Last night I was able to get up to the top of Grosse Point Lighthouse to shoot the shot I had in mind for the Evanston Leadership Council poster. There are a lot of photographers living in this town and the city has many existing shots which most of us have seen over the years. I wanted to capture something most have not seen. My idea was to get into the light station and shoot across the Fresnel lens looking back at the city and lake. In my mind it would be a great shot – with the city rising by the lake while in the foreground you had a new perspective on the cities most icon symbol – Grosse Point Lighthouse. Well, what happens most of the time when you go after preconceived ideas is they don’t work out exactly like you thought. Evanston seems to have lots of tall buildings in its downtown space so I had envisioned a downtown area with the tall buildings standing by the lake. I had forgotten how far back the city really is from the edge of the lake, and the fact that from the north, at this point of land which juts out into the lake, the buildings are not the packed in look I thought they would be.

This means you adjust your thinking, reposition for a different shot which presents itself to you and begin to think outside those preconceived notions. Get in closer to the Fresnel lens, work with the full moon which was rising – and one reason for going up this particular night. And yes, you may have to switch from the wide angle lens to make that moon show up a little better. I even shot a series with the specific idea of stitching them together in Photoshop to make a panoramic image which would include more of the lake. As night fell the light from the Fresnel lens began to illuminate the inside of the lighthouse and I balanced the interior and exterior exposures which had been in my original preconceived vision of what I wanted.

While the shots were not what I had in my mind when I ascended the 116 steps to the top they work for me and in the end it was a great night of shooting for this fine city. Once on the ground I looked up and saw the moon coming closer to the lighthouse from the ground, so with mosquito’s biting away and darkness already upon me I continued to shoot from the ground looking up. Now I confess the final shot in the series from the ground is a compost of the correct exposure for the moon and one for Grosse Point Lighthouse. By this time of night the exposures were up to 6 seconds – way out of the scope of the moon which moves in the sky in that time frame. But I knew that…

I want to thank Don Terras who is curator of the lighthouse for letting me in to get these shots. If you want to know more about Grosse Point Lighthouse check out their website, or come take a tour on the weekend, and buy Don’s book, The Grosse Point Lighthouse (ISBN#0964855801) a great book which also includes a history of this light station and others around the Great Lakes.

To see the entire take from the evening go to http://www.mackphoto.com/blog/GrossePointLighthouse/

To se what I shot of the old Lighthouse Beach Pier last Friday when rain kept us from shooting in the lighthouse go to http://www.mackphoto.com/blog/LighthouseBeachPier/

Peace,

Richard