“Standing Strong”
A lot of my photographic teachers are people I watch on YouTube. They live and work in far away places like England, Spain, and Norway.
I live in Oklahoma. The landscape and the weather are very different here.
Something I see my YouTube photography friends do a lot is shoot in rainy, cloudy, and foggy conditions. Those kinds of atmospherics make for gorgeous images, and when you’re learning an art form you find yourself wanting to copy the work of people you love.
If Oklahoma has those kinds of atmospherics then chances are we’ve also got 30-50mph winds and a tornado’s coming, too! Sure enough, that’s what it was like the day I captured this image.
I made my way to a lake I knew that had a cute little lighthouse, bundled up, and stepped out of my car into the elements. There was sleet coming down and hitting me in the face, and the wind was so cold my finger began to hurt almost immediately.
I walked to the shore as quickly as possible, found a spot with some foliage (that was barely hanging on in the wind gusts), and captured a series of images of the lighthouse standing strong and tall and looking like this wind was the most unremarkable thing it had every experienced.
You and I have seen dozens of lighthouse images. They’re always calm and pretty. This image of a building used as a beacon of hope, being unfazed by harsh weather was the most appropriate scene I could imagine.
