 |
| Nauset Light (1877) • Cape Cod, MA |
Nauset Light (1877), Barnstable, Mass, Cape Cod - United States
Once upon a time, - boys and girls - Nauset Light was a key part of the Global Positioning System. And from 1877 on, if you were near Barnstable on the North Atlantic at night... it was a part of the Cape Cod 8-lighthouse Positioning System.
Today's GPS is a disruptive tech. It made this cone at daybreak only pretty. It's been decommissioned and the keeper's house was given, along with the light, to a preservation society.
It's one of the East Coast's least photographed lights, and hard to find sitting smack in the middle of a neighborhood of cottages that grew around it.
Now, here's the question... Why the hell do we feel driven to make images of these things? They were public utilities. So are dumpsters and fire hydrants. Have you got many dumpster/hydrant pix? Okay, maybe it's a supply/demand thing? Not as many lighthouses around... Does that explain it? If that's the reason, well then why don't we picture every old bridge? Or municipal hall? Or ... you get the, um, picture, right?
And yet... yet... I don't care what sort of art you're into, you gotta' admit that the itch to do something with a lighthouse tingles-right? What's the magic?
Here's what late summer looks like in Nauset through my Canon 7D's EFS 70-300mm lens after I poke and sculpt it in PS4. And here's why people buy homes on Cape Cod and others travel so far to vacation here, or on the nearby islands. For a quarter of a century we lived in New England... And even thirty years later, as I sit here in Lancaster County tonight... I feel its tug.
BTW... How's this look on your monitor? Too dark?
4 comments:
Great image Ted! Hard to say, but even as a landlubber every time I see a photograph of a lighthouse I want to go out and make some of my own. We don't have too many in Colorado.
On my monitor your image isn't too dark for me to enjoy, but hard to say about everyone - and then, how bright do they have their monitor in the first place? We don't have any control over how a person's monitor reflects an image, so I basically feel once it looks good to me, that's that. I use it.
Now printing out said image is a different story!
Thanks John. Do we have some sort of inherited instinct for our imaginations to fondle lighthouses? Railroad cars? Water falls? Naked women? Um… Maybe that last one's not too hard to figger-out, but there does seem to be a common denominator among certain objects when it comes to their pull upon lenses, huh? In fact all artists seem to have the same attraction including writers, composers, and of course the entire range of graphic creators.
Yeah, I too tend to figure it it looks okay on my monitor, let the world adjust. But since the world and not me is my intended target-audience. Maybe my attitude's a tad, um, problematic? After all, there are few poets who write in disappearing ink, right? :-)
Great picture Ted. Interestingly I'd be more likely to take a photo of a dumpster than a lighthouse. In fact I'm not sure I've ever shot a lighthouse. Plenty of dumpsters and some fire hydrants but can't recall lighthouses. Hmmm... Anyway, excellent work as always Ted.
You have a seditious mind Cedric... Who else lacks an instinct to take endless pictures of puppies, babies, locomotives, and lighthouses? I proudly take pictures of lighthouses AND dumpsters :-) Thanks for the nice words.
Post a Comment