Boothbay and Southport in the Snow

Some of My Favorite Conditions to Photograph In

Good Evening, Everyone

I had a very wonderful and productive morning, driving down the Boothbay peninsula to Southport, and then swinging back through town.

I first stopped at Robinson’s Wharf, just past the Southport Swing Bridge, which was under repairs. The snow was falling heavily at this point, and the lobster boats at the Wharf looked great.

I then drove down to Hendricks Head Beach, with it’s wonderful view of the lighthouse on the point.

The soft snow and muted hues made for a wonderful atmosphere, and I simplified the scene by placing the lighthouse in the lower left corner of the frame with a large expanse of mostly featureless sky.

Just a little ways down the road is Cozy Harbor. This view looking out at a lone lobster boat, the only one still in the water, worked really well when juxtaposed with the cottage on the point and the navigational marker with the osprey nest on it.

Turning to my left at basically the same spot, this historic boathouse looked great in the falling snow, and I worked on the composition by including the lines of the pier and lobster traps around it.

Continuing down to Newagen, I photographed the iconic “Wicked Witch - Margaret Hamilton” house on the small island from the Town Landing.

I loved the red house, but my favorite photo from here is a little more subtle, this sweeping composition featuring fractured snow clumps floating on the water, leading to another small island dotted with fir trees just offshore.

Just to the right of that scene is another well-known landmark, the curiously named Cuckolds Lighthouse.

Next, it was on to Capitol Island, somewhere I’d never been before. It’s pretty desolate this time of year, but looks like a great little community surrounded by water. The one-lane wooden bridge leading to the island was pretty cool. A nice detail here is the large nest, likely Osprey, on the pole right next to the bridge.

This green building on stilts right on the other side of this bridge caught my eye and I had fun framing it up with the cluster of homes on the opposite shoreline. One factor that I really appreciated in this series was the incoming high tide, which meant that the little land that was still left above the waterline was covered in snow.

This is a familiar view for anyone rounding the corner where West Street turns into Western Ave on Route 27, heading to Boothbay from Southport. Although the buildings aren’t much to look at, the composition was great with all of the flat gray negative space, snow in the air, and calm reflections on the water. Did I mention that I love winter?

Here’s that same building in the background, just a little further up the road, in what might be my favorite image of the day. This very expressive oak tree was covered in snow, leaning out over the water, and thankfully isolated from the surrounding trees.

This image almost didn’t make the cut, but I’m a sucker for red on white and for funky vernacular buildings. This is in the parking lot of the Tugboat Inn, a place I return to again and again to make photos.

This is another situation where when I was standing admiring the little red shack in the previous photo, I looked to my right and this scene was perfectly framed up for another very easy to make, evocative image. The colors, like the red, really pop against the snow!

This is the most familiar landmark in Boothbay Harbor, the iconic Footbridge House. You can see that everything has been recently repaired and has some bright new wood. I kept returning to these types of compositions with a lot of negative space.

Continuing around the harbor, I landed on this really lovely arrangement of boat, island, and dock, basically everything you need in these parts. This is right next to Atlantic Edge Lobster.

I had a hard time choosing between these two compositions. I really liked the red building on the right, but the background is kind of lost . Which one do you prefer?

Here’s the main village from across the harbor, looking out over the few remaining working boats on the water this time of year.

I really wanted to get over to East Boothbay and Ocean Point, but the snow stopped and I had to get home.

On the way back, I stopped in the middle of Route 27 to photograph these two barns, which I’ve always admired. The apple orchard right next to them is pretty amazing, too, but I didn’t get a photograph.

And finally, these two barns have always caught my eye, too.

Even though this wasn’t a heavy snow, it was enough to do what I love to the scenes I was photographing: simplify them. I love the way colors pop against the white, gray, and other muted hues of winter. I love how including an expanse of relatively featureless gray sky can open up some really interesting compositions. I love the mood. I love the feeling. I love snow.

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