Getting Lemons out of lemon aid - I just got back last week from my very first trip to Pt Reyes National Seashore. I hadn't considered going to this, to me, unknown American icon until just a week prior to departure. I was struggling with where I was going to camp with my son at the beginning of his one month summer visit. As is our tradition, we usually spend a few days on the road going somewhere. Last year was a bit of a bust due to the significant lack of time off from work. The end result was we didn't go anywhere. This year on the other hand has kind of made up for the last; we've gone to Arches NP--back in March--and planned to do this trip. But, as has been my practice the last few years, I couldn't settle on a location until just prior to departure.

I'm not sure what the motiviation was but somewhere I decided to search out Pt Reyes National Seashore. I searched the web, got lots of information and promptly made reservations at the nearest RV campground near the park. $75 bucks later, I was set. Day after my son arrived, we departed for the eight hour trip to Pt Reyes NS. For those that don't know, it's located about 1hr north of San Fransisco. This was a new adverture having never been to this particular location. Also, I hadn't been to this region--the San Fransisco area--in almost ten years. I was excited. As planned--despite $2.65 dollars per gallon of regular gas--we arrived at the park.

For those that don't know, Pt Reyes NS is really a cooperative between entrenched ranchers and the National Park Service. This realization is clear as a bell when traveling along the parks roads and seeing multiple signs saying "Historical Ranch B, established 1865". Oh, there's the occasional pause in traffic waiting for bovines to clear themselves from your path as well. Was this disturbing at all? Was I troubled by seeing so many ranches on a supposedly protected location? Actually not. The grazing practices and the environment seemed to allow lots of tall grass. It wasn't like the cows weren't allowed to graze the fields. It seemed more like the ranchers had plenty of fields to work in that allowed the grass to grow hip height. At least the grass was that long when I visited. It seemed on the surface a reasonable compromise was being held here.

Not knowing anything about anything of the park, I decided to make sunset at its icon--the Pt Reyes lighthouse located at the end of a 25 mile drive from the park entrence. Fortunately for me, since we had arrived around dinner time, I considered for a moment to skip the sunset and start new the next day but elected to shoot anyway. Little did I know how important it was to not give up.

Getting out the lighthouse was simple enough as long as you were willing to devote the time and didn't mind winding roads when driving a 10,000 lb truck-camper combo like I was. The skies were clouding up to reveal a great sunset. I was psyched. Getting to the point though, things went south. While conditions were absolutely perfect for shooting, there were a couple of things preventing me from going for my preconcieved vision--a level view of the lighthouse with a great setting sun in the background. We get there not 30 minutes prior to sunset--time to run into action. Immediately the wind hit us. Pt Reyes is considered the windiest location on the California coast--that's something. Well, getting to the steps to descend to the lighthouse, the winds were gusting upwards to 25 kts. This is going to be a challenge I thought. Next challenge, the stair to the lighthouse was closed. No wonder there weren't any level images of the lighthouse with a great setting sun in the background. The place was closed to everyone at 4:30 everyday. So much for realizing any of my preconcieved notions. Oh, I did try to shoot looking over the ledge towards the lighthouse by looking down. While a pretty acceptable idea on any normal, non-windy day, it wasn't to be this day. The wind really picked up to I guess 35 kts right at the lip overlooking the lighthouse. That was totally unacceptable for long exposure photography. So much for plan A, B, and any other plan I had. Time to retreat and think of something else.

By now I was willing to shoot anything but nothing was coming to mind. No savior vision was coming to view. I actually started to walk back to the truck to try again the next day when things must surely be better. Just then I decided to stop right in front of this fence. I didn't see this picture initially. All I saw was a great sunset with an annoying fence in the way. I did work the fence a few different ways trying things just to say I was out shooting rather than trying to figure anything out. Then it hit me, the light in the fence to the right was standing out like a bunch of lines. That was interesting. Thinking, thinking some more, then thinking I liked the whole idea of making the image more about the fence and less about the sunset, I totally transformed my thought process to shooting the fence with blazing sky as background.

After realizing what the end would hold, seeing a vision in other words, I went to work with the descending sun. I grabed the 2-stop ND grad filter, setup the camera to take panoramas, and finally repositioned everything to center on a fence post. From that, I shot three different sequences to get this final image.

What you see is a composition of seven images shot vertically and stitched together with Realviz Stitcher. I also shot two exposure values to capture the shadows and highlights--one stop apart. When working the final product, I realized I needed even more light and processed another, one stop brighter. All together, this image is three layers, each a stop darker than the previous. If you're wondering, there's a huge dynamic range captured by with this technique. I think it works because it still stays within the expectation of what the human eye sees while still retaining alot of detail.

BTW, I spent three nights in Pt Reyes NS, and this was the only setting sun I saw. I never saw the sun again after this night. So, good thing I decided to shoot to say I was shooting verses packing things in to shoot another day.

Cheers

Tom Hill