Last weekend, I took my trusty Fuji down to Point Reyes at dusk to photograph the lighthouse and all the loveliness surrounding it.  It turns out, the California coastline has quite a few cool old lighthouses.  Has someone done a coffee table book on them?  I feel like there  ought to be such a thing.

The coastline, as always, was spectacular.  I often struggle with how to frame these expansive coastal scenes.  The easiest thing, of course, is to put a human in it – examples of this kind of landscape shot are all over instagram.  It seems like such a copout, though, and anyway, it’s not really practical for these long exposures.  My tactic lately has been to put something in the foreground to give the thing some interest.  Here, I’ve used a fence:

And here, a rock:

Now that I look at this, I begin to think I over-processed it in post.  Sometimes I just get carried away by all of the wonderful colors available to me.

I can’t tell if my framing technique is working or not.

Sadly, the path to the lighthouse itself closed at 4:00.  Booo.  I was forced to take my pictures from the distant lookout.  Still not a bad view.

Very little processing was required to pull out this sky.  Go smog.

While we heard the horn from this lighthouse, its light never turned on for us.  Maybe we didn’t stay late enough.  As the offspring gets tired early, and is a little scared of the dark, we weren’t able to linger and find out.

On the way back to the car I snapped a picture of this charming structure.  No idea what it is, but it sure is cute.

As Dr. Seuss says: Funny things are everywhere.

Point Reyes was a great time.  I encourage you all to visit, should you every find your way to Northern California.   There are many lovely picture-taking opportunities to be had.

Until next time, photo-buddies!

-R.