Continuing with the morning of January 15th, when the sun rose behind Tinker's Island it created incredible backlight on the smoke rising from the Atlantic Ocean. Once the sun had risen high enough in the sky, I tried to capture more images of the smoke coming off of each wave as it approached the shore. Here I lucked out with a lone bird whose feathers are backlit by the risen sun.
I love capturing a lone bird in a sunrise or sunset shot as it adds a bit of life and movement to a scene but on October 10th, I got far more than I expected as a flock of birds formed a line circling Marblehead Light as I captured a muted sunrise from along Front Street.
On August 3rd, I was at Devereux Beach grabbing ice cream with my wife when a very nice sunset formed. It was low tide so I was able to get fairly far down the beach and took several images facing back toward the causeway. I then turned and noticed the first birds taking flight and headed toward me so I fired off a few shots hoping to catch them. I will often clone out a random bird or plane in an image if it doesn't offer anything to the composition. In this case, I thought the birds taking flight at [...]
On March 31st, I woke before the sunrise and raced out of the house to capture the moon setting near Abbot Hall. I shared that image as soon as I returned home but held on to this shot taken five minutes earlier until now. I had watched the moon descend into clouds and wondered if it might reappear in the small clearing you see here. While I waited, the sun rose and bathed Abbot Hall in the soft light of dawn. As luck would have it, a lone bird flew overhead and into perfect position to create some drama in [...]
On Thursday, I shared an image of Abbot Hall, Old North Church and the new St. Michael's steeple captured on a recent dawn morning. This composition was what really brought me out on that day and it could not have happened without the help of three people. Ulrike Welsch is a phenomenal local photographer and I happened upon her image of Abbot Hall and Old North Church juxtaposed so that it wasn't clear which was in front of the other. I commented in the prior post that I learned the location of this shot from Uli but was dismayed to [...]
I can't imagine a better start to the day than capturing this image on a perfect morning in Marblehead yesterday. The road to this shot was long and convoluted - I hope you don't mind a bit of a backstory... A few years ago, I happened upon an image by Ulrike Welsch of Abbot Hall and Old North Church juxtaposed so that one couldn't quite tell which was in front of the other. The composition was nothing short of brilliant and I tried in vain to figure out where it was taken from. Fast forward to a recent Farmer's Market [...]
On January 17, the temperature had promised to dip down into the low single digits and I decided to head to Fort Beach at dawn to capture sea smoke. I arrived to find calm water, clear sky and not even a hint of smoke rising from the water. As a consolation, I found three swans swimming in the waters of Fort Beach. They seemed to be looking for food and were moving along the length of the relatively short beach at high tide. I realized I might be able to catch them with Marblehead Light in the background and set about [...]
It's been a while since I've shared an image of Castle Rock and this deceptively warm one seemed a great choice leading into a promised warm up for the rest of the week. In fact, this image was captured on December 21, 2012 just before sunset but the cold temperatures were offset by the warm glow of light that surrounded the scene of crashing waves. I was fortunate in this frame to catch a number of birds flying around the water including one perfectly backlit by the reflection of evening light against a wave in the distance.
I went out this morning as another arctic blast hit Marblehead with temperatures in the single digits (7F to be exact) before the wind chill pushed that to -10 or so. I had hoped for a chance to shoot sea smoke from Fort Beach but was dismayed to see a harbor devoid of steam and little else to shoot. Just as the dawn ended, I spotted three swans swimming in Fort Beach. I quickly grabbed the camera and ran to the stairs leading down to the water as the swans approached. I captured this morning swan in Marblehead harbor with [...]
I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had only learned about Wyman Cove recently and had decided to make my way there on Tuesday, June 17 at sunset to see what compositions might result. As I reached the end of the path leading to Wyman Cove, I stood and took in this scene before me. The grass formed a great frame for the scene with private piers poking out to the right. A wooded section of Salem can be seen beyond the water and the light was reflecting beautifully off the still waters in Salem harbor. I had to wait [...]