Sylt, Ellenbogen West by pensrud

Want to know how I made this: See detailed how-to on my Facebook page:

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So….On a two week long visit to the area my goals were to capture many of the beautiful lighthouses along the North Sea in Germany and Denmark. This lovely lighthouse is on Sylt, a popular tourist destination, and getaway for wealthy Germans living in Hamburg, like the Hamptons for New Yorkers.

Beautiful coastline, and great place. I rented a bike and cruised all around the island finding locations and capturing four of the five lighthouses on the island. I spent the night out in the sand dunes capturing the Milky Way and stars overhead and getting blasted by sand and salt water. 50+ mile an hour winds.

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Cloudy Sunset by pensrud

A gorgeous sunset out by westerhever. Am a big fan of this place. Have spent many nights and days here. Hope you like this one!

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Cloudy Sunset by pensrud

A gorgeous sunset out by westerhever. Am a big fan of this place. Have spent many nights and days here. Hope you like this one!

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Gorgeous Sundown by Westerhever by pensrud

This is another from a few days ago now. If you didn’t read the other descriptions in previous images from this evening, will say briefly I was lucky to even have this. All around, for miles, was grey, overcast and rain. At dinner I kept peeking out on the horizon to dark grey and blah. Ate dinner and afterwards was getting up to take the kids to bed and when I peeked out far off in the distance you could see the clouds had thinned on one spot, which I knew was the direction of westerhever.

Asked my wife if she wanted me to put the kids down but she told me to go. Grabbe the gear and got in the car to rain and enjoyed a lovely 45 minute drive to the lighthouse. Despite the rain and rental car, weird renault wipers, my optimism and joy made the drive wonderful. Made better by seeing a couple wild rabbits and a pheasant on the way, which I consider good luck seeing wildlife on the way to shoot.

Long story short…it was amazing. colors. cloud layers. mid and high level, light rays. rainbow. mud. Sheep. Birds. And I was completely alone out there. The rain kept the tourists away for what could have been the best sunset of the summer. At least it will be my best sunset at Westerhever this summer.

Such a great night. Hope you like it. Cheers from Northern Germany.

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Westerhever Compass by pensrud

From one of the most amazing sunsets I have witnessed in years. Was so hard to desaturate this and to remove the clouds and foreground. But, I wanted to try something different with my favorite lighthouse. Reminded me of a compass. Hope you like it. Have a nice week.

Feel free to follow me if you like the image so you can see future images as well.

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Alone Under Clouds by pensrud

Another from the gorgeous sunset last night.

For this one, you can see the clouds just got better and better. I was so glad I had my Singh-Ray filter with me in that it let me really expose for the sky while illuminating the foreground. Used another .6 LEE soft ND grad and a .6 hard as well. Was it a pain playing with the filters from image to image, pano to pano, horizontal to landscape, back to horizontal and back again…so on and so on…sure. But I enjoy it, and have gotten used to it. Not going to get into the filter vs bracketing debate. I am a filter guy that focus stacks and brackets as well. “Show me the Focus stacked, bracketed, 15 image wide, three row high pano.

This is not that beast. Just a 5 image, focus stacked blend. Hope you like it.

Feel free to share and follow me if you like my work.

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Sunset Walk by Westerhever by pensrud

Westerhever Lighthouse….one of my favorite places in the world. Why? I couldn’t tell you, but since a child and seeing it on the cover of a school textbook with a family walking in the mud, it just stuck with me. And now I have family that lives a mere 45 minute drive from it, so whenever we come visit I make sure to spend several nights and days out there, while making time to visit other lighthouses as well. While the others are great and I enjoy the adventures visiting the others, ferry rides, train rides, renting bikes and biking around islands and the North Sea, this one is still like home. At sun down I did several panoramas from the other side of the lighthouse. Then I waited for 3 hours until the skies finally darkened enough for me to capture the light rays from the lighthouse. Long night. Great night.

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