I didn’t let the rainy day on Saturday morning keep me from making a quick trip over to Great Island Common to see what I might find.  I found a steady drizzle and some interesting clouds – and Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse across the way.  A subtle shot….later this week I’ll feature a video I made of little snippets of the water rolling on shore and some other neat seacoast scenes.  It was too bad the sun didn’t want to break for a minute or two while I was out there – I guess I’ll just have to head back.

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.

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.

Fort Constitution has a stoic feel to it, appropriate for a location first fortified in 1632 for the early New Englanders. Read up more on the site here.  The fort is home to the US Coast Guard and Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse, a regular fixture here at The Daily Portsmouth, and one of my favorite landmarks of the seacoast.  The shot below is a view of the Fort from Great Island Common in New Castle.

All 48 feet of the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse loom large in this shot during a rainstorm earlier this summer. You can almost feel the texture of the lighthouse’s cast iron skin. Visit PortsmouthHarborLighthouse.org to read up on the history of the lighthouse and see when the tours start back up (not until the weather warms up in May).

Today’s shots feature Strawbery Banke with some freshly fallen snow. Above is a panoramic shot of the museum campus and the former Puddle Dock neighborhood with the North Church visible in the background.  Below is another shot from my  trip to Fort Constitution, where you can see just how cold the Fort’s stone wall is with the ice built up from the snow and sea spray. View on large for a nice crisp shot of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse (you can even see Whaleback Light in the distance). The fresh snow definitely made for a lovely walk on Monday afternoon.