I captured today's image at the end of June but have been staring at the color version of it for a while wondering why I hadn't bothered to share it. Last week, as I converted another image to black and white, I decided to do the same with this image of a tree weathered by time and flanked by benches on Chandler Hovey Park. The black and white served to accentuate the textures in the tree, bench and sky while helping with the too bright light of this pre-sunset image.
So the title above 'lightning strikes Marblehead Light' may be a bit of creative license but when I saw this bolt and the image on the back of my camera's monitor, I just about lost my mind. A bit about the shot: What an incredible lightning storm we just had pass through town! I saw the sky darken as we finished dinner and ran out the door when I saw the radar image of the storm. I quickly decided that Front Street offered me the best view and wondered if I might get a lucky shot of a lightning strike [...]
As the sun set on September 10th, I quickly flew my drone back from its spot over the green buoy at the mouth of the harbor to Chandler Hovey Park. I returned just in time to angle the camera toward the familiar landmark of Marblehead Light and lucked out with a slight gust of wind that set the flag flying in the air. It wasn't until I returned home that I discovered the best part of the image - silhouettes of people enjoying and catching the sunset themselves. As you look around the scene, you'll find a number of silhouettes [...]
For the past few nights, I have been chasing clouds and sunsets over Marblehead and been less than thrilled with the results. I returned home from a barbecue at the Marblehead Community Charter Public School at 6:30pm eyeing the sky all the way home and made a beeline for Chandler Hovey Park as soon as I could. The clouds held promise and the sun was descending over a cloudless patch of sky but, as I drove, I realized the angles were all wrong for shooting from the Neck. As luck would have it, I had the drone with me and [...]
Recently, I was at Chandler Hovey Park having chased some clouds and crossed my fingers for a decent sunset when I lucked out with this view of four sailboats coming home to Marblehead Harbor. I arrived at the park just as the sun was about to dip below the horizon and jumped out of the car to find a good composition. As luck would have it, these four lasers were coming into harbor and I moved onto the edge of the rocks to capture this image. I'm almost never without my tripod to make sure my images are level and [...]
From the same night as yesterdays post (literally taken 34 seconds before), comes this image of Marblehead Light captured in a reflection from a recent storm. As I mentioned yesterday, I chased clouds between storms out to Chandler Hovey Park and spent a few minutes shooting the lighthouse with boats coming into the harbor. I then spotted a puddle created from the rain that had just ended and captured this shot of the lighthouse reflected in the mirror-like surface. As luck would have it, another person was photographing the sunset and their pose at the base of the lighthouse almost [...]
I shared one image of the full Strawberry moon rising on June 9th as it cleared the slight haze at the horizon and shone low in the night sky. As the moon rose, I followed its trajectory until the lighthouse became moonstruck with the full moon perfectly backlighting the green beacon at the top of the structure. The light of the full moon had just started to cast a glow in the still waters of Marblehead Harbor and created a very different scene from that taken only 7 minutes previously. The earlier image is below to compare the two side [...]
Yesterday, I had an interview with Mary Reines of the Marblehead Reporter for an upcoming story and I she asked what it meant to me that so many people seem to count on my capturing 'the shot'. I answered that it is incredibly flattering and used the example of rainbows. It seems that any time a rainbow forms in Marblehead, my wife's phone will start blowing up with incoming texts alerting her (and me) that a rainbow was formed and that I should head out to capture it. Today's image reminded me of that feeling and I thought it fitting [...]
Tonight the full Strawberry minimoon rose over Chandler Hovey Park and I was ready to capture the year's smallest moon from across the harbor at Fort Sewall. I had set up with my camera on a tripod and brought along the drone wondering how a different perspective might work in shooting the moon. When the moon rose, I learned quickly that the drone's camera was simply too small (in regards to focal length) to do this 'minimoon' justice and concentrated on getting this shot with the real camera. I decided to compose the final image to include the working boat [...]
Whenever possible, I've tried to include the green beacon of light atop our lighthouse in images of Chandler Hovey Park. And so when I had chased a sunset to this familiar spot and flew the Phantom 4 Pro for some aerial images, I was delighted to see the familiar green light shining against the darkening sky. I composed this image bisecting the lighthouse with Marblehead's skyline and made sure to include the Boston skyline as well. With the dark cloud in the sky, the beacon of light shone even brighter in the final image. It's amazing that only two months [...]