We recently had a chance to spend an overnight in Portland Maine.
Weather was gorgeous the first day and overcast the next. At sunset I made my
way out eying a Portland skyline shot. The location turned out not to be
pristine of that particular night for twilight Skyline Photography but the bug
lighthouse made up big time for that disappointment. Upon arrival a beautiful
sailboat was sailing into the harbor and I barely had enough time to make it
from the parking lot to the shoreline to snap a few hand-held pictures.
If you
are a regular reader of my photo blog you know how I feel about not using a
tripod! Following this attempt I settled in and started composing around the
rocky shoreline and the Breakwater lighthouse. The sunset provided a beautiful
backdrop. Using the rocks as a compositional foreground feature that also leads
the viewer to the main subject of the lighthouse I released the shutter for
multiple exposures and compositions. Deciding on the right format, Portrait or Landscape, was not an easy task either which is why I captured this Maine
lighthouse in both formats. The critical tool was a neutral density photo
filter. This filter allows lengthening exposure times to multiple seconds,
thereby beautifully blurring out the water and creating a Silky Water Effect of
the incoming tidal waves. The camera aperture in the portrait format was set to
f/22 while for the landscape format photograph was f/18. Combined with an ISO
setting of 100 and the neutral density filter reducing the incoming light,
exposure times of 20 and 25 seconds respectively were achieved. During post
processing dust spot removal was applied to clean up the image a bit. Minimal
contrast, lighting and color saturation adjustments were made during post processing
before sharpening provided the final photography images of this Scenic Maine lighthouse
in Portland.
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