Category: Travel Photography

Great Lakes Lighthouses

July 22, 2024
Aerial PhotographyGreat LakesLighthousesRichard Mack PhotographyThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater SeasTourismtravelTravel Photography

What summer trip might you be planning? There are 388 lighthouses around the Great Lakes. They are beckoning you to a great trip of discovery!

It may surprise you in these days of near-universal GPS systems, 300 of the lighthouses are still active aids to navigation. The state of Michigan has more lighthouses along its coastline than any other state in the United States.

Here is the count of many active lighthouses are on the Great Lakes by state and Canadian province:

Ontario – 94

Michigan – 109

Wisconsin – 39

New York – 21

Ohio – 14

Minnesota – 7

Illinois – 8

Indiana – 6

Pennsylvania – 2

Can you name where your states lighthouses all are? Most people can only name a few.

Lake Michigan – 97

Lake Huron – 95

Lake Superior – 75

Lake Erie – 68

Lake Ontario – 53

Follow this link for a map of all Great Lakes lighthouses.

https://gllka.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9e1508ae15f9444f9b960aa42e435951

You can tour many of these lights, and you can at least walk around most of them. Many give you the opportunity not just to make it back to a harbor or around an island safely but make stunning photographs in all types of weather. Every lighthouse was built for a reason, either too many shipwrecks in the area from shoals or shallow water or to aid navigation to harbors.

Get out there and visit these great places, many built more than 100 years ago and still in operation. To learn more about them, visit www.thesweetwaterseas.com and find more information on lighthouses and other places around the Great Lakes. We have lots of links on our learn more page.

Cheers, Richard

*Statistics from the National Lighthouse Keepers Association   https://www.gllka.org/faq

United States Lighthouse Society https://uslhs.org/

Source:http://thesweetwaterseas.com/blogsws/LighthousesonGreatLakes

Taliesin, Spring Green

August 2, 2021
Architectural PhotographyMidwestMidwestMidwestTourismtravelTravel PhotographyWisconsin
  • Originally the barn at Taliesin.
  • Frank Lloyd Wright house backside at Taliesin.
  • Garden and pond at Taliesin.
  • Main entrance to the Wright home at Taliesin.

A few weeks ago we took a trip up to Spring Green to see both the American Players Theatre and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, his home in Wisconsin and on 800 acres he used as a place to teach his architecture students. It is currently 400 acres in the Taliesin Preservation Trust. The home is the third one Wright built as the two previous ones burned down. You can only visit the grounds and structures, of which there are many, in a tour group, so photography is limited in time as you stroll through and hear the history of the place. The photo’s are all shot during a tour using my iPhone.

  • Old stables now garages at Taliesin.
  • Old stables now garages at Taliesin.
  • Main room of Wright’s studio where he met with clients at Taliesin.
  • Looking down the studio at Taliesin. The lamp on the left was a Wright design and every student had to make one out of plywood. It can be adjusted to have the light reflect up or down.
  • Waiting area at Wright’s studio.
  • A corner door which opens on both sides and the current office of the Wright Preservation Foundation at Taliesin.

Being someone who thought about becoming an architect and then starting my career in photography as an architectural photographer I have an admiration for many of Wright’s designs. Although he was clearly not good on the structural side of design. I love his prairie style with it’s overhangs and lots of windows. One interesting thing he did being only 5’ 5” tall was make short ceilings, especially when entering a room though a hallway or changing spaces within a room. His thought was it makes you want to move into the bigger space, often with vaulted ceilings.

  • The breakfast area which looks out to “the bird walk” which cantaleaver’s out away from the house.
  • The breakfast area which looks out to “the bird walk” which cantaleaver’s out away from the house.
  • Main Living room at Taliesin.
  • Guest bedroom with door above their daughter used to preform pupet shows at.
  • Area between the bedrooms at Taliesin.
  • Frank Lloyd Wright’s bedroom and the actual bed he slept in. Notice the bedroom allows him to see through the entire house on first floor.
  • Frank Lloyd Wright’s desk in his bedroom at Taliesin.
  • Wright’s bedroom where he could work at his desk at night and see the famrland, his sister’s house and the family church as well as the entire first floor common areas at Taliesin.
  • The pond outside Wright’s bedroom at Taliesin.
  • Frank Llyod Wright’s grave where he no longer lies as his third wife moved his asshes to be with her in Arizonia at Taliesin West against his wishes. He didn’t evven want a headstone.

On the house tour you also see what used to be a barn and is now used as apartments for those who studied under Wright and still live on the property as well as staff.

It is a trip worth doing if you like architecture! Enjoy the images.

Cheers,

Richard

Chicago Skyline Time-lapse

September 23, 2019
CanonChicagoCityscapeGreat Lakes ProjectLake MichiganNight sky time-lapseRichard Mack PhotographyThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater Seastime-lapseTourismtravelTravel Photography

I did my first real test of the of the “holy grail” of time-lapse where you go from daylight to night-time (or the reverse). I used the Timelapse+ VIEW intervalometer and software plugin for Lightroom CC to handle the exposure changes. I did this from the Montrose Harbor area looking down to Chicago, an iconic view of this beautiful city. We started the exposures at 6:40pm and finished 2 hours and 44 minutes later at 9:24pm. This gave us just under a minute of video from the 1,408 images shot. For those interested it was shot with the Canon Mark 5d IV with the 24-105 lens set at F/11. The ISO started at 100 and ended at ISO 8000. The shutter speed started at 1/80 of a second and ended with an exposure of 4.0 seconds. A total of 14.5 stops! Timelapse+ VIEW was setup to change the shutter speed first and then the ISO. Timelapse+ VIEW Intervalometer will automate night to day time-lapse using a light sensor and advanced algorithms. This system worked really well and once you take it into Lightroom in post processing the plugin finds the keyframes which you can use to do the initial processing in Lightroom Development window to make any exposure / color corrections you require. The software then makes these corrections for the entire selection in subtle increments so you have a finished piece with smooth transitions for a beautiful time-lapse.

Now one thing I know I will try next time is starting with at least a 1 second exposure to make the water smoother throughout the time-lapse. I would also go longer into the nighttime view to give a little more room in editing to be able to use a longer nighttime scene.

This Timelapse+ VIEW intervalometer and what we will be able to do with it will be a great addition to The Sweetwater Seas – North America’s Great Lakes documentary! It will be in the equipment bags for every shoot from now on! Can’t wait to get outside along  the Great Lakes and do some day to night with the Milky Way winding its way across the screen, and maybe even back to daylight.

Enjoy,

Richard

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South Haven Lighthouse

September 12, 2019
Aerial PhotographyDJI MavicdroneEquipmentGreat Lakes ProjectLake MichiganThe Sweetwater SeasTravel Photography

Over this past Labor Day weekend, I had the pleasure of joining a group of friends and family who have met each year at the wonderful Michi-Mona-Mac cabins in South Haven, Michigan. It was a wonderful time with this group of folks for the first time over the Labor Day weekend. I had the chance to use the DJI Mavic Pro drone to do some aerial video for our documentary The Sweetwater Seas – North America’s Great Lakes. On this morning it was slightly overcast at sunrise and with little wind.

Using manual settings, I shot at 1/50 of a second, as the frame rate in the end will be 24 frames a second. It is best to try and shoot with double the frame rate to give you a smooth image. Using ISO 100 and adjusting the aperture until I the exposure was accurate. I always use a polarizing filter as well – especially when shooting over water – but in all honesty whether shooting stills or video it is always on my lenses.

I knew several of the shots I wanted to get before starting out, and while I did not do a storyboard before flight, I had mapped it out in my head what I wanted in the finished film. Setting up each shot so I could edit them together later. There are always happy surprises like the folks walking the pier or only one boat coming down the river into the open lake instead of many at a time. I used Adobe Premier Pro to edit the film instead of the DJI software. We shall see if we use any of this is the final film and I am guessing some shots will be used.

I hope you enjoy this small piece!

Cheers,

Richard Mack

Addendum:

Tower Information
Tower Height: 35.00′
Focal Plane: 37′
Active Aid to Navigation: Yes
Latitude: 42.40100 N
Longitude: -86.28800 W

The South Haven South Pierhead Light is a lighthouse in Michigan, at the entrance to the Black River on Lake Michigan. The station was lit in 1872, and is still operational. The tower is a shortened version of the Muskegon South Pierhead Light, and replaced an 1872 wooden tower. The catwalk is original and still links the tower to shore: it is one of only four that survive in the State of Michigan. The keeper’s house is on shore, 2-​1⁄2 stories tall, wood with a hipped-roof. It was also built in 1872, and is located at 91 Michigan Avenue onshore, was transferred to the city for preservation in 2000. The Michigan Maritime Museum has renovated the keeper’s house as the Marialyce Canonie Great Lakes Research Library.