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Wind Point Lighthouse, lake Michigan, Racine WI
This image was made by taking 3 horizontal pictures and stitching them together vertically. This allowed me to shoot the lighthouse at closer range and create a perspective that looks much more natural that what you get with a wide angle lens. To read more about this image, see my post on SBDigitalArts: The Art of Visualization
Last Friday, after I had finished cleaning up the driveway of snow, I went down to the lake to see what was happening there. What I found was some of the wildest natural scenes I have ever seen. The lake was going crazy. The waves were crashing into the ice shelf and exploding 30-40 feet in the air. Due to the non-stop pounding of the waves, the 20 degree temperature and the 7 inches of snow the night before, the ice shelf had grown huge, and it was still growing with every explosion of water. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
These first pictures were taken down by the harbor in the same area I took the snow volcano pictures last week. I was standing on the beach and zooming in on the action. That’s all ice that you see out there, even the dark, dirty stuff. The temperature at this time was 18 and the windchill was 7.
This second set was taken a little to the north and looks back on the area above. Though I was close to the action in these pictures, I was perfectly safe standing on the sea wall outside of the splash zone. In this area the water would bounce off of the ice shelf and slam into the waves coming in. Where the outgoing wave met the incoming wave, huge explosions would take place. Notice the wave in the background of the first image.
I also shot video of all this action. I’ll get it posted sometime this week. The video really shows how amazing this show was.
Here are some pictures from four of the five new lighthouses we saw while over in Michigan. I left out the Muskegon Light because the lighting was so bad that the only picture shot didn’t come out. I’ve arranged these pictures from south to north. The second picture was shot by Lynne.
To see more Lake Michigan Lighthouses please visit my Lake Michigan Lighthouse Page
While up in Door County Lynne and I spent Monday and Tuesday discovering the lighthouses we had yet to see up there. We saw six new lights. Four of them in Door County and the other two on the drive home. Here’s some of the photos I got.
The first lighthouse is the Cana Island Lighthouse. This lighthouse was built in the 1860′s and has a Third Order Fresnel Lens. The tower is 95′ tall. This is the first lighthouse that we’ve climbed the tower on.
These next two lighthouses are found on islands at the top of the Door Peninsula. The first is the Plumb Island Range Light and the second is the Pilot Island Lighthouse. We were at the tip of the peninsula when I shot these.
This next lighthouse is the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse overlooking Green Bay on the west side of the peninsula. It was built in 1866.
The last two lighthouses are the Algoma North Pierhead Light and the Kewaunee South Pierhead Light. The lighting was horrible this morning, so these shots aren’t the greatest. I really want to go back and shoot the Algoma light at sunset.
We’ve now seen 26 lighthouses on Lake Michigan. We’ve seen all of the lights from Chicago north to the top of the Door Peninsula. We still have three lights to see in Door County. Two of them are on islands, the Chambers Island Light in Green Bay and the Pottawatomie Light on Rock Island. The other is the Sherwood Point Lighthouse. Sherwood Point is on the peninsula, but it is only open to the public one weekend a year because the Coast Guard uses it for residences.
I don’t know if I’ve shared these links with you guys before, but here are two of the sites I use to find the lighthouses and get the history for them.
I had more sites, but I think I deleted my folder that I had them bookmarked in.
We also have a couple of books about Lake Michigan Lighthouses.
