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Light Keeper
Uploaded on: July 8, 2008
2 Bracketed shots about 20 minutes each. This shot is completely flashlight painted. There is no light on this lighthosue. I was in the dark. There is also not another angle to get this shot with circular star trails due to the thick forest about 35 feet away from the base. You can see my shadow at the center of the base where I was waving my flashlight. I probably should have centered the lighthouse instead of centering the startrails.
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rdelangel says,
I want to learn how to do the star trails now that I have my D300 lol
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JuliaB has offered this critique,
No NO, I disagree! The centering of the star circle was a wiser choice. Give the photo the balance it needs, and impact. The subject, to me, are the stars, not the lighthouse. The lighthouse is the anchor.
I love this types of shots. You did a great job with it and your explanation explains away any problems I might have had with it. I like this photograph quite a bit.
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iceprincess says,
Wow, I love this. To me this conveys an understanding of light that I sam still trying to grasp. ok, you need to do a tutorial too lol. This is incredible :)
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jmanzione says,
Man, I don’t get it. I think Julia is impressed with the star circles. If so Julia, stop by my house tonight and I’ll show you how its done. This needs to be critiqued as a whole, not just because you (the viewer) likes the swirling lights.
My critique:
The lighthouse is the main subject, the stars anchor the shot, gives it some depth, that’s all. The lighthouse needs to have been shot at a different perspective, as is, the skew of the lighthouse is off. Its feels awkward. There is way too much color shift, if you shoot a lot of this stuff, you compensate for the color shift. If you don’t know then you don’t. Using a filter can help, but these days its easier to correct the color shift by shooting in RAW mode and adjusting the white balance in post.
I can see a fence around the lighthouse as well, the photographer should have either cropped it, shot it at a different angle (my preference) or used a burn in tool to darken it. Having it show up like this looks lazy, or he just doesn’t know enough on how to properly compose such a building. Which is not to say anything negative, shooting tall narrow building is very difficult, the perspective is easily skewed. Now, had this been shot using a bellowed lens with nice perspective, had it been properly cropped, had he compensated for the color shift, then I would “consider” making it a feature. But none of that is here and I think Julia was impressed by the night sky. I know this sounds harsh, and I really wish I could pull it back, but the truth is no one should allow any one aspect of a photograph to influence the overall critique. Its not one element that makes a photo, its all of them.
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yomommaj says,
hello, my friend…You know I love my lighthouses but your star trail with Cape Hattaras Lighthouse is outstanding work…You desirve to get a free membership for this one…jmo…Janice
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kpullen says,
So basically I can fix the skew in lens correction in photoshop, clone out the fences and get rid of the black to pink color shift and I have a better shot? I was lucky to compose the shot the way I did. Id need a fish eye lens or a full frame camera to lose the 1.5x factor. The forest does not lend to a great angle with the base still in the shot. It would be nice to have a tilt shift lens to correct the cruddy skew, but not in the budget yet.