As both climate change and rising sea levels put historic lighthouses
in imminent danger. Photographer David Sopa's alpaca has a sense
of urgency to capture as many as possible. He's published a book
USA stars and Lights of portraits from the Dark to showcase What
is it Risk? Michelle San Miguel of Rhode Island, PBS weekly Profiles
of Pataca. It's part of our arts and Culture series canvas.
If you think of a lighthouse
It does. It's work at night.
Primarily
To not have that recorded in history is a shame.
David Zappa Co. Has been recording history for more than three decades.
He's an award winning videographer, but his biggest project yet has
him picking up his still camera and I didn't realize that this was
a project to
I was 15 or 20 lighthouses in and that's when I was doing more research
on more lighthouses, realizing
Wow. There's no pictures of this lighthouse is photographed more
than 175 lighthouses in the United States, including many on the
Eastern Seaboard
stars. That's a good thing.
His goal to capture every working lighthouse around the country at
night. What the digital camera has allowed us to do was to open up.
Two photographers this whole new field of shooting when the sun goes
down.
So these are the slick ones.
Not too bad because they're the tide is on the way in, so they're
a little bit dry.
What you can't see in Zepa. TCAs photos are the great lengths he
goes to in order to capture these images. It's not a stretch to say
you're putting your life at risk on some of these shoots. Early on,
I realized that it's it's dangerous at night.
Almost there.
Little bit further out than we get the reflection.
That's always the bonus. Patika often wades knee deep into water
to take a photo. On the night we went with him. It was this one.
The Ned's point lighthouse in Massachusetts. Other lighthouses are
only accessible by boat to get an image like this. So pataca put
his 20 ft tripod in the water.
So I can launch it off a boat. Stick it down in the water.
And get a shot of the lighthouse from the water that you couldn't
normally get. Because your camera has to be completely steady for
20 seconds during new Moon phase, Arriving at night to these lighthouses
is not for the faint of heart
on his friend Sean found that out on a trip to Thatcher Island to
capture twin lighthouses, right by the lighthouses there, like right
there.
That's where they are. Let's let's keep going. Let's shoot it.
So we tie the boat off at a morning and now we're facing to the wind
and the waves are coming over the bow of my 15 Ft. Boston Whaler.
And it's all hell's breaking loose. The water's coming over. It's
filling the back of the boat. We're getting hit by wind. I'm at the
bow of the boat like getting slammed, and I'm like
You know what? Sean?
We gotta go. And he was like, Dave, you know I'm with you, man.
I never want to give up. He came back another night and captured
the twins in all their glory.
Nope. That's slick.
Just when you think you're done, Liz
I'm creating this history right in front of my eyes,
times his photo shoots around the lunar calendar. So now here's what
you need.
New moon or close to it.
Low tide.
Slack tide, which means the tightest stopped.
Um
In no clouds. So why do you think it's taken me eight years to do
only 175 lighthouses? Roughly
eyes are not deceiving. You still don't expect this story sky to
look quite like this in person camera sees more than our eyes can
see. So when you're standing here looking at Beaver Tail Lighthouse
In the middle of the night.
The Milky Way is there and you can barely see it with your eyes,
But the camera can see it better than you can because it's seeing
in this long exposure.
To has driven up and down the East Coast and this RV photographing
lighthouses. But he says the effects of climate change with rising
tides present a real and present danger.
The work you're doing is really a race against time totally in many
on many different levels, the level and talk about levels. The levels
of the Great Lakes last year were higher than they have ever been.
They're down again this year, but
If it gets higher again. There are several lighthouses that are threatened
because the foundations will just start crumbling and
Potentially those lighthouses could just fall into the lake. It's
with that sense of urgency. That's epoca approaches his work.
To me. It is called out and said
This needs to be done.
And so I guess I'm the person to do it.
For the PBS news hour. I'm Michelle San Miguel in Jamestown, Rhode