I am fortunate to live in a place like the Door County Peninsula in Wisconsin, well known for its long coastline and spectacular natural beauty in all seasons. There are many islands off the coast of the peninsula and several have lighthouses on them which are very enjoyable to explore and photograph with my drone.

The main issue with this type of island photography is my drone is always over open water so extra care must be taken with the weather forecast and especially wind strength and direction as there is no room for misjudgement of battery levels and return to home flight times. It would be all too easy to get caught up in magnificent conditions like this evening and forget to start for home in time.

I had wanted to fly out and explore Pilot Island for many months but conditions were never quite right until late on this afternoon. It is an island out into Lake Michigan and always exposed to winds possibly much stronger than those on shore so it is one of the most tricky places to go. Pilot Island has a derilect lighthouse that was in use in the 1930’s but time and nesting Cormorants have taken a heavy toll on it. On this afternoon, the weather was perfect and I made three trips out to the island, needing to come back to get fresh batteries as I only had about 10 minutes of photographic time over the island with the rest of the battery life spent getting out to and back from the island.

The light got better and better as the evening progressed.and this image was the last and best exposure of the day. I watched the light fade as I flew back to shore but still wished I had another battery to make one more trip.