This week’s image is a classic example of the picture presenting itself, rather than me going hunting for a picture. Let me explain.
Last week I posted the image of the Cockspur Island Lighthouse, a super cool, scruffy little lighthouse just at the edge of Tybee Island. As I explained last week, I shot it in an absolute downpour because I thought the scene was neat. Well, after shooting it in the rain, I thought I should return and maybe shoot it in better light so you could get a better feel for the lighthouse and its surroundings. After doing some investigating, it seemed like maybe sunrise would be the time to go there, so, I showed up early and got set up.
A few obvious things had changed since I last shot it. Most obvious of course was that it had stopped raining, and second, sunrise happened to be low tide, whereas the rain shot was closer to high tide, which means you can actually see the ground in this shot, whereas everything was underwater previously. My calculations were correct that it would be a decent shot for sunrise, however what I didn’t account for was that, for this time of year, the sun wouldn’t actually be in the shot, but it would provide some nice lighting. As the sun was coming up and casting some nice color in the sky and on the side of the lighthouse… and frankly, as I was pondering how I should shoot the scene, I hear the engine of a fishing boat trolling through the inlet. Bingo! Fishing boat with the lighthouse! 🙂 I liked how the boat gave some scale to the lighthouse (even though the boat is much closer to the camera than the lighthouse, the lighthouse is in fact really short), and well, I just like fishing boats as subjects.
–Dan Thompson