#13 – Photo Day Trip 2
1. I can’t remember the last time I woke up at 5am to head out on a day off for a photography trip. It’s been probably 7 years. What was originally a ‘quick’ trip with my buddy Steve to The Gurnet (a private beachfront community in Plymouth, MA) ended up stretched out late into the afternoon. It was well worth the early wake-up.
2. The reason for the early start was a stop shooting a famous tree in Duxbury known simply as the ‘gumdrop tree.’ This is due to its nearly perfect gumdrop shape. My buddy Steve and I pulled off the road and snapped a ton of amazing photos.
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| Duxbury's gumdrop tree |
3. Two things to take from this gumdrop tree stop: 1. Egrets don’t care if you want them to help you make a photo better, they will do the opposite just to be jerks. 2. There may or may not have been a drunk cyclist riding by. He was one of three who rode by but made it a point to shout out asking what we were shooting. If he wasn’t a little sloshed he sure sounded it.
4. After being a passenger on the drive around the sandy roads of The Gurnet and Saquish in Plymouth I can say I’d never want to drive those myself. So tight and winding, you need perfect skills to navigate them. Guess that’s why the speed limits marked around there are 5mph.
5. Gurnet (Plymouth) Lighthouse is a fun place to photograph. On this trip, they were doing an excavation of a lot of soil for testing for lead since there’s also a centuries-old fort on the grounds. I briefly thought about not crossing the plastic orange fencing to get some shots, briefly. C’mon, what else would you expect from me?
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| Sorry, I didn't even see the excavating going on. |
6. The Gurnet definitely has a cool vibe to it, no wonder why many of the people out there have passed down the old homes to family. Also, no wonder why some rich jerks want to steal some of that vibe for themselves by building houses that don’t fit in out there.
7. If you’re on the Massachusetts South Shore, grab a freshly made bagel with one of the varieties of cream cheese at Gunther Tooties. Several locations. I got a french toast bagel, toasted, with honey cream cheese. Highly recommended. Just enough of a sugar rush to get me through the arduous task of photography.
8. I finally got the famed Draco the Dragon on camera. It is a metal dragon sculpture that guards a house on Rt. 3A in Duxbury. It was featured on WCVB’s show Chronicle. How did I capture it? A slow-motion video on my phone as we drove by and then grabbed a screenshot when I paused the video. Pretty crafty.
9. Damon’s Point in Marshfield is a great spot to shoot not only a decaying old building that used to reside along railroad tracks that are no longer there but also a nest of bald eagles somewhere along the shore of the North River. There were no eagle sightings but there was a cute dog catching tennis balls in the nearby water. Every time it dove into the water I whipped my head around thinking it might be an eagle diving for fish. No such luck. There were plenty of seagulls since I never see those.
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| What are you looking at? |
10. There are four huge coastal defense/fire watch towers along the Massachusetts South Shore. These are all concrete and look pretty cool. No clue if they are ever open for people to climb but they are all in Marshfield including the village of Brant Rock. Interesting for history lovers.
11. Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse sits 1¼ miles off the coast of Cohasset and Scituate at its closest. However, that is a private community with no access for common folks like us. So our best hope for photos of the lighthouse is Sandy Beach in Cohasset. This is 2¼ miles from the lighthouse. Luckily it stands 89 feet tall so it can be seen like a gray cigar. There is a large rock outcropping that can get you a slightly better photo than standing on the beach. Only now when traversing those rocks do I realize how dangerous it is and really doesn’t make the photo any better. I guess I’m older and wiser, or at least older.
12. Fort Revere in Hull is a haven for visitors but more specifically photographers. I believe that nearly every time I have gone there I see at least one other person with a real DSLR camera. The crumbling fort covered in graffiti makes for some amazing shots.
13. Fort Revere also gives a great vantage point of nearby Boston Light which is the oldest in the country. Surprisingly this was a rare time that a giant cargo freighter wasn’t passing by the lighthouse. It seems to always be the case since it’s a busy shipping lane, but alas not this time.
14. It can be like playing with fire when I go on a long drive as a passenger due to severe motion sickness. However, I must say that the Dramamine made with ginger root did a good job. I was out for roughly 9 hours as a passenger and felt strong when I got back into my own car. Recommended for anyone who suffers like I do.
15. In an interesting bit of psychology we visited Old Scituate Lighthouse. It’s being renovated and is surrounded by scaffolding. Steve mentioned that with the scaffolding the lighthouse somehow looked shorter than usual. Once he said that it looked shorter to me as well. The mind does play tricks on you.
16. I did manage to create a couple of time-lapse photos while at Fort Revere. I reenacted a pair of selfie poses inside one of the creepy corridors. One from 2017 and one from 2010. They came out good and were fun full circle type moments. Plus I’m glad that I didn’t look like I had aged terribly in the new photos compared to the old.
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| Fort Revere: 2017 on the left, 2024 on the right. |
17. Overall it was a fun trip, not quite 200 miles driven. It definitely turned out to be much more than a quick trip to The Gurnet.
