Rockland Harbor

Author's Comments

Rockland is a working harbor before it is anything else, and that is what makes it worth photographing. Come at five in the morning in late July and you will hear the boats before you see them - diesel engines turning over in the dark, gulls already arguing, the particular sound of rope against cleat. The lobstermen are out before the light, and if you are on the public landing by five thirty you will catch the fleet in silhouette against a harbor that is still more pewter than gold. The windjammers are a different photograph entirely. Their masts go up like a forest at the far end of the harbor, and there is a moment in early morning when the rigging catches the first warm light while the hulls are still in shadow. I have made that picture a dozen times and I am still not tired of it. A longer lens compresses the masts into something almost abstract. Walk the boardwalk slowly. The details are where this harbor lives - the coiled lines, the stacked traps going soft with salt, the painted names on transoms that have been repainted so many times the letters have a topography. These are the portraits and detail shots that will outlast the wide harbor view in your edit. August brings the Lobster Festival and a different energy, more crowded and more colorful. I prefer September. The light has sharpened, the working boats are still running hard before winter, and the harbor settles back into being itself.

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