Study Group 10
Cliff Banks

December Image

Title - St. Mary's Lighthouse

How I did it -  This month's image is St Mary's Lighthouse on the North East cost of England.  The picture is close to where I live and was taken in late afternoon light at a slow shutter speed of around 1/15th of a second to capture movement in the water on the submerged causeway to the lighthouse.  Other than some cropping and changes to contrast, it is as taken.

COMMENTS:

Mark Aksoy	An interesting seascape which captures the restlessness of the sea under an overcast sky.  The greenery and red roofs on the lighthouse island add welcome color accents to gray surroundings.  Clouds and surf balance each other, and the wooden plank acts as a leading line.
Cliff Banks
Bob Altman	Beautiful lighthouse. I just wish it was larger in the image. The water and sky are too gray. Did you try any levels or saturation work? It could benefit from it. I would have cropped the foreground more and even tried to increase the size of the image to see the lighthouse better. On a positive note, will you adopt me? I'd love to be near scenery like this. It really looks like a photographer's heaven.
Bob Barley	I like the lighthouse in the distance and the disappearing causeway in the foreground. The red of the lighthouse captures the eye. Good sky, too. I do find the sea in the foreground to be a little distracting. It might be interesting to see how the scene would have appeared had the exposure been even longer. I might suggest darkening the foreground a bit to push the eye up into the frame, and cropping a little off the right side.
Rene Ross
Margaret Boike	I love the angry looking sea in the foreground and the touch of red in the roofs of the buildings.  I think you captured the wave movement very well and your depth of field is good, too. I find the causeway(?) at the bottom of the image distracting.  I would crop it out, just to where you can barely see it below the surface, while still showing most of the wave action.
Rich Krebs	Nice image. Having the lighthouse at the 1/3 point would be better. Also, less water to get the lighthouse larger would enhance the image. It is still a nice image as it stands.

Member Bio

Cliff Banks, AFIAP, LRPS, PSA EID - 2 stars   cliff@cliffbanks.hivetelecom.net Biography - Born in 1938 in Sunderland England, where I still reside, having retired in 1997 after 40 years as an electrical engineer. An active amateur photographer since the 1970’s, an LRPS member of the “Royal Photographic Society”, and joined “PSA” in 2002 when I commenced entering the international salons. I am also a member of the “Sunderland Photographic Association” and "Yorkshire Monochrome Group". Since my retirement, I now spend 2 to 3 months each year in USA as my daughter and family reside in Denver, Colorado. Computer: Pentium, 2200mhz, 512 MB ram, 80gb hard drive, 52x/24x/52x cd-rw, DVD rewriter, 19” monitor, Epson 1800 printer for colour, Epson 1270 for monochrome, Canon fs400 slide scanner, Mikrotek x6 flatbed with transparency hood, Wacom Graphire Tablet. Software: Photoshop CS3, Vuescan, GF Fractals, Pics to Exe, Windows XP. Camera: Nikon F80, D80, and F70 converted for infrared; 24-120mm, 100-300mm, and  20mm lenses, and 105 mm macro lens.