Pigeon Point, Fog. Pescadero, California. November 17, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

There is a little story behind this photograph and another one taken the same night that should turn up on this page soon.

Every November there is a special event at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse on the Pacific coast south of San Francisco. In the evening the original lighting system is fired up for a couple hours. It is nothing like the lighting used in modern lighthouses – those are more like what you might see in an old airport control tower – but instead uses a fresnel lens to break the light into many beams that point out in all directions at once.

When this historic light is turned on they leave it in a fixed position for about five minutes so that photographers will have time to make long exposures. (After this short period, the light begins to rotate.) Needless to say, this event attracts a lot of photographers. This year I decided to head over and try my hand at photographing this event.

Things went wrong for me in a bunch of ways. First, I got a late start and only just barely arrived at Pigeon Point at the schedule time for the lighting. Then, although the air had been fairly clear as I drove in along the coast, right at the lighthouse an incredibly think fog bank obscured the view. Finally, much to my surprise, when I arrived I found that this event is so popular that hundreds or perhaps thousands of people show up!

To make a long story short, I couldn’t get anywhere near the lighthouse to shoot the fancy light itself. I quickly came up with a “plan B” and found a spot on a bluff perhaps a quarter mile south of Pigeon Point and set up for some long exposure night photography. I ended up with two photographs that I think are interesting and somewhat mysterious – both are exposures of several minutes and include both the surf and the think fog along with some light coming from the lighthouse.

(For those who wonder, the far left light is coming from the lighthouse tower.)