Not a particularly picturesque lighthouse, but still a lighthouse and beggars cannot be chooser.
I was looking through online news and saw a post from our local member of gov about a working bee in one of the nearby conservation park around the lighthouse…… hold on, what lighthouse! Lighthouses are always handy locations so after after a bit of google maps research (it is actually within walking distance embarrassingly, so much for my in depth local knowledge) I set out with my Canon RP and phone to do some location scouting. It was the middle of day so was not planning on taking any real shots, just some location reminders.
Just one of the weird apps I find useful for planning photos and remembering locations, “theodolite”
It really didn’t look like it would work for any of the evening or night shots I was hoping to do and so I wandered through the conservation park to the next hill looking for some long lens shots that may work. Just when I got to the top of this hill I looked across and saw an epic cloud framing the lighthouse. I didn’t have time, or the gear, to set up anything special so I just took some handheld images leaning towards under exposure to try and get some separation between clouds and sky. I think I always had it in my mind to try and turn it into a B&W to highlight the drama of the clouds, but really had no idea if it would work until I got home and could have a look at the image if it was going to be a keeper. I think it was in the end.
The final image is obviously enhanced from the original. Essentially all I did was convert it to B&W using two seperate luminosity masks on the one image. One lights mask to capture and define the sky and clouds, and a less aggressive mid tones mask to convert the land and lighthouse to monotone. In case you are wondering I use TK panels (https://goodlight.us/writing/actionspanelv7/tk7.html) to generate the masks in PhotoShop CC, they work incredibly well. Then the biggest challenge was to decide on the best crop. Just reinforces that you should always be ready to capture an image when it comes along.
Canon EOS RP, RF 24-105mm, f8 1/800s ISO100