Rocky Driftwood Lighthouse

Highest position in Explore = #3 on March 16th, 2009. Also featured on both the Explore front page and the Interestingness page! THANK YOU all for the wonderful support!

My last lighthouse shot got quite a bit of buzz so I decided to shoot another, this time, at Discovery Park in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle. I was on my way home from work one night last week and noticed that the cloud conditions were shaping up for what might be a really great sunset. I’d been wanting to shoot the lighthouse in Discovery Park for some time now, so I pulled the trigger. Having never been there, I had no idea where to park and since you can’t actually see the lighthouse from the road, picked the first spot I found. Lucky me, I don’t think it is actually possible to park any further away. But hey, the weather was great... Just had to lug my gear... Oh, and I had on my work dress shoes, which made for a fun walk... and sore feet! Oh the things we photogs sacrifice to get the "shot". Well after about 40 minutes of walking, I reached the lighthouse and was blown away. Beautiful beach grass everywhere, tons of amazing driftwood, and the snow capped Olympic Mountains in the background. I played around with several different shots and ultimately decided on this angle as it had the best balance between sky, rocks, driftwood, lighthouse and the colorful reflection of the setting sun. Just as the sun was going down, a ton of birds began to fly overhead as if they knew it was photo time. One even had his “landing gear” down which I thought was cool. Perhaps they were expecting crumbs... doh, maybe next time!

You'll have to view the larger version to see which bird had the landing gear :)