Camden Harbor and Mount Battie

Author's Comments

There are harbors that photograph well and there are harbors that photograph like a painting somebody already finished. Camden is the second kind. The hills come right down to the water, which is unusual on this coast, and when a windjammer is anchored in the foreground with Mount Battie behind it the whole composition arranges itself before you have done anything. The trick is not finding the photograph. The trick is making one that does not look like every other postcard sold in the village. I work the outer harbor walkway in late August and early September, after the peak of summer crowds but before the schooners start heading south for the season. Golden hour here is genuinely golden - the hills throw their shadow across the water early, but the masts and the upper rigging stay lit for another twenty minutes, and that gap is where the photograph lives. A long lens compresses the boats against the hillside and makes the scale of Battie feel right. A wide lens almost always flattens it. For a different photograph, drive up the auto road to the summit before sunrise. The harbor reads small from up there, the village is a scatter of white roofs, and on a clear morning you can see Penobscot Bay opening east toward the islands. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote about this view and you will understand why when you stand in it. Fall narrows the window but rewards it. The hills go red against the blue water and the light gets longer and lower. Fewer schooners then, but the ones still in the harbor sit against color you cannot get in July.

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