Description
They've trudged down many a trail, high winds blowing, slogged through sand carrying camera bags in hundred degree temperatures, with bugs biting, Nikons slung around their necks. They've waded knee deep on a trail flooded with water from the Hudson River. They've gone out on the water in sports boats, crabber's boats, lobstermen's boats, rowboats.They don't know how many ferries that they have taken. They lost count long ago. They've flown in twin engine planes, single engine, and seaplanes. They've climbed over boulders, hung from tree branches over a cliff and rolled in a mud puddle under a fence. Why? To photograph a lighthouse. On their wedding trip in 1987, Bob & Sandra Shanklin traveled to New England, and among other things, photographed a few lighthouses. The first one was picturesque Portland Head Lighthouse. It was love at first sight. They started searching for more lighthouses that very day. At an age when most people are thinking of retiring, the Shanklins started a whole new and exciting project. Bob contends that lighthouses are a virus with no known cure, and at that very first lighthouse, the bug bit both of them. Since then the couple have traveled over all the coasts of the United States looking for lighthouses. The Shanklins call themselves "the Lighthouse People", and they feel they have earned the title. Some years ago the Associated Press did a story on them. The story was printed in newspapers all over the United States. At that time they had photographed around 200 lighthouses and so, had only a good start on their project. Whenever they were in an area, looking for a lighthouse or trying to find transportation to a lighthouse, someone would come up and say, "Aren't you the Lighthouse People?" The Lighthouse People are photographers Bob and Sandra Shanklin. After that first trip to New England, it became a goal, a cause, an obsession to photograph all the lighthouses in the U.S. In their calculations, there are about 670 lighthouse in the U.S., some of them major, some minor. They have photographed them all including Alaska and Hawaii. They have just published their first book of full color photographs: "Lighthouses of the Hawaiian Islands". The Shanklins have had wonderful adventures on their quest. According to Sandra, "They almost always are in beautiful places, and there's always good seafood near a lighthouse." Some lighthouses are like their first lighthouse, Portland Head Light, easy to reach. You can drive right up and view or touch them. Many others take a special effort just to view, like Ship Shoal, Louisiana. Ship Shoal is over 10 miles off the Louisiana Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico. The Shanklins had to charter a seaplane to take them there and to the six lighthouses at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The plane ride to Ship Shoal was the most miserable plane ride Sandra had ever taken. Louisiana had a cold front come through, with record cold temperatures for December. The plane was not heated. The pilot said his planes almost never need heat. The sun was shining but the wind was blowing, the flight was rough. Sandra got airsick and stayed airsick for the whole three hour flight.