Smarch Weather

Portland Headlight. Canon 5D Mark IV. F/8.0 1/125 ISO100 50mm

Spring has finally arrived here in New England!

You wouldn’t know it, though.

Temps are still hovering in the low to mid 50s for the most part. With a decidedly unpleasant chill from the humidity, periods of rain, and strong breezes.

I had some unexpected time off early this month. I booked a night in Portland in the middle of the week so I could visit Cape Elizabeth the following morning.

I’ve photographed iconic Portland Headlight multiple times over the last eight years. A composition from my first outing there back in 2017 graces my home page.

As I recall, that was a quite calm summer day, with mainly clear skies.

On this occasion, I was hoping that the expected gusts of up to 40 mph would create some dramatic waves crashing into the rocks below the light house.

I did see one or two decent sized waves of maybe 8 or 9 feet.

Sadly, my camera kept shutting down in the sub-freezing morning temps. Almost always right when the best action was unfolding against the shoreline.

I suspect that my camera battery drained a lot faster than normal in those conditions. I eventually put a fresh one in and had no issues after that.

I also think I should have visited at high tide later in the day instead of in the morning.

And I’ve since learned that there’s a website that provides surf forecasts for coastal Maine that I can monitor to get a bead on days where things might go off the rails.

On the plus side, I had the light house entirely to myself for the something-like 2.5 hours I spent photographing.

I played around an awful lot and took both long exposures and faster compositions.

Honestly, I get a bit bored standing around at the tripod. I think that I managed about an hour of that in this instance. Once I packed the tripod back up in its bag, I didn’t use it again.

I also captured scenes from the right, left, and nearly dead on. And I used three different lenses to change up how prominent the light house is in the scene.

I took photos with numb fingers and shaking hands on my phone, too. I firmly believe that the best camera is the one you have handy, and phone photography is extraordinarily good today.

There were still patches of snow on the ground, which I captured in some of the images I came away with.

Also lots of thick ice on the path on the left-hand side of the complex. After testing that for a minute or so—there were guard rails I could grab onto—I deemed it unsafe to continue down to one of the well-worn vantage points.

Regardless, I came away with a good number of captures that I very much like.

The photo I’ve selected—with help from a good friend to narrow things down—is one of the last I took before packing it in.

Upon reflection, I’m noticing a change in my aesthetic over the last couple of months.

The compositions that are speaking to me most are those that are close in. Kind of the opposite of what you’d expect in landscape photography!

I think photos like this work well because they drop you right into the scene. You could be there with me and immediately understand why I’m taking the photo in that spot.

Photo details are in the caption.