Category: Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan Waves & Evening Light

October 29, 2012
Great Lakes ProjectLake MichiganLake MichiganLighthouse Beachnature photographyRichard Mack Photographystorms

Took a break from framing for the gallery show with Jill Buckner next week and headed to Lighthouse Beach to see the waves and moonrise if possible. For the last few days the report was we would have those big waves and I knew that tonight was the best night to shoot this month’s full moon rise. So in my head I was thinking maybe I could get a shot of the old pier with huge waves and the moon rising in the background. Would be so cool I thought.

Never saw the moon and didn’t have 20’ waves. Change in my perspective lead me to and enjoy the evening light, clouds and waves and even the extremely strong wind which blew the sand across the beach in a sandpaper kind of feeling on your skin. Plus the winds made it very cold! I’ve been in some very strong winds – like a few years ago in the big snow storm we had – but this one was so strong it wanted to blow over the tripod with my camera and 28-300 heavy lens on it. I hung the camera bag from the bottom of the column of the tripod but then the bag kept being blown around and I had to steady it with my knees. Alas, many of the shots were not sharp at all.

But, because I let go the idea I came down here with I made some images which show the evening light, waves and even the wind in the sand. I could not get to the old pier, but used the board walk and sand to frame the images. Don’t know if I will like these in the future but it certainly was a fun thing to have done! And in the wind you felt the strength of the storm and the feeling of being alive! While I was only there for about 30 minutes, I was also never alone as folks would wander, or really, take that tough walk in the wind, to see the edge of the lake and feel the wind. Then they would turn around with w quick hello and be off. Bet they felt as alive as I – although maybe not as cold!

Glad I could change my thinking and accept what was presented to make some interesting images in the evening light.

Enjoy,

Richard

To see the other four I chose quickly use this link: Evening Light

 

Full Moon Rise – First of 2 this Month

August 2, 2012
Great Lakes ProjectLake MichiganLake MichiganLighthouse BeachLighthouse Beach PierMoonriseRichard Mack
1 Comment

This August we have two full moons we can all shoot. I went on down to my favorite location which is about a mile from my house and shot the full moon coming up. I have been trying to get the perfect shot of the moon rise over this old pier. So far to no avail the way I first envisioned it. And because the rock wall blocks how far away you can get it is not possible to back off and use a long lens the way I want to. So you adjust.

There was another person who has read this blog who showed up and recognized me. I gave her some tips on equipment she might want to purchase. For me a key ingredient is the polarizing filter. And for shots like these more important are the graduated neutral density filters. A most worthy thing to have in your bag. It will bring down the exposure in the sky to make images without a blown out sky. I use the .9 neutral density filter which takes off 3 stops of light. And the later you shoot – and I go way past most folks – you really need it in order to try and keep the moon without having it just burn out. You also have to keep your exposures to less than 1 second or the moon will move during the exposure and therefore not be sharp. Some of the last images from last night were 8 seconds, and I knew the moon would just be a small white circle – well a bit oblong though but also blown out. Acceptable since I wanted the glow on the water.

Now in all honesty I was not really into making images on this night. And there was a cloud layer, as usual, out over the lake, so once I got there I had to wait. A photographer doesn’t like just sitting so I made a few images before the moon popped out of the clouds. I tried to do something a bit different than anything done before. Sometimes you have to reach back and look at things in a very different perspective especially when the location is very familiar.

Not sure how successful these were, I will need to ruminate on them a while longer before deciding whether they might be worthy for inclusion in the book I am currently working on Twenty / Ninety-Five: The Great Lakes Landscapes. It covers all five of the Great Lakes. You can see more about it at Quiet Light Publishing. www.quietlightpublishing.com/GLP.php

You can also see more of the images from this shoot here: Moon Rise

The second full moon is on August 29 – known as the Blue Moon – a semi rare occurrence. And where the phrase “Once in a blue moon” came from. Wonder if I shoot that one as well. And where?

Cheers,

Richard

 

Two Friends, their cameras and the Full Moon…

December 11, 2011
Great Lakes ProjectLake MichiganLighthouse BeachLighthouse Beach PierMoonriseRichard Mack Photographyseeing

Last night we had another full moonrise, and in addition there was a total lunar eclipse, which unfortunately wasn’t visible here in Chicago. But I still made my way down to my favorite beach here in Evanston and the old pier at the north end of Lighthouse Beach. This time I was prodded by a friend of mine to make the journey. Jill Buckner is a photographer who has been working in Atlanta for 20 years and is now splitting her time between Atlanta and Chicago. She wanted to visit the beach with me for a moonrise. I thought why not. It’s cold which will help condition me for the upcoming winter shoots around the Great Lakes and I will have the pleasure of shooting with another photographer who I have never shot with.

It is always interesting to me when you shoot with another photographer, because they may bring fresh eyes to something you look at the same way each time. This can be especially true in the case of a location you have shot repeatedly. As luck would have it the moon came up right on time, yet we were not. So we arrived about 15-20 minutes after it had cleared the horizon. We thought we had more time from looking at the cloud layer out over the lake, which magically disappeared at the time of the rise of the moon. Clearly we should have been on time, especially because the moon was positioned far enough north of east in the sky that it came up right down the pier’s path.

Maybe because of our late arrival we both just went to work rather than looking at the scene and talking about what we would be trying to get in our shots. So you had two photographer’s plying away quietly for the next 70+ minutes through to the darkness if night.

Interestingly we never really crossed paths with each other. She went to one view I another. For me the immediate goal was to get the moon rising over the end of the pier with the posts pointing towards the moon. As the evening went on and darkness fell it was the moon’s glow on the water which came to life and became a stronger element than the moon itself. At this point you are shooting in the dark, with a high ASA – in my case 1600 – but then have noise to deal with in the dark areas of the image. My guess is that if I moved up from the Canon 1Ds III to one of the newer Canon’s like the 5D Mark III which has a much higher ASA scale topping our near 128,000 I would solve this problem.

I look forward to seeing what Jill shot – I’m guessing they are different even though we shot the same place at the same time with similar cameras and equipment. Each of us has their own unique perspective and that is what makes art an individual creative form.


To see more from this evening’s shoot use this link: Moonrise

And to see even more full moon images just search the blog for moon

Cheers,

Richard

 

My 711th Moonrise!

September 15, 2011
eveningGreat Lakes ProjectLake MichiganLighthouse BeachLighthouse Beach PierMoonrisephotography at nightRichard Mack Photography


On Monday September 12, 2011 I watched my 711th moonrise. OK, I haven’t seen all of them but based on a moonrise every 28 days this is my 711th moonrise. I was down at Lighthouse Beach in Evanston, Illinois, my favorite beach which you know if you’ve been reading this blog. Unfortunately, on this night the clouds were coming in once again which blocked the moonrise until it was high in the sky.

 

First shot

Luckily I had come down the night before, which is always the best night to shoot the full moon because it rises about 25 minutes before sunset giving you have enough ambient light to work with to illuminate the scene. As many of you know I have been shooting this scene for a long time. I have been waiting to get the angle of an old pier to line up with the moonrise in just the right way. In the past the moon has either been too far south or too far north and not directly where I wanted it. Then you have the weather which must be just right as well, so for months, maybe even years, I have been trying to get this shot. So on Sunday night I headed down to the lake front to see if this would indeed be the night. The sky was clear so my hopes were high. As luck would have it I was set up and ready to go well before the appointed time of moonrise, and yet I couldn’t find the moon on the horizon. There was still too much moisture along the horizon so the moon wasn’t visible until it was about 10 above the horizon. So my plan to use a long lens to pull the moon in tight against the pier once again has to wait.

Yet it was still a great night to be there as the sunset was a mixture of blues, reds and purples. With the polarizing filter on the colors were enhanced enough to match what it looked like to the eye. I also used my graduated neutral density filter once the darkness fell to balance the brightness of the moon with the rest of the scene. I found this time I didn’t like the results as it took the colors away from the sky around the moon. The darker it got the more the moonshine on the water came out in the shot. But at that point you tend to lose the detail in the moon. And as the exposures get longer than about ½ second you start to see movement in the moon with longer lenses. In the age of film you couldn’t work as long into the darkness as you can these days and still have usable images. With today’s digital cameras and post processing in Lightroom or Photoshop you can adjust RAW files in to get detail our of shadow areas of underexposed files which means you can expose for the highlights and bring back the shadow areas in post. Knowing this I kept making images well into the darkness, an hour past sunset. The two last images are my favorites from the evening.

Almost the last shot...

There are many moonrises in your life and each one is unique because of where you are when you see them. Each is to be savored. Enjoy them.

Peace,

Richard

PS: To see more images from this shoot follow this link: Moonrise at Lighthouse Beach