Part 2 of my trip was spent in a little coastal town called Port Townsend. I was at Fort Warden which had it’s own lighthouse about a mile down the beach. I made it my goal to get some amazing shot of it, and I woke up most mornings that I was there around 4:30 am in order to walk down the beach, set up, and wait for sunrise. On this particular morning the sky was so socked in that I never got a sunrise, so I did a self portrait before going back and getting a quick nap before work.

Even though there wasn’t a directional sunrise, I still really liked the look of the Port Wilson lighthouse in the foggy mist. I photographed it various ways each morning.

One morning I also photographed this ship wreck on my walk back. I really liked the detail in this image, and split-toned the final piece so that the white would really stand out.

Each walk back was quiet and serene. Sometime there would be a sailboat out in the water, anchored for the night, and other times there would be a few fisherman out in row boats. On one occasion I ran into someone on a morning walk, but other than that I never saw anyone else on these early mornings.

On my last morning, I caught the sunrise. Once I could see the sun peaking, I set up in a different spot than in other mornings, and began to work trying to capture all the detail, watching for the sun rays to come shining in the image.

Once the sun peaked, all the little rocks on the sand lit up. It was really exciting to finally see the warm directional light and get something different than the other mornings.

I had to hurry and get different angles quickly, as the sun really travels fast. I really liked this one below, with the grass blowing in the morning breeze.

And here’s one last one from set up from the far side, with me very low in the grass. I wanted one with the sun lighting up the lighthouse with the warm morning light without any sun flares.

So which images are your favorites? All of these have such different looks and different feelings, it’s hard to pick a favorite but I’m curious what you all like.

In my next blog entries I’ll talk about some of the work I did while I was out there, but before I got to that, I wanted to first show you some of these images that I created during my free time. I really like to find lighthouses and photograph them. They’re beautiful and inspiring, and a real challenge to photograph in interesting ways. I hope you enjoyed looking at these.

Until next time, America. 🙂