Castle Hill Lighthouse

Author's Comments

The granite is the thing. The lighthouse itself is small, almost modest, and what makes the picture is not the tower but the rock it grew out of. Castle Hill sits low on its promontory, the same gray as the ledge beneath it, and at the right hour you can almost lose track of where the stone ends and the structure begins. I like it best in late September, an hour before sunset, when the Jamestown shore on the far side of the passage goes blue with distance and the sailboats are still working their way back into the harbor. The walk in from the inn is short and feels longer than it is. You come around a curve in the path and the lighthouse is just there, lower than you expect, the bay opening wide behind it. The rocks are genuinely slippery. I have gone down hard on them more than once and now I wear boots with real tread and I take my time finding a foreground. A long exposure here does something honest to the water. The chop around the base of the tower softens into something closer to mist, and the granite holds while everything around it moves. That contrast is the photograph worth waiting for. Stay through the silhouette moment. The sun drops behind Jamestown and the lighthouse goes dark against a sky that keeps giving color for another twenty minutes after you think it is done.

Gallery