Battery Point Lighthouse From Shore

Battery Point Lighthouse

I've been hanging on to this shot for a while now. I've been wanting to share it, but it had never hit that threshold of me liking it enough to post publicly. Especially when I look at where this photo started off. A little about the sight first. This is Battery Point lighthouse which during higher tides is cut off from the mainland. Unlike a lot of lighthouses these days this one has a lighthouse keeper that lives on site, and as a result very unsightly electricity and phone lines are strung up between the rock/island and the "mainland" (for lack of a better term). These lines didn't work as leading lines so they were just a distraction. So I set about getting rid of them. Now it's entirely possible there's an easier way to do this, and maybe even better tools, but I used the tool I was familiar with, Aperture. Using a mix of the clone tool and the automatic retouch brick I was able to get rid of the wires and a power pole that would have looked odd if I had left it there with no wires connected to it. But I could still see where the lines were. I had used a brush that was too hard and too small; softening the brush up and enlarging it gave me better blending, but I was still seeing them. The tool that finally got me to a point where I felt the lines were truly gone was the Skin Smoothing brick.

Other photo info. This is an HDR composite image made up of seven bracket shots. The day was a cloudy dull day, but I like the color I was able to get out of the foliage with the red and white of the buildings just peeking out. I can't imagine what it must be like there during a bad storm.