Visit to a lighthouse...

printergirl

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of visiting a landmark I have never been to, even though I am a lifelong Floridian. Went to the Ponce de Leon lighthouse in Ponce Inlet (between Daytona and New Smyrna beaches). It was a beautiful day and I am so glad I took my camera.



The lightouse has 203 stairs, straight up. It was a bit daunting looking up and deciding to make the climb. Now, I am not exactly one for "exercise," so this was a challenge for me.



This was taken when I was about (ONLY) half way up, looking down to the ground.



I shot these trees when we took a nature walk between the lighthouse and the beach. Thought they were interesting, but wish I would have framed it better.



But, I digress, the view from the top of the lighthouse was amazing.

TonyCooper

Nice shots. I've seen that lighthouse, but never been in it.

Next time you're out roaming with your camera, go a little bit further north to St Augustine and do this one:

printergirl

Ah...St. Augustine! My favorite weekend getaway in Florida. We go there at least once a year for a weekend trip. Have one planned for later in the year there, so I will be sure to visit that lighthouse as well.

Jack'll do

Hi Nora
I really like the lighthouse views (inside and outside). The others seem a bit washed out though. If you have photoshop it's real easy to rectify that. One little trick is to apply unsharp mask with a small amount and very large radius. Sometimes that is all that's needed to make a dull image pop. I took the liberty to work on one of your photos (hope you don't mind). Took about 3 minutes to get this.



Step 1: Unsharp mask amt.=24 radius = 204 threshold = 0
Step 2: High Pass Filter radius = 0.7
Step 3: Brightness/contrast adj. layer play with sliders as needed. I used brightness = -45 and contrast = +2
After flattening the image, I felt it was too bright so added another b/c adj. layer and decresed brightness another -38

printergirl

Awesome! Thanks for the "step by step" stuff too. That really helps me when I start playing with them in Photoshop (which I do have).

Roadkill

The stairs are really cool, nice job.

TonyCooper

The foreground is better in the "jack'll do" alteration , but the sky is weird. I'd treat the sky in a separate layer and use a Layer Mask to let it show through. Maybe even lay in a layer of sky from a different photo with good sky color. Easy to do this with a nice, clean horizon to work with.

grimace

Beautiful looking shots Nora!!