Oregon's oldest lighthouse

Cape Blanco Lighthouse (infrared)

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

The Cape Blanco Lighthouse is Oregon's oldest continuously operating lighthouse AND its most westerly.  Poised on the point of a bluff six miles north of Port Orford, Oregon, with no protection from south, north or west, the winds can be fierce.  The fresnel lens was lit for the first time on December 20, 1970.  The lighthouse is still active today.  You can learn more about this exquisite lighthouse here http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=125

Besides being Oregon's oldest and most westerly lighthouse, it is also elegant -- with beautiful lines and textures.  From any angle, it presents an intriguring, strong, beautiful face to all who visit her.

This photograph was made during the workshop David Lorenz Winston and I co-led in August.  When we arrived at the lighthouse, it was enshrouded in fog, barely visible from the road.  The fog lifted, allowing us to photograph it with fog swirling around it and then completely clear of fog.  In all kinds of weather, the lighthouse at Cape Blanco never disappoints. 

While this is very much a photograph of the lighthouse, the addition of the people interacting with the lighthouse -- one entering, one leaving -- was important to me.  For my eye, other photographs made at the same time but without people lack the power and emotion of this image. 

About this photograph.  This is an infrared (invisible light) photograph made with my newly-converted Nikon D90,  using my 14-24 mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 21-mm (35-mm equivalent = 33mm). Minimal post-processing: I converted the image to grayscale and increased the blacks, clarity & contrast to enhance the black-white contrast. 

Something Different

The Dolly Dock at Night

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse -- All Rights Reserved

Here's a photo that's something different from anything I've posted here before. This was made during the Port Orford-Cape Blanco photography workshop David Lorenz Winston and I co-led in late August. We spent sunset along the beach at the Battle Rock Wayside and then noticed that the lights were on across the bay at the dolly dock. So we all trekked over there, after dark, and photographed some more.

About this image: When I first arrived at the dock, I made some standard shots of the activities going on -- people working on the docks. It was so dark, though, that there was lots of motion-blur. And so I decided to take advantage of it to create some abstracts. I shut down my aperture enough to give me a slow shutter speed and created ghost images of workers. Then I experimented with zooming in. I was drawn to the vivid orange, yellow & lime green as well as the ice on the floor of the dock & decided to use my zoom to create some images that were more about color and line than about subject. This is one of my favorites. I hope you too enjoy it.

Metadata: Nikon D300, 24-70 mm. f/2.8 lens at 24mm (equivalent = 36mm), exposure of 0.7" at f/19, ISO 800. Tripod. No flash.