Tag: composite

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Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks

Standing tall against the storm in a make-believe location…

Here is an imaginary mashup of an actual photograph of the Fenwick Island Lighthouse in a composite presentation with an ai-created stormy sky as the background.

Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks
Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks

This could be a nightmare scenario if there were to be an upheaval of the earths internal forces, creating a new geologic structure for the geographic island of Fenwick Island. But, of course, that would need be coupled with massive climate change and the resultant huge rise is sea level. Right?

Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks Monochrome
Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks Monochrome

Could this really happen?

Truly hypothetical, of course, but there are many who understand that climate change is a real thing. From elementary school science we are taught about the history of our planet. The Ice Ages began 2.4 million years ago and lasted until 11,500 years ago. During this time, the earth’s climate repeatedly changed between very cold periods, during which glaciers covered large parts of the world and very warm periods during which many of the glaciers melted and the sea levels rose and flooded many lands. You do know what caused the end of the last Ice Age, don’t you? It was Global Warming, of course.

The following is excerpted from the USGS “Water Science School” article on Sea Level and Climate Change…
Climate-related sea-level changes of the last century are very minor compared with the large changes in sea level that occur as climate oscillates between the cold and warm intervals that are part of the Earth’s natural cycle of long-term climate change.
During cold-climate intervals, known as glacial epochs or ice ages, sea level falls because of a shift in the global hydrologic cycle: water is evaporated from the oceans and stored on the continents as large ice sheets and expanded ice caps, ice fields, and mountain glaciers. Global sea level was about 125 meters below today’s sea level at the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago (Fairbanks, 1989). As the climate warmed, sea level rose because the melting North American, Eurasian, South American, Greenland, and Antarctic ice sheets returned their stored water to the world’s oceans. During the warmest intervals, called interglacial epochs, sea level is at its highest. Today we are living in the most recent interglacial, an interval that started about 10,000 years ago and is called the Holocene Epoch by geologists.

Of course, the above images are available as wall art prints and on a variety of home decor items.
Link to: Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks
Link to: Fenwick Island Lighthouse on the Rocks Monochrome
Link to real photographs of: The Fenwick Island Lighthouse Collection

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A Night Light for Fenwick Island

With a bit of creative editing we see a new perspective of a familiar old lighthouse.

So, who’s afraid of the dark? No one around these parts need fear the night because we have a light to keep us safe.

night light beacon - the fenwick island lighthouse
Night Light Beacon – the Fenwick Island Lighthouse

Of course this is a composite image and a good bit “contrived” – but it has attracted a lot of attention on social media. None of that attention was negative. Well, there may have been a few snarky remarks but the image received (literally) hundreds of re-tweets on twitter and dozens of “likes” and “comments” on Facebook on a personal page, a business page and some local group pages.

image of the fenwick island lighthouse with wires and pole

It is that “feedback” that prompted this brief article with an explanation of how this image was created.

Step one was to choose an image like this “touristy” snapshot-style picture of the lighthouse complex. The Fenwick Island Light Station in this shot includes the tower, the keeper’s home and assistant keeper’s home.

Image of the Fenwick Island Lighthouse with wires removed

Next was to “straighten” the buildings and “remove” the wires and the utilities pole. This is something that is almost never done by photographers with and turns an ordinary picture into a photograph worthy of being displayed. This was the longest and more tedious part of the editing process. Photoshop Elements software was used for this most of what follows.

The image was also cropped to a (more) standard 3:2 ratio. This shape prints perfectly at a small 12″x8″ size up to the popular 36″x24″ for wall display.

night light - fenwick island light
“Night Light” – the Fenwick Island Light

The blue sky was removed and rendered black with scattered stars. The building and lighthouse had lighting reduced and contrast increased to give a bit more of a “nighttime appearance” without losing detail in the structures – as might happen with a normal nighttime exposure.

Using the same Photoshop editing software the moon (from another image by Bill Swartwout Photography) was superimposed onto the night sky. The addition of the moon and the starry background are the “composite” (added on) parts of the image.

Finally a special “Star Filter” by ProDigital Software was used to create the lighthouse beacon. That resulted in the final composite photograph you see at the top of this article.

The image below is another (popular) photograph edited from the original. This is also a composite image with a dramatic sky added to the background and then converted to black and white. This creates a moody and impactful scene as might have been photographed decades ago.

Fenwick Island Lighthouse in Black and White
A somber Black and White presentation of the Fenwick Island Lighthouse sets the mood…

Click the large images above for more detail and to see the wall art and home décor choices available for both of those photographs.

Click here to see more photographs of: The Fenwick Island Lighthouse.