Storm Chaser

For several days I had been watching different weather reports and was hoping that Hurricane Earl would hit along the New England coast.  I wasn't hoping for any damage, mind you.  I just wanted to be able to get out with my camera and take pictures of some dramatic skies and large waves.  As the weekend drew closer, Earl was on track to hit Nantucket and the outer cape.  I didn't think that law enforcement would allow me to get down to any of the beaches I had in mind to go to on the Cape if the storm hit as hard as was being predicted.  I decided to contact a photographer friend to see if he was interested in heading either to a location in New Hampshire or Maine.  He was ready to go chase the storm and we decided on Cape Elizabeth, Maine, home of Portland Head Lighthouse.

I left my house at 4am to head out on the trip.  It was cloudy at home but dry.  Within 5 minutes I was in a downpour.  It actually stopped raining as I got closer to the ocean.  I was expecting to find more rain, but I was glad it had stopped since I don't need water in the camera.  We arrived at Cape Elizabeth somewhere around 7am and started taking the standard photo that everyone else takes.  There should be a sign on the fence that says "insert tripod legs here."  I don't have a problem with getting the "standard" shot, but I also want something different; something that not everyone else can say they have in their photo collection.  The easiest way to take care of that was to hop the fence and head down the rocks.  It wasn't like we had to watch out for some huge waves that were being kicked up by the storm.  Hurricane Earl had turned into Tropical Storm Earl overnight and had moved on up the coast toward Nova Scotia.  We were on the back end of the storm and only got to see some of the clouds.  Thank goodness for high tide that morning, otherwise the photography would have been okay at best.

Since the waves weren't very big, I decided to try some long exposures.  Not only did I use my polarizer, but I stacked a couple of ND filters so that I could get a 15 second shot.  The waves that were coming in with the high tide were smoothed out because of the lack of light coming into the lens.  I really liked the effect and ended up with some really good shots.  Since they were shots taken from hopping the fence, there is only one other person who has the same shots as me from that morning.

When we finished our shots from this side of the lighthouse, we headed to the other side so that we could get some shots facing south.  On the way there, a gentleman  stopped up to show us some shots from a storm earlier in the year.  He was able to capture some of the huge waves we had hoped for.  After seeing those photos, and taking some good ones ourselves, we decided that we're going to go to this location again for some storm photos.  In the words of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, hopefully next time we'll see some "tasty waves."

Until next time.

Glen Taylor

9/6/10