PORT WASHINGTON SCENES

Port Washington is about 25 miles north of Milwaukee, close enough to the city that it serves as a bedroom community for many who work downtown but far enough that it has its own identity.  In that respect it is truly a port, not to mention being the county seat of Ozaukee County, the geographically smallest county in Wisconsin.  The town is blessed with an established harbor and a relatively large, affluent marina.  I spent a couple of hours there last weekend looking for photo ops.  Here are a few of the shots that I got (and kept).

One of the reasons I went to Port Washington was to do a little photography in St. Mary's catholic church, a venue that I have visited a number of times before.  This was the first time that I found the church to be locked.  So I was relegated to exterior shots.  I took a couple of symmetrical shots from directly in front of the church, but the one I liked best was the following, taken from an oblique angle.

The little bit of clouds available actually added a bit of drama to the shot.  However, I would have preferred not to have the tree branches on the left side of the image.  Maybe if I had taken the shot from the other side?

Then it was down to the harbor, which includes a very long stone pier/breakwater leading out to a lighthouse.  A number of people were fishing on the pier, one of whom showed me a couple of large fish (including a trout and a tuna) that he had caught.  It was difficult to capture the fishing and the pier in photos, and the following don't really do justice.

I also took a number of shots of the marina, but the only one I am including here is of a dock that I thought provided some interesting lines and that I converted to a black & white.

Finally, below is a (heavily cropped) photo of the lighthouse at the end of the pier.

I realize this is an unusual composition, but I was trying to make the best of a less than ideal image.  I should have used more of a telephoto, so that I wouldn't have to crop so much.  Also, it might have been preferable to show the stone pier/breakwater as extending further across the image (in other words, to center the shot to the left of the lighthouse rather than to the right).  However, there was a closer breakwater that extended into the image on the left and this was as much as I could spare cropping on the left without including that breakwater.  In the end I wanted to include the essentially empty sky as negative space in the shot.  Finally, I probably wouldn't have saved the shot at all were it not for the pair of individuals fishing in the shadow of the lighthouse.  Maybe I will try this shot again.

John