Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Author's Comments

The rocks do most of the work here, and that is the surprise of the place. The lighthouse is the obvious subject - white tower, black cap, the silhouette that ended up on the state quarter - but I find I spend most of my time at Pemaquid looking down rather than up. The metamorphic bands run in long diagonal lines toward the sea, and they read in a frame the way a road reads in a frame. They pull the eye exactly where you want it to go. September is when I prefer this coast. The summer traffic has eased, the air sharpens, and the light at the end of the day comes in low across the water and rakes the rock at an angle that brings every seam and fracture into relief. Late afternoon is what I would choose if I had only one visit. The tower catches warm light against a cooling sky, and the granite goes from gray to something closer to bronze. Sunrise works too, since the point faces southeast, but the morning can be hazier this far up the coast and the rocks are at their best when the sun is low and behind you. A long exposure here is almost cliché and still worth doing. The Atlantic on this stretch does not break gently. Thirty seconds turns the chaos into something silken and slow, and the rock holds perfectly still while the water dissolves around it. Bring a polarizer. Bring something to kneel on. The best foregrounds are low to the ground, and the compositions are everywhere once you start looking.

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