Seascape Photography at Sakonnet Point Lighthouse
In photography so much is said about getting out and shooting in “good light”, and the “golden hour”. And the people who say it are right – the time of day can have such a huge impact on a photograph. The light in the hour before sunset and the hour after sunrise can be breathtaking and full of beautiful colors. On a recent Saturday night I packed up my gear and headed out to Sakonnet Point in Little Compton, Rhode Island to photograph the Sakonnet Point Lighthouse, located on Little Cormorant Rock, just off of the beach.
Sakonnet Point Beach Sunset – Little Compton, Rhode Island
The lighthouse was originally build in 1883, and was first used on November 1, 1884 and remained in use until it was decommissioned after sustaining damage during Hurricane Carol in 1954. Since 1985 the light has been owned and operated by Friends of Sakonnet Point Lighthouse, Inc, who have restored and maintained the light to this day.
When I arrived at the beach that night I had every intention of photographing the sunset on this historic light. As is my practice, I arrived well before sunset and walked up and down the beach looking for interesting vantage points, and taking photographs to see how the composition would work. However, as I setup to photograph the lighthouse, I kept looking back over my shoulder to an interesting rock formation at the other end of the beach. Look forward at the light, look back at the rocks. It only took a few minutes to realize that I was captivated by the rocks, and no matter how I looked at the light house my heart was just not into it. I gathered up my stuff, and headed back towards the rocks.
I set up my tripod and camera and grabbed my wide angle lens from my bag. What I love about a wide angle lens is not that I can photograph a really wide scene, but rather how I can get really close in to my subject. In the below photographs I was only a foot or so away from the rock formation. Looking at the seascape in front of me I knew that if I set my camera to capture the sunset and color in the sky, the rocks would appear as just dark shadows, loosing all the color and texture that had initially caught my eye. I also knew that if I set my camera to capture the color and texture in the rocks, then the sky would be a white blob, losing all the colors of the sunset and the beauty of the clouds. To deal with this wide range of lighting levels, I shot 7 different photographs of the seascape, each at a different exposure. I took the “normal” exposure as my camera wanted to capture the scene, and then shot 3 shots that underexposed the image by a full stop, and then 3 shots that overexposed the image by a full stop. Within these 7 photographs I had one photograph that was dark enough to keep the details in the brightest part of the sky, and a photograph that I could see the details in the deepest shadows of the rocks, and every level in between.
Once home, I was able to take the 7 RAW photographs and perform some basic developing in Photoshop Lightroom. This included setting a camera calibration, correcting any lens distortion, setting the White Balance and performing some Noise Reduction. The 7 photographs were then exported to Photomatix, where an HDR photograph was created and Tone-mapped, resulting in one photograph that contained the entire seascape. I find that this intermediate photograph is simply a good starting point. The photograph at this state often seems a bit flat, and lacking in contrast. I almost always take the photographs into Photoshop to to restore a little bit of pop back to it. The final result are the seascape photographs that you see below.
Sakonnet Point Lighthouse Sunset – Little Compton, Rhode Island
While I was there, I did manage to get a photograph or two that included the lighthouse, however it is a really small part of the photograph, and certainly not the dominating lighthouse seascape that I had anticipated creating. The good news is that the lighthouse has held strong for 128 years, so I am pretty sure that I will get the chance to create the photograph that I have in mind another day. But for now, this photograph of the light will have to do. I hope you enjoy!