Wow! It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly two months since we finished our Lighthouses of the Outer Banks workshop. We had great weather for photography, albeit a bit “breezy” at times. Another great group came and hit it off right away. That always makes Arnie and me feel good, because if people are having fun, they are relaxed and learn so much more. They are also willing to take chances and experiment, because the group is so supportive. That’s one of the wonderful things about a photo workshop or any workshop, for that matter … like-minded people coming together for an intense and fun time, feeding off each other, challenging each other, learning from not only the instructors, but from one another.

One of the things Arnie and I like to do is to continually challenge our participants, to not allow them to get lazy, to push them beyond their comfort zone, to encourage them to experiment. It’s how they improve so much and why our student galleries are so strong.

At Lighthouses of the Outer Banks, as in all our photo workshops, we did just that. The Outer Banks is a popular destination for photography, so to make one’s image of an oft-photograph location or landmark is often difficult. Our first assignment was at one of our favorite piers. We asked them to not just do another shot of a pier.

Mike skewed his camera to accent the bulk of the pier, then used a slow shutter speed to smooth out the water to make a good contrast.

Liz really liked the early-dawn and pier lights dancing off the surface of the water and celebrated them and their sources with her composition.

Carmelina did her shot later and accented the stormy sky in post-processing, then turned her image into a sepia-toned black and white.

When one thinks of the Outer Banks, one cannot but think of sand among its other elements. The sand changes daily, encroaching, receding, offering new palettes and designs, morphing into different shapes.

Liz was captivated by a criss-cross pattern here, rim-lit by the early-morning sun, and allowed the scene to recede into the background.

For one of her shots, Carmelina worked on a scene with shapes and shadows surrounding an old piece of wood peeking out of the sand.

It was the snow fence posts that attracted Mike, and he did this image with the posts and shadows in the sand marching off toward the distant dunes.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest brick one in the nation, the quintessential symbol of the Outer Banks and North Carolina, and arguably the best-known lighthouse on the southeastern seaboard. It was originally built 1,500 feet from the shore, but in the ensuing decades, Mother Nature eroded the shore so that the lighthouse was in jeopardy of toppling into the sea. In a 1999 successful rescue operation, the Cape Hatteras Light was moved some 2,900 feet to its current location. It has been photographed to death and appears in books and calendars, on t-shirts, mugs, place mats, cocktail napkins, and anything you might want in every nifty-gifty shop for miles around. We asked our participants to do something different for their shots.

Carmelina gave it a very effective, ghostly, moving treatment, appropriate, given its history.

Mike scrinched himself into a near-impossible position to make this view of the lighthouse.

Back down by the water, Liz captured the unusually brilliant colors in both the sky and water reflections.

The last exercise was probably the most difficult of all, since the Cape Hatteras Light is probably one of the most popular lighthouses on the east coast, if not the whole country. We think they did an admirable job.

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