Category: Uncategorized

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Minot Ledge Lighthouse

I spent an hour or so photographing at a cove along Jerusalem Road in Cohasset last week.  You lose the light there long before sunset and so I was on the road home when I couldn’t help but stop to make a few images of Minot Ledge Lighthouse caught in the warm light of the late afternoon sun.

Minot Ledge Lighthouse celebrated it’s 150 th anniversary last year.  Known to some as the ‘I love you’ lighthouse because of it’s 1-4-3 flashing cycle, the 150 year old lighthouse is now up for sale under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.  Hopefully the next owner will maintain and preserve this part of our coastal heritage.

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The Value of Sharing Ideas

I came across a good quote about the value of sharing ideas recently and thought I’d share it here:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine: as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.  That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

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Scituate Sunset

Sometimes I head out with a clear idea of the photograph I want to capture.  Other times, I don’t have a good idea.  On those days I’m not sure why I even head out of the door, especially with the kind of weather we’ve had here in New England in recent weeks.

After finishing up at the conservation area, and getting the image that I showed last week, I headed over to Scituate harbor.  I’m not sure what I was expecting – the sky was white, heavy with more snow, and so I had low expectations of making any photographs.  Nevertheless I drove over to the harbor to take a look.  I was surprised when I got there.  The sky had begun to light up and was drawing quite a crowd.  Although the photograph doesn’t quite do the scene justice it looked as though someone was shooting a giant laser into the sky.  Pretty amazing!

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Members Show North River Arts Society Feb 19 – 27

I spent an hour or so last weekend printing and framing ‘Approaching Storm, Orient Point’ and dropped it off on Saturday for inclusion in the North River Arts Society members show. It’s my first time in the show and I’m curious to see what feedback this image gets.

The show is being held in the G.A.R. Hall, 157 Old
Main Street, Marshfield Hills, MA and runs Feb 19 – 27.

VIEWING HOURS :
Monday – Friday 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Please stop by if you are in the area.

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Winter Stream

After one of the recent storms I headed out to one of the local conservation areas to see what I could find.  I had been photographing one of the streams in this area before the snow and wanted to see how the snow had changed things.  Increasingly I find with areas that I’ve been to often that I have an image in mind that I want to take.  In this case I’d photographed a series of rocks in a stream before the snow storm and wanted to make some similar images with the rocks covered with snow.  The images I made were okay but as I moved on and continued to photograph the image posted above revealed itself.  This shot captured much my feeling of the couple of hours that I spent tramping around in the snow than my planned images did.  I’m pleased that I continued to explore and photograph after I came what I was after.  A reminder that regardless of what my preconceptions are, its always worth remaining open for other opportunities.

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Winter Trees, Close to Home

We’re in a cycle of one storm per week here in the northeast at the moment.  When I first moved here, over 10 years ago now, having storms that could drop 1 – 2 feet of snow was quite a novelty.  I’d never really seen that much snow before.  As a kid had always wanted to live somewhere where it really snowed.  Well I do now!

I was around the house at the end of last week for a number of reasons.  This photograph is the view from my back door – I didn’t even have to do outside to take it – just before I headed out to scrape some of the snow and ice off my roof. With more snow on the way there’ll be many more opportunities for winter snow pictures!

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Three Little Birds

When we sailed into Dutch Harbor towards the end of the 2010 sailing season one of the first things that we noticed was the curious looking trimaran heading out.  It turns out this stunning looking boat was ‘Three Little Birds’, an ACC 11 built by Aquidneck Custom Composites.  The weekend we visited Dutch Harbor Boat Yard was the first weekend that the owner had been able to take Three Little Birds out.  It certainly seemed as though all on board on her were having a blast.  Three Little Birds seems to have been well received at the Newport Boat Show and was described in a recent article in ‘Ocean Navigator’.

I was pleased that the owners of Dutch Harbor Boat Yard are using my image of Three Little Birds as the background for one of the pages on their website.  Click here to see how they are using it.

I look forward to seeing more of Three Little Birds next season.  Hopefully I’ll manage some shots of her ‘in flight’.  If I can keep up that is!

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Close to Home

I’ve been reading, or rather, re-reading Stuart Sipahigil’s e-book ‘close to home’ in the last few days. Stuart makes a compelling argument that you often don’t have to look much further than your own backyard to make engaging photographs. Granted I would love my backyard to look like his – see page 10 in the e-book for an example – but I am fortunate to live in New England, an amazing part of the world. We take home for granted and stop seeing what is in front of us everyday and as a result miss opportunities to hone our craft without having to travel thousands of miles. This practice stands you in good stead when you do travel and have an opportunity to make photographs that you would have otherwise been unable to make.

William Neill in a recent post on the luminous landscape blog articulates this point nicely. I think I live in a great place, just south of Boston in the heart of New England. William Neill has live in or very close to Yosemite for over 25 years. Yet it took many visits over the course of a number of years for him to begin to make images that were unique and expressed what he felt. What particularly rings true for me is that the better you know and understand your subject the more likely you are to make a unique image. Focusing on subjects close to home allows us to visit frequently, to experiment with making images at different times of the day, different seasons and different weathers. Making it more likely that you’ll capture the essence of the place.

Stuart describes an exercise in his book of limiting your self to a particular area ‘Close to Home’ in an effort to spark the creative juices. My reaction to Stuart’s exercise rather than to initiate such a project, was to think about how far from home I consider still to be close. I’ve been shooting close to home for the last 3 or so years.  I attended a workshop in Acadia NP and while I had a good time, I didn’t end up with many images that I was happy with.  I realized that I needed to put some time in behind the camera if I’m to stand a chance of getting the images that I hope to make.  After 3 years of working the same subjects in different seasons, weather and light, I now feel that I’m likely to get reasonable images when I venture farther afield.  The time is right for me to expand what I consider to be my home territory. After some consideration I decided that for me ‘home’ is now up to an hours drive or about 50 miles for morning shoots and perhaps 2 hours or 100 miles for evening shoots. This gives me an enormous range of potential subjects that I could explore. To help me focus I am going to begin a couple of projects – one of which is to get more images of Boston. Even though I live close to the city and travel there every day, I have very few images that go beyond the standard tourist shots. This is the year that I will work to build my Boston portfolio – watch this space!

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Michael Brandon

I was surprised to hear on the news recently that a fishing boat from Scituate had been involved with a freighter and badly damaged.  I was even more surprised to hear that the fishing boat was the ‘Michael Brandon’, one of the boats that I have photographed regularly during my visits to Scituate harbor.

I wish the owner Thomas Bell the very best of luck in getting Michael Brandon back in operation again and I for one will look forward to seeing her reclaim her place in the Scituate fishing fleet.

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Morning at the Harbor Breakwater

I continue to explore the coast and harbors close to home looking for different viewpoints.  On this particular morning I was on location while it was still dark and as the sky began to lighten ventured beyond the warmth of my car.  Overnight there had been a light dusting of snow, most of which had been blown away but some remained, to provide highlights to the buildings and rocks.  Unfortunately what I took for snow on the breakwater was actually a layer of ice.  Waves washing up and over the breakwater had left the breakwater with a thin, but very slick coating of ice.  My first confident step onto the ‘snow’ put me very quickly on my back.  Fortunately neither me nor my gear were worse for wear and I was able to make this image.  I was however much more careful as I returned to the car!