Tag: Coast

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Along the Shore

Along the Shore

I continue to work through the images I captured at John Paul Caponigro’s Maine Islands workshop. I have plenty to work on!

One of the topics for discussion was the use of graduated neutral density filters. With a well captured image the tools available in Lightroom and Photoshop make this type of filter redundant. However, I’m not ready to give up my filters just yet. I will usually take a number of images with and without the filters and see which I like the best. Even with the expensive ‘neutral’ filters from Singh-Ray, under the conditions I usually photograph I get a pronounced color cast. Sometimes I like it, sometimes not so much. The image above was taken without a filter and then processed in photoshop to add a digital neutral density filter.

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Maine Islands Workshop

Last weekend I was at John Paul Caponigro’s Maine Islands Workshop.  The workshop appealed to me because it was based in a part of Maine I hadn’t previously explored and it was an opportunity to work with John Paul.  For the uninitiated, John Paul is a fine art landscape photographer whose work often blurs the line between photography and painting.  I was initially more familiar with his work as a master printer since he was referenced by many of the photographers I have paid attention to.  After poking around on his website I realized that JP could be the photography mentor that I have been looking for, someone who could help me become more like me.

I was more than a little bit intimidated in signing up since I felt that John Paul attracted people that were already very good and were pushing to be more creative.  I really needn’t have worried.  John Paul’s relaxed demeanor helped to foster a very supportive environment that made for good weekend.

As an added bonus Kevin Ames was part of our group.  I was familiar with Kevin through his book ‘The Digital Photographer’s Notebook’ so this was real surprise to get a chance to meet him and see him in action.  Kevin has a great sense of humor and was fun to be around.  He’s also a great resource for imaging possibilities in photoshop which came in very handy.  I’m looking forward to bumping into him again.

The subtitle of the workshop was ‘Illuminating Creativity’, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that at each of the shoots John Paul gave the group an exercise – shoot a photograph that’s a noun, make the postcard image and then make a more creative one.  What this did was to shift my thinking.  I have a specific project that I am working on that I half thought I would come close to finishing at this workshop but what actually happened was that I tried a lot of things that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  I made some images that I like, I have a few ideas that I will pursue further and I have a better sense of why my duds are just that duds.

It was an odd sensation but I came away from the workshop feeling the same way I did when I got into graduate school – an ending but also the first step on a grander adventure.

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No Excuses

For photography, perhaps more than anything thing else I’m involved in, having a group of people who can give you solid feedback when you ask for it, applaud when you’ve done well, and give you a kick in the pants from time to time is absolutely critical.  These need not be accomplished photographers themselves but people who are going to give you a relatively unbiased opinion, who want to help you succeed and will hold you accountable.  To those people in my life thank you!

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Look What You're Missing!

As the days get longer I’m finding it increasingly difficult to get up for sunrise shoots.  I’m not sure that there’s really a cure for that other than sheer dogged determination to get up and get going, something I was reminded the other day as being the hallmark of a true professional.  It’s not hard to understand the motivation to get up and get going when you are often treated to glorious sunrises such as the one I was greeted with on a recent visit to what has become one of my favorite beaches.  This shot and others like it are posted in prominent places around my home and every morning I don’t get up for a morning shoot they scream ‘look what you’re missing!’.

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Beach Rope

Although I do my best to make sure that I am up and out shooting on mornings when I’m likely to get ‘good light’ there are those days that I just don’t get it right.  This morning was a good example of that.  I had been expecting to add to my collection of photos of rocks at the waters edge but as it got lighter, or rather as it didn’t get much lighter I realized that the weather forecast of partial cloud cover must have been for somewhere else!  In reality there’s no such thing as bad light, only light that’s not appropriate for your subject.  With the even light that comes with cloudy mornings I turned my attention to the beach – patterns in the sand and anything else  could find.  I’m not sure what the story is behind this rope – how long has it been part of the beach scene?, where did it come from?, will it be uncovered the next time I visit? – but it was a willing subject on a day when I thought I was going to have to go home without making a frame.

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Morning Light

I’ve been continue to work on photographing the seashore and in particular rocks in the water.  As summer approaches sunrise gets ever earlier, making it increasing unlikely that I will hit my self imposed goal of being on location an hour before sunrise.  I enjoy being on location while it is still dark and waiting for the right light.  On this particular morning I was on location 30 minutes before sunrise, with it being almost sunrise by the time I got a shot that I liked.  Once the sun appeared on the horizon I felt it was too bright to make the photographs that I was looking to make and I headed for home and breakfast.

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Rocks and a Sun Rise

I mentioned last week the process of virtual scouting that I use to help me find interesting places to photograph and to make sure that I am there at the right time of day to achieve the photograph that I am aiming for.  The image above was the result of spending an hour or so looking at the satellite map within google maps to find and interesting collection of rocks at the waters edge.  It was then a relatively simple task to work out what days I could expect clear morning skies and what the tide would be on those days.  I arrived here when it was still quite dark.  As the sky became lighter I was able to get a better sense of the beach and how I might photograph it.  Starting on the beach I made a series of images that had me getting closer and closer to the water until the final set, of which the above was the best, where I was stood on the rocks in the breaking surf.

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Black Rock

Not too far from my home on the south shore is a curious little island.  What intrigues me the most is the building.  Is it a house, fishing shack, government outpost?  Is it abandoned?  I’ve never seen anyone there at any time of the year.  One of these days I’ll find someone to borrow a boat from and go exploring.  Until then I’ll be trying to work things out from the shore.  The light here dies well before sunset.  On this particular evening I spent a while poking around on the beach and realized that there was some nice soft color developing in the sky.  Fortunately I was able to get the color in the sky while the island was still lit by the setting sun.

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Sunrise on Glacial Erractics

One of the beaches that we went to when I first moved to Boston’s south shore is littered with large rocks.   They are an odd sight on an otherwise normal shoreline and were certainly something of a curiosity for me, having never seen anything like them before.  They are  glacial erratics, rocks that are out of place in terms of size and shape for the other rocks found in that area and that were transported as part of a glacier.  I’m quite taken with these as subjects for my photos, which means I’ll return frequently until I’ve had my fill.  It could be quite a while.

On this particular morning I had been trying out some wider views.  I walked away to see whether I could get an image of a single rock and as I walked back down the beach I saw the image shown above.

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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.