After a day of high winds on Lake Michigan, the waves were crashing into the seawall with impressive force.
I went out earlier in the day to shoot some of the high surf conditions but got sandblasted with the wind driven sand from 30-40 mph wind gusts. Needless to say it was not a pleasant experience. After less than an hour of shooting I had sand in my hair, my face and worse yet in my camera equipment. Not good. I packed up and headed back to calmer conditions indoors.
By late afternoon the wind had eased up a bit but the waves were still coming in pretty heavy. I decided to go back out for another try. I set up next to the Jeep to shield me somewhat from the wind and used my 80-400mm zoom to isolate the lighthouse and the crashing waves. As sunset neared, the waves were getting back-lit with a wonderful warm light. Since I was shooting almost into the sun I put the lens hood on to try and prevent lens flare. I didn’t want any additional filters either since more glass surfaces in front of the lens would just be an invitation for lens flare. I put the Nikon D810 into continuous-high mode to shoot 5 frames per second bursts and fired away.
Just as a point of reference, the lighthouse stands about 75 feet tall. Earlier in the day the crashing waves easily reached the top of the lighthouse. By sunset they were a bit less but the back-lighting made the image more interesting. It’s always all about the light.
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Nikon D810, Nikkor 80-400mm zoom at 320mm. 1/125 second at f/8.
