I always liked to visit PEI’s West Point. Besides great photography features like West Point Lighthouse and beautiful dunes, it offered a spectacular beach with warm water, by Canadain standards of course. Every time I visited West Point I tried to spend at least half a day on the beach just lying down and relaxing.
It’s been 5 years since I visited West Point last time and I was excited while driving from the North Cape anticipating relaxing afternoon. You can imagine my surprise when I reached the destination and found a quite different place. The lighthouse was converted into a motel, and a beautiful beach was covered with debris and trash with absolutely no people around. The place was completely run down.
I spend less than 20 min there talking only a few shots. I composed this shot to omit the motel and beach, reviling only top of the lighthouse and the dunes.
Loc: 44.763973, -66.750817
Shooting & Processing
I took 3 bracketed shots on a tripod (-1, 0, +1) as I usually do. I could see that the light was not too dynamic because the setting sun was covered with the clouds, but I took 3 brackets anyway, just in case.
I used single RAW image editing in Lightroom. I described the process in Lightroom Rapid Editing System for Landscapes.
First I applied Lightroom preset Natural from my Landscape Collection and later I used ToolKit to boost colors and contrast.
The Lightroom Preset Editing Formula: Natural (8, 18, 22, 30 )
Deconstructing Featured Photo
- Camera: Sony a6000
- Lens: Sony 16-70mm
- Focal Length: 39mm
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F4
- Shutter: 1/500
- Bracketing: 3 shots (-1, 0, +1 )
- Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442
- Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Processing:
Lightroom: import, tagging, preset based processing (Natural preset from Landscape Collection)
Photoshop: color correction, contrast, cleaning.
Photoshop Plugins:
- Topaz DeNoise was used to reduce digital noise (sky, water).
- Topaz Clarity was used to enhance details and boost colors (land, falls).