Did you iden­ti­fy any­thing about the pic­ture? More infor­ma­tion below the pho­to.

This pic­ture was bor­rowed from the Light­house­’s web site.

Pigeon Point Light Sta­tion is a Cal­i­for­nia State His­toric Park about 30 miles south of Half Moon Bay. At 115 feet, it is one of the tallest light hous­es in the Unit­ed States and the tallest on the Cal­i­for­nia coast. It first went into oper­a­tion on Novem­ber 15, 1872 using a Fres­nel lens com­prised of 1008 prisms which projects light as in the above pho­to­graph. That lens is no longer in use and is only fired up for 2 hours each year on the Sat­ur­day clos­est to the aniver­sary date. On that night, hun­dreds (thou­sands?) of peo­ple show up to wit­ness the event and take pic­tures. The dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion of the light­house may stop the dis­play indef­i­nite­ly and you can no longer tour the light­house tow­er itself. The grounds and muse­um remain open and there is a work­ing hos­tel on site.

If all goes well, the next light­ing will be Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 13, from 6pm to 8pm. Some tips if you plan to pho­to­graph the next event. Wear warm clothes. Get there ear­ly, before sun­set, if you want to park close by. Take a tour of the grounds, the muse­um, the hos­tel and the local beach. After light­ing the lamp, the lens remains sta­tion­ary for 5 min­utes for pho­tog­ra­phers to cap­ture the star for­ma­tion and then it begins to rotate. Hope for some mois­ture in the air. Fog helps to define the rays of light. You will meet lots of oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers with tripods. Con­sid­er using a red flash­light when adjust­ing your equip­ment. It’s kinder on the eyes and less chance of spoil­ing oth­er’s pho­tographs.

For long expo­sure cam­era set­tings, I start with an F/8 aper­ture. That is about the best qual­i­ty aper­ture for my D80 and gives a decent depth of field. Exper­i­ment from there. I use the low­est ISO, again for best qual­i­ty. Even though it is a low light sit­u­a­tion, the light­house is not mov­ing. You don’t need that wide open aper­ture or a high ISO. Go for bet­ter DOF and low noise instead and use a longer shut­ter­speed. Use a tri­pod. Turn off image sta­bi­liza­tion, at least on Nikon lens­es. Use a remote shut­ter release or time delay to reduce cam­era vibra­tion. Focus­ing is always tricky in the dark, but the light­house is pret­ty bright, so aut­o­fo­cus should work.  Be quick, the five minute grace peri­od when the lens does not rotate goes by fast.

I’ll prob­a­bly be there, either to take pic­tures or as a docent. I recent­ly vol­un­teered to work there and begin train­ing this Sat­ur­day.

Here is a link to their web site: The Pigeon Point Light Sta­tion State His­toric Park

Thanks for play­ing the Fri­day Foto Quiz.