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Storm Front Over Ludington

Shining brighter than a spotlight at a rock concert, beams of light I like to call "God beams" spotlight the Ludington lighthouse. I prefer nature's light shows to any manmade ones.

I walked out the Ludington North Breakwater to photograph the northern lights in the middle of the night. The lights we barely visible, but the Milky Way was incredible. You could also see the lights of Wisconsin. It was a beautifully calm night on Lake Michigan.

365 Week 06

Those who climb their way to the top of the Skyline Trail are rewarded with a birds-eye view of the southern portion of the park. If they time their hike to the schedule of the carferry S.S. Badger, and look through a good pair of binoculars or a large telephoto camera lens, they might also enjoy one of the best views they have ever seen of the big ship heading out of Ludington harbor.

An integrated tug and barge steams past Ludington South Breakwater Light while northbound on Lake Michigan. I wish the ship's crew smooth sailing and arrival at their home port before Christmas. F4.0 at 1/400, ISO 100, 500 mm lens at 500 mm

Pure Ludington - Panoramic

Those who climb their way to the top of the Skyline Trail are rewarded with a birds-eye view of the southern portion of the park. If they time their hike to the schedule of the carferry S.S. Badger, and look through a good pair of binoculars or a large telephoto camera lens, they might also enjoy one of the best views they have ever seen of the big ship heading out of Ludington harbor.

Ludington Lighthouse During Workshop

 Although, over the last few years I’ve made many images that I’m extremely proud of, one photo that I still had not captured was a great image of the Ludington North Breakwater Light. I’ve made images of the lighthouse, just none that I was in love with. I had the chance to stay in town to shoot the sunset on May 21st, and I was crossing my fingers that the rain would stop, and the clouds would break just enough for the sun to shine through. It could have gone either way, but I was ready and waiting. I chose a telephoto lens, so that I could focus on just the lighthouse and the setting sun. Thankfully for me, the sunset turned out to be gorgeous! I could see others taking a nightly run to the lighthouse, or taking in the sunset with family or friends. It was just me, my camera, and the setting sun enjoying that special night on the south side of the beach, listening to Lake Michigan tell her summer secrets.

Ludington Lighthouse During Workshop

Winter arrived in Ludington today while we were gone. This is my view of the Lake Michigan shoreline at Stearns Park upon my return. After donning a lot of foul weather gear, I venture into the blizzard-like conditions to make this shot. This weather is beyond exhilarating.

The sand hitting my face feels like shards of glass as I make my way to the water's edge at Stearns Park to photograph the Ludington North Breakwater Light. The winds over Lake Michigan at times exceed 60 miles per hour. Magic light, white clouds and dark blue sky behind are my backdrop. Now I just need a huge wave. Bingo! F5.6 at 1/1250, ISO 100, 300 mm lens at 300 mm

The day was November 10, 1975. It was—and still is—the roughest I have seen Lake Michigan. I was amazed by the 20- to 30-foot waves slamming into the Ludington lighthouse. The roiling sea engulfed the breakwater. Hurricane-force winds made it nearly impossible to stand up. I braced myself against a tree and held the camera as still as I could. Sand blasted me and my Nikon camera. Of course, I could not know that within a few hours, the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald would succumb on Lake Superior to what meteorologists would later describe as the “Perfect Great Lakes Storm.” What I did know without a doubt was this was the fiercest storm to hit the Ludington area shoreline since the Armistice Day Storm of 1940. I knew this storm was more than a match for even the mighty self-righting 44-foot Coast Guard motor lifeboat at Coast Guard Station Ludington. Thank God my shipmates there didn’t have to try to go out that day. The barometer dropped to the second-lowest level ever recorded in Ludington. Even the waves inside the Ludington pierheads appeared mountainous. The breakwater leading to the lighthouse was not even visible because the waves rolling over it were so large and storm surge so great. The waves were so big inside the harbor it was impossible to discern where the submerged breakwater was. This was a day for the history books. It was not the only big story I covered that day as a reporter and photographer for the Ludington Daily News. I had been sent earlier that day to a farm an hour away near Chase, Michigan, where a group of farmers herded their dairy cattle into a massive pit excavated in the middle of a farm field. The farmers surrounded the pit and shot and killed dozens of the cattle to draw national attention to the fact that their cattle and some farm family members were being poisoned by PBB that had been accidentally mixed into cattle feed they had purchased. The slaughter was a gruesome undertaking, carried out in pouring rain. I drove soaking wet back to Ludington. Upon reaching downtown Ludington, just before turning off Ludington Avenue onto Rath Avenue, where the newspaper was located, I could see the mountainous waves on Lake Michigan a half mile west of my location. I didn’t make the turn. Instead I drove straight to the west end of Ludington Avenue, jumped out of my Ford Bronco and began photographing the greatest Great Lakes storm I had ever witnessed. After a half-hour or so, I was too numb to shoot anymore. Incredibly, when I crawled back in my vehicle, I realized the hurricane force wind had blown all my wet clothing dry. I headed straight to the Daily News because I couldn’t wait to develop the 400 ASA Kodak Tri-X black and white film containing my storm shots. I was not anxious to see the cow-killing shots. Give me a great storm to photograph any day!

During one of our weekday photography workshops, my dad and the rest of our students rushed to the North Breakwater Light in order to photograph the Badger leaving the harbor. I stayed further back and tried to frame the entire ship along with the lighthouse and its reflection in one photograph. It wasn

I have photographed dozens of storms with waves as big as or bigger than those I shot during this February 1995 storm, but this image remains one of my favorite storm images because of the wave’s shape, position in relationship to the Ludington lighthouse, position of the seagulls and drama created by the storm light. I consider this image “perfectly poetic.” As my Grandma Reed liked to say about her small but precisely designed and tastefully decorated home: “There is a place for everything, and everything in its place.” I made dozens of exposures on Fuji Velvia film this day, none so perfectly poetic as this one. My youngest son, Willie, and I watched this February storm for hours, capturing photographic moments during lulls in the blizzard. As sunset neared, I prayed for storm light. If this magic light arrived, it would appear shortly before sunset, and only if the sun could find its way through, or beneath, a band of boiling clouds skirting the distant horizon. It is a photographer’s game of hide-and-seek I have played with the sun and clouds thousands of times. I love winning, but experience has taught me that I am more likely to lose or at least not win big. This time, as I had envisioned, sunlight broke from beneath the clouds, backlighting the waves and the lighthouse. Rewarded by the knowledge of what could happen and by perseverance, Willie and I were oblivious to the gale winds pummeling us as we witnessed the magic light and lake’s fury come together against the storm cloud backdrop.

Break Time

Little things can make or break an image. Straight horizontal lines in a photograph can be extremely destructive to the flow of a composition. This photograph would not work if it were not for the three diagonal lines in the sky. The diagonal lines get the viewer's eyes moving around the photograph and lead one's attention to the lighthouse.

Little things can make or break an image. Straight horizontal lines in a photograph can be extremely destructive to the flow of a composition. This photograph would not work if it were not for the three diagonal lines in the sky. The diagonal lines get the viewer's eyes moving around the photograph and lead one's attention to the lighthouse. D7000, F22 at 1/30, 100 ISO, 70-200mm lens at 185mm