Fire Island Lighthouse shoot

February 10, 2008 by Lesa Snider

Not much has gone on in the way of travel since getting back from San Francisco for Macworld Expo. That being said, I did drive to Long Island, NY on Friday to shoot the Fire Island Lighthouse. Much fun was had as after shooting, my husband and I spent 4+ hours at the Brickhouse Brewery.

Going out for a photo shoot is a rather new experience for us, and this one taught us several things:

1. Only shoot lighthouses in the summer, else you will freeze to fracking death!

2. Monopods are USELESS! In a fit of generosity, I let the husband borrow my new tripod because he was testing Nikon's new D300. Foolishly, I thought the monopod would help me in the low light situation that is sunrise, but I was dreadfully wrong. I had better luck handholding the darn camera (Rebel Xti).

3. Scout the location the day before. Thankfully we did a drive-by, but didn't actually walk to the lighthouse. Not only was the address of the lighthouse wrong on their own web site, getting to the lighthouse involved a one mile hike. That much we learned driving by, though if we had gotten out and walked it we could have scouted a better position than what we ended up with early the next morning.

4. Not all sunrise pictures are going to be great. Since I got up at "the crack of ass," I fully expected the pictures to be fantastic. Alas, they were not. Either because of too many or too few clouds, the time of year, or whatever, this particular sunrise wasn't worth the 4:30 am price.

All in all, it wasn't a total bust for as disappointed as we were, we retreated to a fabulous pub for many pints and good food with good friends at noon. I'd probably do it again... when it's warmer ;)

Click here to see all the photos from our Fire Island Lighthouse shoot.