Long Point Beach and Dunes

Author's Comments

Cape Cod ends here, or rather it curls back on itself like a fiddlehead, and Long Point is the last gesture before the land gives up entirely to water. The walk out is part of the photograph, even if you do not make an image of it. Forty-five minutes across granite blocks the size of small cars, the harbor on one side and the bay on the other, Provincetown growing smaller behind you with every careful step. What you find at the end is mostly absence. A low white lighthouse, a stretch of sand, dune grass bending in whatever wind has decided to show up that afternoon. The composition is minimal in a way that rewards a wide lens and a slow eye. I have learned to stop trying to fill the frame here. The emptiness is the subject. September is when I prefer the walk. The summer crowds have thinned, the light has gone longer and warmer, and the harbor across the way begins to catch gold an hour before sunset. Long exposures work well in the shallows on the bay side, where the water goes glassy at low tide and the lighthouse can be made to float in something close to silver. The piping plovers will be gone by then, which means the roped-off areas are smaller and the beach feels more like itself. Bring more water than you think you need. There is no shade, no shelter, and the walk back across the breakwater in the dark is not something I would recommend twice. Time it so the light is doing its work as you turn around. Provincetown across the harbor, lit and small, is the photograph you did not come for and will keep anyway.

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