I’ve only captured two images of Black Joe’s Pond in all these years of shooting landscapes in Marblehead and, as soon as I purchased my aerial camera (Phantom 4 Pro), I knew I would try to find a new angle on this great pond.  As it happened, we had picture perfect conditions on a recent Sunday in May and I headed out to Gingerbread Hill to scout out possible locations.  I ended up parking along Norman Street and then took off over dense foliage to find an interesting composition.

Once I was up in the air, I found too many different viewpoints of this Barnegat section of town to focus on.  In the end, I decided I could only do the scene justice by shooting a panorama.  This image is the result of three rows of six images which captured the whole of Black Joe’s Pond, Barnegat, Grace Oliver Beach, Doliber’s cove, Redd’s Pond, and even the full span of Marblehead Neck.  It was a lot of fun zooming in and exploring various areas when I stitched the eighteen images together.

Even more fun was learning about Black Joe who ran a tavern in this area in the late 1700’s.  His wife served beer and Joe Froggers.  There’s a wealth of information about Joe Brown available on the Marblehead Magazine’s Legends Inc site – More about Black Joe