Tag: portland head

As Winter Moves In

New England’s winter approaches with the photographic opportunities that it provides. An example is this March 2019 shot of Portland Head at sunrise.

Here in New England it is beginning to feel more like winter, as temperatures have dropped by a good margin over the past week and the forecast looks chilly! There won’t be any complaint about it from me, as it is a season that I enjoy with the photographic opportunities that it provides.

You’ve seen some of those captures (Wednesday’s Wintry Wonder) and I think that part of what attracts me to photographing during winter is the sense of solitude that a cold frozen landscape provides. The landscape almost becomes otherworldly in its expression of the environment around us.

Portland Head Sunrise

This image was a late winter shot, as it is from March 7, 2019, but there is not a single hint of springtime weather yet; I still remember the bitter cold of this morning as there was a good breeze and temperatures were well below freezing. This shot was taken at 6 am as part of a series of exposures to try and capture the ever-changing light around dawn.

With the light still in the blue hour period, the snow and lighthouse show the cold while a bit of hope is on the horizon as the sun’s light is beginning to warm up the day.

Sunrise at Portland Head

A chilly morning, but worth the effort!

In this second post in the Thursday sunrise/sunset series, we experience quite the contrast over last week’s post. Whereas the weather in Bar Harbor in June was rather pleasant, this morning in March of 2019 was a little colder…

A Cold Sunrise at the Lighthouse

For this photoshoot, a number of us hardy souls met at Portland Head lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. On this early March morning the temperature was about 4F at the time of this capture (6:00 am).

I vividly remember wearing several bulky layers to stay warm and wearing my woolen flip-top mittens, so that I could expose my fingers for the shortest possible amount of time. I was happy that there was barely the lightest breeze, as any significant wind would have been brutal.

At this location, I took my first pre-dawn shots at 5:32 am and the last ones at 6:44 am; for each I took a series of 3 exposure-bracketed shots, so that I could process them for HDR. This series centered at ISO 320 F/10 and 1/60s using a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L USM lens.

Processing for HDR was done using Skylum’s Luminar Neo; I then made use of a template that I have created for Skylum’s Luminar AI software for color adjustments and structure; after that I used Adobe Photoshop to add a bit of soft light, contrast, final crop and text.