Lighthouses of Summer (Part Two)

Earlier in the week, I posted  Part One of Lighthouses of Summer.  Part One focused on the lighthouses that I visited in the Outer Banks of North Carolina during my summer break.  Part Two will focus on a lighthouse on Assateague Island and three lighthouses in Maine.

Immediately after returning from the Outer Banks, I went on a family vacation to

Chincoteague, Virginia.  It is one of our favorite places for a family vacation.  You can read more about some of the wonderful things Chincoteague has to offer visitors here.

While on Assateague Island, while I did take some photographs of the outside of the lighthouse there, the images I liked the best were the ones that I captured inside the Assateague Lighthouse.

I was drawn to the shadows and the alternative view that the fisheye lens gave to the inside of the lighthouse.

The finale of my summer break was a trip to Maine with friends and fellow photographers.  While in Maine, I had the opportunity to visit three lighthouses.  When visiting each location, I wanted to try to get something a little different than the typical lighthouse image.

The first lighthouse we visited was the Nubble Light, located in York, Maine.  We arrived at the Nubble Light in plenty of time to photograph sunrise.  The difficulty was that the fog was so thick, that it obscured the view of the lighthouse as the sun rose.  Not long after the sun rose, we were rewarded for our patience as the fog began to break creating some wonderful golden light.

The second lighthouse we visited was the Portland Head Light, located in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.   I was able to make many different compositions at this location as we spent time exploring different views of the lighthouse.  My favorite two compositions included plants that were growing near the lighthouse.

The plants in these images served two purposes.  First of all, they added an interesting foreground.  Secondly the covered up the many people who were on the grounds of the lighthouse at that time of day.

The final lighthouse we visited was the Bass Harbor Head Light, located on Mount Desert Island.  This was the most challenging of the Maine lighthouses to photograph as all who visited this lighthouse had to share a rather small viewing area which was on large rocks.

Our group arrived well before sunset in order to get a great spot to photograph the lighthouse.  Many visitors arrived to view and photograph the lighthouse while the sun set.  Photographers had to be patient in order to wait for other visitors to cross to find their positions.  In this last image, I included two of the visitors to the lighthouse.  I found their presence in the image made it a more powerful photograph.  They not only gave scale to the image, but they also made it more of a story telling image.

It was an amazing summer filled with these wonderful locations and lighthouses mixed with memories made with family and great friends!