Behind the Scene: Nubble Lighthouse in full daylight

As a serious photographer I am well aware of many of the "rules" of photography.  One of them is that there are two good times to make outdoor images: at sunrise and at sunset, during what are called the golden hours and which include the 30 minutes before and after sunrise and sunset.

I am all in favor of the golden hours, but on this day I decided to follow my rule of photography:  the best time to take a picture is when you are there.

In this case, we were at the lighthouse parking lot at 11:30 am and the sun was as high as it was going to get all day.  This made for dark shadows, but by using the new "shadows" slider in Lightroom 4.0 I was able to brighten up some of the rocks.

Mid-day images can have some advantages on clear days if, like me, you love blue sky and puffy clouds. A polarizer would have been nice, but I didn't have one with me.


This first image is a single image taken with a 28mm-e lens. I cropped a little 
on the left and right and a lot on the top and bottom 
to create an HD aspect ratio of 16:9. 

I've kept this version at a 3:2 aspect ratio so I could keep the rocky foreground
in the picture.  The lighthouse is on an island which is so very close to the mainland,
and this image lets you know that.

This is a 2 shot panorama cropped to HD proportions.
My 28mm-e lens didn't quite cover the area so I overlapped two images.
The main subject is a lot smaller in this composition,
but I like this version the best of the three.
Some may object to placing the buildings in the center,
but there is a certain symmetry in this picture that makes we want to keep the island and
the buildings in the center.  I think the snow draws your eye to the lighthouse first,
which is what I want. I think this images screams for a big print.