Coos Bay Area Day 1

Today was a day of photographing lighthouses. I went to Coquille River Lighthouse first. Coquille Lighthouse was commissioned in 1896 and decommissioned in 1939. The lighthouse, which is 40 feet tall was there to help mariners across a dangerous bar but was no longer needed after improvements to the river channel and navigation technology. After being abandoned it began to fall victim to weather and vandals. It was taken over by the city of Bandon and in 1976 they received help for the restoration project from the state and the Army Corps of Engineers. The next lighthouse is Umpqua River Lighthouse. This is the second lighthouse built on this site. The first one fell victim to the ravages of Mother Nature. I took the tour of the lighthouse and something that was very interesting was that at the top of the lighthouse you get the chance to go into the inside of the lens. I took a picture on the inside of the lighthouse lens that I really like. It was taken at 28mm, ISO 400, with a shutter speed ok 1/800 sec and an f-stop of f/8.0. One of the things that I realized today was that I developed what I would call tunnel vision. I have been concentrating so much on the lighthouses on the coast that I forgot about the basic reason for this trip. I have been concentrating so much on the lighthouses that I have missed a lot of the interesting sights in between the lighthouses. Well that is going to be changed. Don’t get me wrong. The lighthouses have been interesting and fun to photograph but there is so much along the coast that I saw but didn’t stop because I was concentrating on the next lighthouse.