Highland Light (Cape Cod Light)

Author's Comments

The lighthouse itself is the obvious photograph and I will not pretend otherwise. White tower, blue sky, the dignified geometry of a structure that has stood through two centuries of weather. It is a fine image and most people leave with some version of it. But the photograph I keep chasing here is the one where the lighthouse is almost incidental. Walk past the tower, out toward the edge of the bluff. The land falls away in clay cliffs that go orange in late light, and the Atlantic stretches flat to a horizon that on a clear evening seems impossibly far. From certain angles along the golf course, the lighthouse becomes a small white punctuation against all that sky and ocean, and the scale of the place finally makes sense. That is when you understand why they built it here, why they moved it rather than lose it, why this particular point of land has mattered to anyone trying to navigate the back side of the Cape. September is my season. The summer crowds have gone, the light has begun its autumn lean, and the wind off the water has an edge that keeps you alert. Golden hour comes in low and sideways across the bluff, and for about twenty minutes the white tower goes the color of warm cream while the cliffs below it burn. Bring a longer lens for the compression shot from the south, and a wide lens for the cliff edge. Both photographs are worth the trip. Neither is the one you came for, which is fine. That one usually arrives on its own, after you have stopped trying.

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