Portland Observatory

Author's Comments

The tower is older than almost everything around it, and that is part of what makes it work as a subject. Two hundred years of weather have given the shingles a particular character - not picturesque exactly, more honest than that - and the octagonal shape catches light differently on each face as the sun moves. Late afternoon is when I prefer to photograph it. The west-facing shingles go warm while the eastern faces hold their cooler tone, and the geometry becomes something you can actually read in a photograph rather than a single brown shape against the sky. Munjoy Hill itself does most of the compositional work. The tower wants context - the bay behind it, or the long sweep down toward the Eastern Promenade, or the White Mountains stacked faintly on the horizon on the clearest days. I have found that backing away helps. Up close, the tower is just a tower. From a hundred yards out with the right foreground, it becomes the punctuation mark on a hill that has been watching the harbor for longer than the country has existed. Go in September if you can. The summer light is too flat and the fall color in the surrounding neighborhoods has not quite turned, but the air is finally clear and the bay reads blue rather than hazy gray. The crowds are minimal even at peak hours. After the tower closes for the season in October, the hilltop itself remains, and a winter morning with snow on the shingles is a photograph I keep meaning to make and have not yet.

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