Continuing the same gripe from my previous blog entry, the weather was so cloudy and gloomy the whole weekend that I couldn't get any good sunrise/sunset pictures. Thanks to photoshop, I am able to revover this particular one. I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the rocks waiting for the sun to rise. But the clouds seem to have gobbled him on this day. I later came to know that the rocks were laid out to prevent the land from sliding into the ocean. Historic pictures of this site show significantly larger distance between the light house and the ocean. In fact the soil appears quite loose around this area and I did encounter quite a lot of billboards warning about land slides into the ocean.
When I was all set to drive back home, I noticed that this place attracts quite a lot of birds. Then I came to know that this place has lots of nice hiking trails to explore the landscape. Next time I definitely know what to do. If not the sun, i should be able to get some nice bird shots.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Montauk Point Light House
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
This beautiful picture is a shutter bug's ecstasy. Amazing panorama...Light houses always have created an eerie feeling for me, yet can be looked at as carrying a ray of hope for onlookers from the sea. It really depends on perspective...I am no critique as you know ;) but I think what would make the blog complete is a picture of the same light house taken at night from the sea looking ashore. In any case, that doesn't take away anything from this awesome picture posted. A picture perfect indeed - worth decking up as a wall-frame.
Thanks @niket. Your suggestion is well taken. I do plan to make more visits to this place. Hopefully I could make more inspiring shots
looks like some movie cap....
Ring !!!!!.
lol
just kidding.. it is a wonderfull shot. Wonder what camera it is.
good job.
Thanks Anil,
Yeah.. I see the eerie relationship of this shot with Ring. I will keep this in mind during my next attempt at this location.
I use a Canon 20D. Its definitely one of my better investments.
Post a Comment