Friday, March 1, 2024
I almost feel as though I am slacking here since we are about a week into March, and I am just now getting a blog published that happened on the first one of the month. Of course, I have a good reason that there has been such a delay. You see, I just returned home from the trek on Tuesday evening, and it took me a while to get the photos edited. In all actuality, I am having to edit the photos by the day to keep myself from getting overwhelmed in Lightroom. I’ve actually just finished this first day at the point that I am typing this out. I tried to save some time by starting the blog in essentially real time before I even saw the photos. My goal is to have a very raw look at how I felt as I went through the different days and talk about all my choices not knowing if there would be a photo to share to illustrate what I was talking about. I’m going to leave everything in that I type during my time on the coast and will add bits and pieces that are specific to the photos that do turn out, if there are any at all. I will admit that it is very odd talking about a trek before I have had a chance to see what the photos even look like other than seeing them on the back of the camera. There was actually a lot that was different about this trek, so I might as well dive into that aspect of it before we get to the photos.
Probably the biggest oddity of this trek is the fact that it was to the coast. I don’t really spend much time in that location because I don’t enjoy being hot or sandy, and the beach usually means a little of both. Of course, if I can go during the off season, the temperature is usually quite a bit better. For the past couple of years, I have been trying to plan a trip to the beach, but things keep coming up that prevent me from going. After the quick weekend to Jekyll Island in Georgia, I really had the motivation to go, but found myself too busy with other things during the Fall months. By the time Winter hit, the holiday season was upon us, and I just never really put much more thought into it.
The first couple of months in 2024, Toni and I did more traveling than we have been used to with two different trips to Virginia. The first one was completely devoid of photography as there wasn’t going to be time with it being our anniversary trip. The second one, I took my gear with the anticipation of getting some photos, but that didn’t turn out quite as fruitful as I had hoped. Had it not been for a Thunderbird, I doubt that there would have been any clue here in the blog that the trip even happened.
Since that time, I have been really thinking more and more about doing a purely photography related trek over several days so that nothing else would prevent me from being able to react to the conditions. Toni has been after me for quite some time to make a trip like that so that I could go places that I don’t normally get to in my day photography trips. With me still wanting to get out to the coast, it made sense to put together a plan to see the Atlantic once again with the camera.
This brings us to the other rather unique aspect of this trek. While I normally go out alone so that I can be at one with my creativity, there has only been one other time that I have stayed in an area overnight without Toni being by my side. The whole idea of this adventure was to get out there and only focus on photography. For me, that means that sleep and food take a backseat to the process of finding and creating the photos. This would never float with Toni who would make sure that I was well fed at all times. Nope, this time I was going to go it alone and really focus my energy on the photography.
Part of that is trying to plan out when the weather would be showing the best chance of cooperating. Looking at the extended forecast, I could tell that there was a series of days when it appeared that there would be partly cloudy skies and only a small chance of rain. That group of days fell between other groups of days that showed rain throughout the day. I started to make plans to head out to the Outer Banks starting Friday and ending on Tuesday. This would give me multiple days to work with the weather should it decide not to cooperate. Of course, a little unsettled atmosphere will usually yield some great conditions as the fronts pass through.
I started the process of deciding where along the barrier islands I wanted to stay. The most recent time there was down in Buxton County near Hatteras. I really enjoyed that area but found that the actual beach was eroding quite quickly which was going to make the photography that I was wanting to do rather difficult. Another option was further north in the area of Nags Head where we had stayed many years ago during the month of January. I remember it being mostly deserted out there in the off season and thought that might be just the trick.
I started to look around the area to see what might catch my eye for a photographic subject and found that Nags Head and Kitty Hawk were promising locations. There were several piers there and it was close to Manteo where there was a little lighthouse Toni and I had visited before. Jockey’s Ridge State Park was also close by, as was Bodie Island Lighthouse. All of these areas looked to be promising for photographs in some different types of weather conditions.
I found a cheap hotel in the area and started to look at the weather a bit closer. The days that had been partly cloudy were now showing chances of rain, but still smaller chances than the surrounding days. I think it was Tuesday when I looked and found that that same block of days was still looking the most promising. I went ahead and booked the hotel which was kind of odd for me to do for just one person. I am so used to there always being at least two in a room, but it was going to be a fun adventure. At least that was what I was telling myself since I knew I would be missing Toni.
When Friday came along, there was supposed to be rain at home on my way out, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, there was no rain the entire way to the coast except for a bit of sprinkles East of Mebane, NC. The ride out to the Outer Banks was quick and uneventful. I arrived at the hotel at 3:30, a half hour before check-in. Once I got into the room, I started to look at the weather which was showing to be decent with some thin clouds. It was actually going to be a good night for some photos, so I grabbed my gear and got into the truck.
My destination was to be the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse in Manteo, just back over the bridge from Nags Head. This was a lighthouse that Toni and I had visited several years ago, but I hadn’t seen a composition with it that I wanted to shoot, and I don’t think that the conditions were all that great at the time. The hopes were, I would have better conditions this time, and a better understanding of photography to pull off a few interesting photos.
With sunset happening at roughly 6pm, I had to get moving so that I would have time to find a composition before the light started to be interesting. I think it took me about 30 minutes to get there which wasn’t bad at all. I found parking and grabbed my gear. Just after I entered the trail, I was met with something that I had not expected to see but have been looking for over the years.
There was an old wooden boat down in the marshy grass just to the side of the boardwalk. I’m sure it was there as yard art and not something that was abandoned and left to decay. That being said, it was still rather convincing, and I fell in love with the scene. I pulled the camera out and mounted it to the tripod which then showed me that I was too far over to the right to get a good composition on the boat. I ended up throwing one of the legs over the railing so that the neck and that free leg were wedged on the top rail with the other two legs providing the rest of the support. It wasn’t ideal, but it did allow me to get the angle that I needed on the boat.
Once I had the angle, I worked on framing which was also rather difficult. The boardwalk was going to be in the frame one way or the other. I started off with a vertical composition that embraced the boardwalk, but I chose to crop it before it got to the horizon. The idea was to leave a little to the imagination when looking at the photo while centering the attention on the boat. I was seeing this as a black and white composition which would force the attention on the boat and the boardwalk which created some very nice diagonals in the scene. However, there was something that didn’t feel quite right about this composition and framing. It felt as if there was too much area flowing top to bottom with the long boardwalk present. I was also looking at it in the native 3:2 aspect ratio which was not ideal. I had plans of cropping it down to a 5:7 ratio but was having a hard time visualizing it as such. Just to be sure I didn’t miss an opportunity; I flipped the camera to horizontal and tried again.
That was even worse because either I was including too much of the boardwalk, or too much of the empty marsh. To counter that, I switched the aspect ratio to a square crop within the camera for help in visualizing while still horizontal in case I decided later that a 4:5 would be better. The framing felt much better in the square orientation which was where I felt that the success would lay. The attention was much more aimed at the boat rather than the visual path through the frame.
When I finally finished editing the images, I was rather surprised at the outcome. I liked the vertical shot a lot more than I had anticipated. It did work very well as a black and white composition, and I started working it as such. The more I went, the more I liked it. Had I stopped with that initial composition I think I would have been very happy. The reality was, I had moved on to some different framing options that I thought worked equally as well. The major difference that you can see when looking at the two images is the ratio of subject to negative space in the scene. With the square frame forcing more of the attention on the boat, I had the opportunity to use the subtle blues reflected in the lighter surfaces to really compliment the warmer tones of the reeds surrounding the boat. This gave a much more pleasing color harmony and allowed me to present this image as a full color photograph. Both of these compositions are graphically very similar, but the framing allows for different stories to be told with a completely different interpretation.
Not wanting to burn too much time here with a simple boat, I picked everything up and moved on down the boardwalk to the shore where I would be finding the right composition for the lighthouse. I checked out both sides and multiple angles before deciding on the right side to shoot from. I felt the right side was the one that was getting the best light, there were also less distractions from the pilings which were lined up on the left side of the boardwalk. It was this angle that minimized the condos and houses on the opposite shore which didn’t really add anything to my composition at all.
I did a quick test shot of the scene and decided that the composition needed to be a little less busy with the waves. Since I couldn’t do anything at all about the wind blowing the water around, I decided to slide in a 5-stop ND filter behind my polarizer. This allowed me to push my exposure to between 20-30 seconds which was enough to smooth the water, but not so much as to streak the clouds which were moving out of frame to the right. The visual balance would have been affected had I showed too much motion in those clouds.
One of the earlier frames that I shot appears above. Obviously, I am adding this bit in well after I have written the rough draft of the blog. My goal had been to create a color image of this lighthouse, but as I have mentioned many times through the beginning of the year, I am wanting to concentrate more on black and white photography. I saw the opportunity to do this particular frame in black and white because the color version was very flat with the warm color not hitting the lighthouse, and the clouds were all very low in contrast. Had I added the contrast to a color image, the colors would have shifted in a way that I wouldn’t have wanted. However, by getting rid of the color, I was left with an image that I could really work on when it came to dealing with the areas of contrast that needed attention. The resulting 15 second exposure made for an amazing monochrome photograph and one that I really wasn’t expecting to see success in.
After a couple of tweaks to the composition and framing, I locked things in and waited for the lighting to change up. Eventually, a warm light started to hit the lighthouse and things started to come to life. The sky really didn’t have as much color as I would have liked, but I kind of liked the overall blue tone of the scene with the warmer light and red roof of the lighthouse. This was really what I was looking for with this composition before I even set the camera up.
As you can see in this photograph, the water is a bit more smoothed, and the sky has a little less detail to it. I really liked how the clouds provided a natural vignette to the top of the frame which would save me time in post. The lack of drama in the sky complimented the smoother texture thanks to the extra ten seconds of exposure. The addition of the warmer tones to the scene thanks to the lower sun helped to create the perfect color harmony which I then accentuated through some color grading of the image both locally and globally. The end result is easily one of the favorite lighthouse photos that I have ever created. Everything just works so well together in this frame.
There I was sitting on the walkway next to the water with my tripod down about as low as I could get it without fully collapsing the legs. My bag was laying open beside me and I had the remote release in my hand. There must have been a half dozen families that stopped to talk with me and comment on my rig. In my mind, I am insignificant, so it comes as a shock to me when folks want to talk with me when I am photographing things…unless it happens to be on their property, then I totally get it. The conversations were all very nice and I met some very interesting folks, some of whom were photographers as well.
One of the questions that came up after I provided a business card was what decay photography was all about. I started to go through my standard explanation of it but remembered the old boat at the start of the trail. I said that boat was an example of decay photography and happened to be the subject that I had started working with when I first got here. They understood completely what I was talking about after that illustration.
My initial plan was to stick around here until the light went into the blue hour, but I could tell that the sky wasn’t going to cooperate with me for anything during the blue hour. I wasn’t concerned because there were plenty of options that could be photographed in the current conditions. I just had to find something before the light faded out.
I started to walk around the area to see what I could locate. There were a few interesting points of interest, but either the light was wrong, or there were just too many people there to make it work. After exploring for a bit, I worked my way back to the lighthouse and checked it out again. I was pretty sure that I had been right about the potential for a blue hour shoot with it. The light just wasn’t there for it. I did stick around the pilings next to the boardwalk in the hopes of finding another composition. What I ended up with was a section to the left of the boardwalk that went to the lighthouse. I found the tide measuring marker to be quite interesting along with the triangle platform leading to a short set of steps. Since there wasn’t much color here and my focus was the shapes, I decided to go with black and white for the presentation here. I even set the camera to shoot in B&W so I could see how things were looking without color. Of course, by shooting in RAW, I could easily switch back to color should I want to during the edit.
I cranked off a few different variations on the composition before calling it quits on the little dock. The sun was now setting and there wasn’t any color left in the sky. I decided to walk around the water to a small boathouse where I thought I could get a few isolation compositions. There wasn’t really anything there unfortunately, so I decided to head back to the truck. The light was failing quickly at this point, and the ambient lights that I had been hoping to see on the lighthouse never activated. The only thing that was there were some path lights leading to the lighthouse (which was nice), and the beacon light atop the house (which was nice as well). The problem was that there were no interior lights active inside the house to link the path and the beacon. Without those interior lights, the composition just felt wrong in the blue hour.
I certainly wasn’t complaining though. I had started out my trip with 33 frames shot after only being on the coast for a couple of hours. It is rare that I ever do any photography on the first day after a long road trip. Most of the time, that part of the day is reserved for finding dinner and getting settled in the room. I opted to skip dinner and just have a bit of trail mix when I got back to the room. I’m grown, I don’t have to eat dinner if I don’t want to!!
Just so everyone knows, once Toni reads this part, I will be on the run though the house as she is about to beat me in the head for not eating. Keep me in your thoughts…
Assuming that I have survived the “you didn’t eat?” conversation, this kind of brings us to the next part of this trek that is also a bit odd for me. Knowing that I was going to have a lot of photos to talk about, and certainly a multiple part blog entry, I felt that it might be a good idea to get a head start on the blogging process. It would also serve the purpose of putting it on paper while it was still fresh in my head. I had packed the laptop and spent most of the evening trying to get it on the Wi-Fi and updated. This is a very old laptop, and it didn’t want to connect very well to the hotel Wi-Fi, but I did have a little bit of connectivity.
I tried to make my phone a hotspot, but the laptop didn’t recognize that at all, which left me with a one-bar signal from the hotel. I eventually gave up on that plan because I had a very hard time accessing the website to start the blog. It wasn’t until Sunday that I decided to go ahead and start the blog in Word to be copy and pasted into the blog when I got the photos done. There was enough connectivity to get the document saved to the cloud which made it very easy to transfer once I got the photos edited.
It made me feel much better to start getting this all documented while I was still at the beach. It would make the administrative portion of this trek less time consuming when I got back home. Just keep in mind that I am writing this blog before I have seen the edited photos. At the current moment, I am sitting on about 278 photos which will have to be culled through and edited. I don’t know what photos will work, and which ones won’t. I could import them into the laptop and edit them, but the monitor isn’t calibrated, so the colors might be off, and I don’t have my tablet and mouse to complete the edits efficiently. I’ll just have to wait to see what I have after the blogs are done, or at least started.
As an interesting aside to mention here, I am actually working the edits a day at a time which will keep the full outcome of this trek a mystery until I am fully finished. I mentioned that there were 33 frames exposed during this first evening. I was pretty sure that I would have three photos from that, because I had worked three scenes that I felt were strong contenders. At the end of the edits, I had a total of the five photos that you see here. Even though two of the subjects were rendered as both black and white as well as in color, you can be assured that each photo represented here is a different exposure at a different time. I will very rarely do the same photo as both a color and black and white because there are details that will make a photo better as one or the other.
With that in mind, I’m going to close out the first part of this blog and remind you that if any of these photos jump out at you and you would like a print, they are available in the gallery store. You can also contact me for larger prints or ones done on special media like canvas and metal.
I look forward to being back with the next part and can’t wait to see how the photos turn out. At this point, I only know what I shot, not how they came out. Fingers crossed that the lens cap was off.
I’ll return shortly…..
