Week 40 – Grand Haven Pier

This week I played some more with my new neutral density filter, this time at the pier and lighthouses in Grand Haven, MI. The exposures ranged from 30 seconds to four minutes.

It was raining the whole time, ranging from spitting to downpour. I had an umbrella over my camera and tripod. The camera and lens are water resistent, but I have no desire to test that claim if I have alternatives like an umbrella. You can see the rain because of the long exposures. The rain simply adds to the misty feeling.

In processing the images I decided to stylize the light a bit. A flat image does not give much of the feeling of light. It was grey, as there were clouds the whole time, and rain. But a bit of a warm-yellow tone came through the clouds at times.

I wanted at least one shot with the red in the lighthouse featured. That was one of the first shots I took–when the light was higher and the rain and clouds lighter.

The later shots, from the pier, are darker and more desaturated, reflecting the lower light and heavier clouds and rain.

It was a bit lonely feeling. There were lots of campers nearby the pier, but few people around. They were either in town eating supper (it was 7pm-ish) or away from the beach area because of the rain.

You can see ghostly figures in some of the images, as people walked through 50 second or longer exposures. Nearby where I was, on the beach, a family was doing pictures of their teenage daughter, as she slowly got soaked in the rain.