This truly is an amazing photo of the Pigeon Point Lighthouse [wikipedia].

From MumbleyJoe's Flickr photostream:

Once per year at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse they shut down the weak insipid modern (presumably electric) light and switch over the the 5 kerosene lamps and fresnel lens of the original, as it was 135 years ago.

Last night was the night, and it's really quite a sight. When they fire it up there's really a collective sense of "whoa!" from the audience (which was WAY bigger than I expected - I probably had to park a mile away and I was there an hour early).

Capturing a shot like this is tricky because the lens itself actually rotates, which looks great but is tough for long exposures. But for the first 5 minutes they leave it static to indulge all of the photographers who turn out and want this shot (this highly unique and one-of-a-kind shot of course). When they switched to this light my camera still had about a minute of noise reduction to do on my final test shot to get the exposure right, so I missed the first minute. Then I started this shot which was about 2 minutes long, followed by 2 minutes of noise reduction again. So by the time I had my shot it was too late for a do-over. So this is it, I only got to take one photo and this is what I got, so I hope it worked out.