Sep 25, 2012

Picturesque Maine Portland Head Lighthouse

Historic Portland Head Light is one of the prime New England Lighthouses located on beautiful Cape Elizabeth in Maine. The headlight always makes for a great lighthouse photography subject at any time of the day, 365 days a year. The other week we visited family in Portland Maine and had a blast visiting the PMA where we discovered the beautiful paintings and art by Mildred Giddings Burrage. On a side trip between lunch and dinner I stopped by the lighthouse to try out my new neutral density filter. I was hoping the up to 8 stop ND filter would slow down the shutter speed and allow for some silky water photography during mid afternoon. The filter did not disappoint and I achieved 1 to 4 second exposure times at a sunny to partly cloudy day. Setting a small aperture (large f-stop setting) maximized Depth of Field and a desired slow shutter speed. Equipped with my tripod I composed the image to feature the rocky shoreline below the lighthouse and have most lighthouse buildings within the picture. At ISO100, an aperture of f/22 and in combination with the neutral density filter resulted in an Exposure time of 2.5 seconds. During post processing I removed dust spots, minimally adjusted contrast, lighting and color saturation before sharpening the image. 

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