My photographic adventure through New England
I finally made it to somewhere I have been wanting to go for some time, New England in the fall where the colours are just fantastic. We went for a couple of weeks and travelled round to a number of photography sites firstly around Cape Cod, then New Hampshire and the Maine coast. I did do quite a bit of planning prior to arriving in the US, I watched multiple Youtube videos by local photographers and bought a picture book from the area. I mapped out all the potential photography sites in Google Maps; this then led to the most ideal bed and breakfast accommodation. We booked accommodation as we went along, in close season we found it very easy to book accommodation with just one or two days’ notice.
Got to say Cape Cod, from a photography perspective was pretty dire, of course it’s a beautiful place, lovely beach’s interesting lighthouses etc… but the weather was awful, just grey, grey, grey with horizontal rain and wind. Regardless we went out every day and explored what it had to offer, every image I took I was thinking ‘if only the light wasn’t so flat’.
By complete contrast, the following week in New Hampshire was just fantastic, blue-sky days, sunshine and warm, T-shirt weather in some places. Again, blue-sky weather is not ideal for photography, but you can only take what is in front of you. The fall colours were beautiful and for the most part we had the place to ourselves, which is great albeit led to a slight nervousness concerning the presence of black bears who apparently roamed the same woods and waterfalls I was visiting. To make it worse, one evening, we were eating our dinner in a really nice country restaurant when a black bear trundled past the window, he looked hungry, big teeth and rather menacing, needless to say we left it a while before we left the restaurant to retrieve our car. Forever the boy scout I decided to develop an ‘action plan’ on coming face-to-nose with a hungry large bear, the plan involved throwing excess food and snacks on the ground, in desperation beating it over the head with my tripod, and finally, and inevitably, running…. fast. Despite the bear infestation the images of waterfalls, bridges and forests were so vibrant, would you believe I de-saturated the colours as they were so bright. New Hampshire was fantastic.
From New Hampshire we moved onto the Maine coast, the weather was beautiful, most of the photography hotspots were lighthouses, I love a good lighthouse. Quite by accident we stumbled across Marshall Point lighthouse used in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks ran down the pier to the lighthouse then turned around and ran back across the rest of the country. Forrest Gump aside the lighthouse made a great black and white shot. I took a few colour shots at dusk and at night, but the black and white night shot seemed best.
Well that just about wraps up my photographic tour of New England, I would thoroughly recommend the trip and hope you have better weather in the beautiful Cape Cod.