Category: The Sweetwater Seas

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

Wait a Day…

February 24, 2021
environmentGreat Lakes ProjectLake Michigannature photographyRichard Mack PhotographyThe Sweetwater SeaswinterWinter Landscape PhotographyWinter photography

If you know the Great Lakes, and many say any place, the weather can change on a moment’s notice. On February 13-14 this year here in Chicago we had a snowstorm that dropped 20” from the sky. Along with that we had winds coming out of the north and right down Lake Michigan which blew the ice into shore. I went down to the shoreline of Lake Michigan on the 17th to see the conditions of the lake, expecting ice up against the shoreline, yet it had already moved out about 2 miles offshore. Still we had the ice built up high along the shore and the open water behind it so I made both some still and video shots of the lake. The next day I went back to the same spots and because the winds had shifted yet again the ice had moved back into the shoreline right up to the pack ice. An interesting perspective on the changes which come within 24 hours along the Great Lakes. And below are some of the still images.

Enjoy,

Richard

Eleven Fine Art Posters from The Sweetwater Seas

December 6, 2020
Fine Art PostersFine Art PrintsQuiet Light PublishingRichard Mack PhotographyThe Sweetwater SeasThe Sweetwater Seas
New Fine Art Posters added to The Sweetwater Seas Collection.

Quiet Light Publishing added 11 new Fine Art Posters from my work this week to the collection The Sweetwater Seas in our shop. These poster are available in two sizes, 24″x36″ for $75.00 and 18″x24″ for $49.99 plus taxes and shipping. These are printed on fine art paper to the exacting standards and make great gifts for you or someone you know! There are over 30 Fine Art Poster in The Sweetwater Seas Collection.

Quiet Light Publishing also has Fine Art Posters for my other works on, The Lewis & Clark Trail, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, his travels around the world in Europe and South America.

Check them all out at Quiet Light Publishing shop.

Enjoy!

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

#thesweetwaterseas #GreatLakes #timelapse #timelapse+ #Chicago #LakeMichigan #Canon #CanonMark5DIV #Chicagophotography #artofchi #earthpix #timelapseplus #travel #landscape #cityscape #astrophotography #illinois #illinoistourism #way2ill