Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

March Photo of the Month: Fish Tug Entering Kenosha Harbor, Lake Michigan, Kenosha WI

This month’s photo comes from my first weekend visiting Kenosha back on the 3rd of March, 2008. This interesting boat is a fish tug, a boat that’s native to the Great Lakes. This fish tug was first created for the commercial fishing industry in the 1930’s. It was designed to stand up to the challenging conditions found on the Great Lakes year around. There are three fish tugs currently in Kenosha Harbor, this was my first encounter with one.

I was out photographing the ice and slush of the harbor when , to my surprise, I heard a boat horn from the lake. I thought I was hearing things. No way was there a boat out there amongst all that ice. Then I saw it. I quickly changed lenses and got four shots fired off before the boat was by me. This image is my favorite of the four.

At the time I had no idea what this boat was, but after some searching online I was able to learn more about the fish tugs and their importance to the fishing history of the Great Lakes. If you’d like to know more about fish tugs, here’s a great source: Fish Tugs of the Greatest Lake

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How often do you think about photography and the photos that you take? I do it all the time. Not a day goes by that some thought about photography doesn’t pop into my head. Many times these thoughts are ideas, or visualizations, about pictures that I want to take when the conditions are right for a certain subject

Take this picture of the Wind Point Lighthouse along Lake Michigan in Racine, WI for example. Not to long ago I read a blog post by Greg Russell on his website Alpenglow Images. The post is titled House on Fire ruin – A Vertical Panorama and it’s about how he shot a vertical panorama by stitching together three horizontal pictures. The minute I finished the post I knew the subject I wanted to try this technique on, Wind Point Lighthouse.

Having shot the lighthouse many times, under many different and conditions, I knew in my mind the composition I wanted and the conditions that I wanted to take it in. Let the waiting game begin….

About a week later the conditions I wanted came to be. We had been out shooting an old mill in Illinois when, on the way home, I realized the conditions were perfect for my lighthouse shot. So we drove out there and I took my three horizontal pictures of the lighthouse. When I got home and stitched the pictures together, I was blown away by the result. There in front of me was not only the image I had envisioned, but something much nicer. This was the best picture I had ever taken of the light.

Then another vision came into my head, I saw this picture in black and white. I immediately began to work on the black and white version that I saw in my mind. Everything fell together nicely and within an hour I had this image.

I find that as I get older and more experienced in photography, I’m pre-visualizing photos much more. I still love going out, being spontaneous and taking what Mother Nature gives me, but there is a certain, wonderful feeling when you see an image in your mind, wait for the right conditions, and then make it a reality.

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The Kenosha Pierhead Lighthouse is a 104 year old lighthouse that sits on the north pier at the entrance to Kenosha Harbor. It’s red color is typical of many lighthouses on Lake Michigan.

I shot this image on my first visit to Kenosha in March of 2008. Little did I know then how many photos I would eventually take of the lighthouse.

The lighting in this image is very typical of lighting found along Lake Michigan in the Winter months. The dark sky is a cloud bank that forms over the lake providing a wonderful contrast with the snowy foreground, (In fact, as I write this, these same lighting conditions are present).

One of the things I love about photographing this lighthouse is how it’s red color stands out so brightly in an otherwise monochrome scene.

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We’ve all been there, waiting for the sunset that never comes. We set up our awesome shot and wait, but it never happens, the sunset doesn’t show up. So, discouraged, we pack up our gear and start to drive away. Then just as we pull onto the highway it happens, the sky explodes with color. By the time we find a place to pull over and fish our camera out we maybe get one or two shots before the color fades. We then kick ourselves for the rest of the night for not being more patient.

That almost happened with this image of the sunset over the White Mountains in California. I went out that evening hoping to get sunset pictures of the Sierra Wave that had formed over the Owens Valley. I waited and waited, but the wave clouds never changed color. I finally decided to give up and began loading my gear into the truck. Just as I began to collapse my tripod I noticed a little bit of color hitting the top of White Mtn Peak and thought I might just get lucky. I quickly got my camera back out and within 60 seconds the sky exploded into some of the most amazing color I’ve ever seen. And it all happened away from the waves clouds I had went out to shoot.

Let this be a reminder to never give up on a sunset. You never know when something magical will happen, even if there’s only 5 minutes left in the day.

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