Everyone’s favorite tugboats are featured today, with more of an intimate view than I typically feature. The closer shot of the working vessels highlights their intense buffers on the bow, which looks to be some seriously industrial rubber. I love how rugged they look the closer you get, with some nice coloration on the green hulls, in contrast against the more attractive maroon portion we all so easily recognize.
Here’s a little video I put together from the shoot we did on Friday at Nubble Lighthouse on Cape Neddick in Maine. Playing around with my 5d Mark II’s new firmware, now shooting 24 frames per second (supposed to help make it more film-like). Now I need some new lenses to sharpen the scenes. This film also commemorates the last day of winter! Keep an eye out for some seagulls doing their thing.
I enjoyed a nice walk around Portsmouth earlier in the week, with some great early evening light and traffic. This week marked the return of warmer weather…very early in the season (before spring officially started!), with Saturday being one of the busiest days downtown that I can remember. The light streaks seen in the shot above are from the Coast Bus traveling up Market Street before stopping at the Congress Street stop in front of Starbucks. It made for some great light streaks in an otherwise beautiful and quiet scene.
For today’s post, we head a bit north to the coast of Maine. I’m sure that Nubble Light on Cape Neddick in York, Maine is one of the most photographed places in the country. This doesn’t stop many people, including myself, from enjoying its beauty and going to shoot it anyway…the crashing waves on the rocks and the grandiose island setting of the lighthouse are incredibly appealing and make for infinite possibilities when shooting. It didn’t take much convincing for my Dad to come along and make the trip (despite the cancellation of a Friday night concert) to shoot the place he’s probably shot 50 times before.
Here’s a shot from dusk, just as the sun was finishing setting on the final day of winter…which left some beautiful blue sky with natural lighting on the lighthouse…and a cooler feeling in the rest of the frame. I was lucky to bump into some new friends from Connecticut who made the trip north to go shooting all weekend – and honored me by taking a visit to the Portsmouth Art Exchange gallery to see some of my work. (and they were even daring enough to return for sunrise in the morning). Later this weekend I’ll upload a video and a link to their sunrise shots too.
As I’ve written about lately, and as you’re probably aware, there are some big changes going on at The Decks this spring season. The City finally started a beautification project, replacing brick sidewalks on Ceres Street – putting in new drainage and stone walkways in The Alley. The biggest part of the project is the switcheroo, with the Poco’s deck being moved against the building (a two-story deck now as opposed to the single-story)…and a public area going in where Poco’s old deck was located. Above (and in the last shot) you can see the guts of the old area, with the Old Ferry Landing visible to the right (which will now have unobstructed tugboat views)….in the last shot you can see the rebar being put into the ground to support the new structure, along with a crescent moon hanging over the Market Street rowhouses. The second shot below is the upstairs portion of the new Poco’s deck…I’ll post a view of the lower portion soon…but in the meantime, upstairs is open for business!
The ceiling fan at Harpoon Willy’s is seen under an open blue sky earlier this winter with the green & white striped canvas in storage for the season. Much to my pleasant surprise, I realized that two decks are sort of open for business. The new upstairs heated deck at Poco’s is open according to a sign on Bow Street, and the deck at the River House was open for business today (St. Patrick’s Day) – probably thanks to the beautiful warm spring weather in the high 60s this afternoon. Although the deck didn’t stay open after dusk (the outdoor lights aren’t yet working for the season) – it was a nice reminder of the warm afternoons to come.
I loved this angle of the ceiling at Harpoon Willy’s – in all my years in Portsmouth, I don’t think I’d ever realized that there was a ceiling fan here….above the ceiling fan you can see the skeleton of the Martingale Wharf building still under construction on Bow Street. Some locals tell me that the owners expect to have the new building complete with a restaurant open later this year during the fall….I’ll keep you posted on what I hear around town.
