Moments like these – The Blog

St Mary’s Lighthouse

—

by

David Harrison
in , ,

This must be one of the most photographed lighthouses in the UK. I must have shots from at least three visits to it. So, the challenge was to try and find a different view or perspective to take it from, and make use of the early afternoon May light. The tide was out revealing rock pools and ripples in the sand, but in this shot I was trying to both lead the eye to the lighthouse using the causeway, but also to get front-to-back focus from a low-angle shot. I think it worked OK, but your views are always welcomed.

[Following comments I’ve looked at the image again and straightened it – the level of the sea is also a bit of an eye-puzzler as it looks higher on one side of the island to the other, and that maybe why I didn’t notice that, I’ve also put it through Topaz Sharpen AI and that (I hope) will mean you can zoom better to see detail, if you so wish.]

Shot hand-held with my FE 24mm F1.4 GM lens on the Sony A7R III with ISO 100 at 1/50sec and f/16.

Comments

7 responses to “St Mary’s Lighthouse”

  1. johnrsheppard avatar
    johnrsheppard

    I think it worked well, too,( but I find the slope of the sea distracting!)

    Reply
    1. David Harrison avatar
      David Harrison

      You’re so right John. I’ll need to look at that again. It shows when you focus on one thing – the lighthouse, and getting it vertical – that you can overlook another pretty obvious line. Hopefully, next time you look at the image it will have been “corrected”!

      Reply
  2. Leonard Smith avatar
    Leonard Smith

    Hi David. This to me, is not one of your better photos. The problem I have with it is that the lighthouse is too small and when I enlarge the picture it looses it’s sharpness. The picture is dominated by the rocks and sea. I suspect the thinking about this picture is to do with perspective and on this occasion it doesn’t grip me in the same way that many of your photos do.
    I know you like to try out new ideas which is why your photography is of a high standard.
    Regards
    Len

    Reply
    1. David Harrison avatar
      David Harrison

      Thanks Len. Very fair comments. I will look at the sharpness – presumably of the lighthouse. I don’t suppose I thought anyone would want to zoom in on it, which is an assumption I shouldn’t have made. I probably paid too much attention to the foreground sharpness. If I’d had the tripod, I’d probably have done a focus-stacking pair of shots. Alternatively, I could have possibly used manual focus and peeking to get a better focus front-to-back.

      Reply
      1. David Harrison avatar
        David Harrison

        The image on my screen is as sharp, as sharp can be, but uploading it to the website and changing it from a TIFF to a JPEG seems to have lost some detail. The problem is that you need to keep the image size reasonably sized to enable a fast load. I’m uploading a larger sized image that should be better – but it’s not as good as the one I can see, unfortunately.

        Reply
        1. Jim avatar
          Jim

          I agree with Leonard that this is a (nice) shot of rocks, pools, and sand, with the lighthouse in the background.
          It is worth opening the photo in a new tab to see it all at once, without needing to scroll. This means the height is restricted by the height of the screen of course. The upshot is that any lack of sharpness is less apparent than it is ‘zoomed in’ on the page.

          Reply
          1. David Harrison avatar
            David Harrison

            OK. I’m going to look into a way of letting “selected people”, ie those subscribing to the blog, a way of seeing full resolution images. I’ve already shared a full-resolution image with Len. I’ll do the same for you Jim.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *