Category: Tourism

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

The Four Dances – Great Egrets in Wisconsin

June 20, 2024
New WorkPhotographyQuiet Light PublishingRichard MackRichard Mack PhotographyTourismtravel

I had a chance to look at some older images I’ve made and decided what at first have been individual images needed to be put together. I have hung the top left corner and bottom right corner next to each other in canvas prints. Going through the old images I realized two more could easily be added to make it a group of Four Dances. The great Egrets were found on an island in Whitewater Lake in Wisconsin and I’m told they are no longer nesting with the hundreds other egrets found there.

This image is now available in the shop at Quiet Light Publishing. Cheers, Richard

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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