Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse

Author's Comments

The walk is the photograph, or at least half of it. Nearly a mile out on uneven granite blocks that shift slightly underfoot and remind you, with every step, that this thing was built by hand over eighteen years and finished before the century turned. The lighthouse at the end is small and square and unfussy, exactly the kind of working structure that photographs better than the more famous ones up the coast. I prefer it in September, an hour before sunset, walking out slow with the Camden Hills going blue across the bay and the light beginning to warm on the brick. There are two photographs to make here and they want different things. The first is the long view back toward shore, the breakwater stretching in a granite line behind you with the hills rising beyond, and that one wants a wide lens and a moment when the water is calm enough to mirror the sky. The second is the lighthouse itself in last light, and that one is more patient. Wait until the sun is nearly down and the brick goes from red to something deeper, almost rust. The keeper's house catches it differently than the tower. Both are worth the wait. Bring real shoes. The blocks are not level and they are not forgiving, and the walk back in fading light is slower than the walk out. Give yourself forty-five minutes each way and then some. I have turned around halfway more than once because the light on the hills was doing something I needed to photograph from the middle of the breakwater, which is its own kind of composition - water on both sides, the lighthouse ahead, the town behind, and nothing else.

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