Lighthouse in the Field (Prince Edward Island)

This is one of my favorite early photographs. I took it almost 10 years ago on Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada. I was driving along the North Shore of the island towards the Darnley Point approaching the ocean and this is when I saw the lighthouse in the field. The ocean was not visible at that point, still hidden behind the hill and the lone lighthouse in the field looked very surreal.

The ocean was not visible at that point, still hidden behind the hill and the lone lighthouse in the field looked very surreal.

Shooting

It was late morning and the light was not too favorable. I had to shoot almost against the sun and I could see that the sky was too bright with not too many details.  I took 3 bracketed shots (-1, 0, +1) hand-held.

Processing

Even though I took 3 bracketed shots and I managed to properly expose the middle bracket the right side of the sky had no details.

As the last resort,  I decided to replace the sky. I used the photograph I took half-hour earlier on the same day and used it as the source for the sky area.

First I applied Point Lobos preset from my Landscapes Collection to both images and then I fine-tuned them individually using ToolKit adjustments (check my tutorial here).

Next, I loaded both images as layers in a new Photoshop document. I used transparency masks and the Gradient Tool to blend them together.

Finally, I used the Stamp Tool to clean up the image and to remove the electric poles and the wires.

Deconstructing Featured Photo

• Camera: Canon 60D
• Lens: Sigma 17-70mm
• Focal Length: 17mm
• ISO: 100
• Aperture: F8
• Shutter speed: 1/200
• Tripod: hand-held

Processing: Lightroom & Photoshop Based Workflow

Lightroom: import, tagging, preset based processing (Point Lobos preset from Landscape Collection).
Photoshop: I blended 2 images together using transparency masks, contrast, color correction. I used the Stamp Tool to remove the poles and the wires.

Photoshop Plugins: 

• Topaz DeNoise was used to reduce digital noise (sky).
• Topaz Clarity was used to enhance details and boost colors.