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Published: December 1st 2015
October 25, 2015
Photos from Pemaquid Lighthouse Photos from Portland Lighthouse Photos from Nubble Lighthouse and York Beach The Bradley Inn was a wonderfully pleasant experience. We had a blissful sleep and awoke to the hope of a magnificent morning. It was still too dark to tell, but the view out our window told us it wouldn’t matter what the weather would be. This place even looks good when it’s bad. The plan was to head over to the Pemaquid Light, come back for a fine breakfast at the inn, and head to Portland Head Light for the so-so light of afternoon. We’d then check into our digs in York for a sunset series at the Cape Neddick Lighthouse.
The first exposure from this morning was taken at 6:37. For these galleries I went back to mixing the painterly versions with the straight photos. Notice how quickly the light was changing. Between the first shot and number 5 here is only 4 minutes difference in time. Between 1 and 14 there is only 7 minutes difference. Photos 15 thru 23 and 39 feature the Perpetual Puddle.
For
number 39 I was standing uphill shooting the ocean and turned toward Matt who was composing with the puddle. The water in it was
very calm compared to the night before, so I calmly shot him. You can also see Matt from that same vantage point as I was shooting the floating birds and a streak of morning light in photo 38.
For
photo 20 I flipped the exposure to give a sense of looking out a cave that frames the view of the lighthouse when an alien-like rock-it ship was ready to crash into it. Photos 24, 25 and the painterly version 26 show what I once called The Saddle Horn rock. With this year’s exposures I’ll call it the Pemaquid Sphinx. Number 24 differs from 25 by using 2 exposures processed in HDR software.
The whole Pemaquid gallery for this morning was shot in less than 55 minutes. We got back to the Bradley to shower and pack, then headed down to see about breakfast. It was around 9ish, but at first we couldn’t find anyone else. We knew we were the only guests this late in the season, but yesterday Beth suggested we have a great breakfast before we said goodbye. Finally we heard some rustling about in the kitchen, and soon Beth came out to greet us. Her husband Warren is
the usual chef, but he was at a cooking convention or something in New York. She showed us to the dining room where she already had coffee set up with all kinds of fruits and croissant-like pastries, and asked us what she could whip us up in the kitchen. Although Warren was gone, she felt confident that unless we ordered something really weird, she’d send us on our way well-nourished for the day. Man, why won’t the big hotels allow the time (and make it easier) for their staff to be as helpful to their guests as Beth was on her own? They might actually find that their employees are happier, healthier, on time and willing to work overtime. Sure, if you spend a couple grand a night, you could find a lot of hotels that motivate their employees to fake that feeling –and expectations of large tips will further encourage that behavior. But Beth genuinely likes people and is happy to freely help them enjoy their day at any cost. You can feel the difference. And Warrens cooking couldn’t have been better.
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We got to the Portland Head Lighthouse earlier than planned, and beat the
straight-up sunlight of noon by 20 minutes. Portland Head, built in 1791, is the oldest lighthouse in the state of Maine. General Washington appointed its first keeper. For more interesting facts and stories of all of the lighthouses in New England, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s connection to the Portland lighthouse, pick up a copy of Jeremy d’Entremont’s book
The Lighthouse Handbook. Jeremy is the guy those in the know will ask when they don’t.
There’s a lot of duplication with painterly versions in the Portland gallery also. This lighthouse is one of the easiest to get to and has many more visitor diversions than most lighthouses, so we expected it to be a little busier than Pemaquid and certainly busier than Marshalls. We learn from the above-referenced handbook that, although all of the other lighthouses are closed after Columbus Day, Portland Head opens on the weekends up until just before Christmas. The crowd, if we could even call it that this Monday, was considerably smaller than when we visited 2 years and 2 weeks earlier, even though it was already October eleventh then.
We walked from the parking lot and headed to the viewing area to the right much like
I did in 2013. Portland Head is a very photogenic structure in an equally pleasing yet unsettling setting. The mere
need for a lighthouse suggests potential danger, so the areas around them usually add quite a bit of natural drama to photos of them. Many of the iconic photos taken here differ only in their display of drama provided by the weather, yet all can easily illustrate the possible perils for anyone approaching from the ocean. We realized we could have made much more attractive representations if we visited when the Sun was lower on the horizon, but our time was limited and we made the choice of Pemaquid for the sunrise and Nubble for the sunset. Portland then was just a stop along the connecting route.
With the wind whipping the cool air at us from seemingly all directions, it didn’t take me long to realize I left the right coat in the car. Fortunately Matt was going back for the 70-200mm lens so I didn’t have to walk so far to correct my choice. Still, I walked back most of the way just to take photos 6 & 7 from atop the structure in photo 8, then
waited there for Matt to catch up. We then went along the path that winds from the left side of the lighthouse as you approach, and I took photos 10 thru 14. We returned along the same path to walk around the outside of the museum, getting 15 thru 22. The remaining photos in this gallery were taken from old Fort Williams which provides the name of the park for the lighthouse complex. Remains of the Goddard Mansion can be seen in photos 31 & 32.
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We were back on the road by 1300 hours and heading to our final destination, York, Maine, and the Cape Neddick Lighthouse, another favorite. The Nubble Light on Cape Neddick Point is one of the first lighthouses many northerly travelers visit in Maine. It’s only 15 minutes north of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. You’ll recognize this beauty in many photos, especially around Christmas when the lighthouse and surrounding buildings on the little island are strung with Christmas lights. When you add some fresh snow to that, you get the New England feel of an old Christmas that seemed warmer. We didn’t get anything like that on this visit, but we enjoyed
the moment and the monument with the respectful art of photography.
My first exposure at Nubble was nearly an hour later (16:29) than the previous night at Pemaquid, and I later did a poor job of replacing the sky in the digital darkroom. Again the gallery for this portion of the day shows a lot of duplication, often alternating straight shots with their painterly double. As I mentioned somewhere in the blog for the
Alaska Trip, I’m getting to like this look that developed when I wanted to present the
photos from Keukenhof, Netherlands –taken in unfavorable conditions earlier this year.
The reflection puddle found to the left side of the parking lot as you face the lighthouse is not as predictably present as the perpetual puddle at Pemaquid. The photos with it (6 thru 9) were more difficult to obtain than their Pemaquid counterparts. Your tripod will be more level with the puddle at Nubble, and requires you to compensate by lowering the legs and likely spreading them quite wide to capture the reflection.
Silhouette selfies were once again on the menu. Let’s talk about the shadows in photos
16,
17&
18. In 16 one could think that the
main shadow with a tripod would be Matt’s. In 17 you could see him leaning forward, but in 18 it becomes clearer that that shadow is mine since you can be more sure there is no hat and the photogs head is back from the viewfinder. So, is Matt’s that shadow farther towards the lighthouse? He was shooting the gull that later is featured in photos 22 thru 25. My favorite selfie is photo 26 accenting the long legs of my tripod, or maybe 27 which brings Matt into the picture.
The nearly cloudless sky was also replaced in photos 32, 34 & 37. Matt once again suggested we wait a bit for the full moon to show up. Barb & I had our own hit and miss with the moon back in 2013. As
the story goes… well,
here’s the result from then. On this occasion no Photoshop trickery was performed for photos 39 and it’s painterly counterpart. We left the park and headed back to our hotel. We had already checked into
The Union Bluff Hoteland had something to eat before heading over to Sohier Park and the Cape Neddick Light. Upon returning, we parked in the back, and Matt suggested we walk around the
building and across the street to capture the reflecting moonlight on the ocean. The sign on the grass warned of recent pesticide treatments so we walked as close to the perimeter as we could, but staggered into the fray when we couldn’t help laughing at our tiptoeing technique.
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Photos from Nubble Lighthouse, October 27, 2015 There’s only 16 photos in the last gallery and our ride home was likely only interesting to me & Matt, so I’ll end this adventure with the morning’s events. We had much the same plan as the day before: get up early, get some shots of the subject area, get back for a shower and head down for breakfast.
The first exposure was made four minutes earlier than the first at Pemaquid, but, man, I was so glad the parking lot at Nubble is literally steps from a good-enough vantage point. The wind was particularly brisk and hurled the cold air through any clothing we had like falling icicles through a spider web. Matt didn’t seem to mind nearly as much as his old man, and I didn’t mind watching him bounce around the rocky shore in search of the best shot of sunrise as long
as I was able to do it from within the car.
According to the timestamps on the individual exposures, it seems I got out of the car about every five minutes at first, sloping off to a more apathetic 15 minutes with frozen fingers before we were done. My last series (and I can’t believe I actually allowed 9 examples in the gallery –even thought they represent about a hundred exposures) was trying to capture the red backlit waves crashing on the natural rock jetty that further symbolizes danger and protection in a more subtle way. In all of those shots you can also see the Boon Island Lighthouse far on the distant horizon.
That last bit of info comes from Jeremy d’Entremont’s book mentioned above. You’ll have to read it to learn of Boon Island’s connection to a 1969 song I was associated with,
Timothy. Jeremy, Beth from the Bradley Inn, and so many other photographers we met along the way really made this an extra special lighthouse tour. Having visited Stubdude and Juno both before and after such tours, I can’t say which I’d prefer, but I’m sure any trip to Maine must include one.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Amazing photography
Wonderful collections of Maine that truly capture the essence.