amacal1
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Not many scenic lighthouses in Louisiana, but one of the few is not far from me. It is difficult to get close to, though. I had been timing this shot for a while, but weather always seemed to get in the way. I would have rather been here the day before, but this was the clearest shot I could get. I arrived at around 4am to set up and wait for some magic to happen. Weather, again, proved to be disappointing, but there were some occasional breaks in the clouds. I managed to snag a handful of shots before the sun and the haze and the clouds interfered too badly.
The long distance (and telephoto lens) along with the fast moving clouds meant that I had no choice but to use relatively high shutter speeds. I didn't like the resulting look of the choppy water. After the fact, I decided to stack about 20 images I had taken back-to-back, which smoothed out the water quite nicely. I'm still not completely happy with my processing, and I'm afraid it looks a little "cooked", but I haven't revisited this image in a while and I'd like to share before it gets too old.
A24A7744+Stack-20200209-FULL-2 by Andrew Macaluso, on Flickr
When I arrived at 4am, to my surprise there were a few people already there and just hanging around. I eventually struck up conversation with them. It turned out to be a couple who were driving through and doing a little sightseeing on their way home. I observed them trying (and failing) to take a moonlight selfie with their cellphones (in near pitch black at around 4 in the morning). I offered to take a shot and then texted it to them right away.
A24A7325-20200209-FULL-2 by Andrew Macaluso, on Flickr
I worked this up quickly by testing a couple of exposures for the background and then for the foreground, lit with a handheld YN-560III. It was a 20sec exposure, so I walked a few feet to the side and popped the flash. You can see the lady is still looking at the camera while the guy's eyes have followed me.
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