What the Heck is a Quoddy Head?

A lovely Sunday morning to you. This morning we journey to the easternmost point in the United States, to a lighthouse that is both the closest point in the United States to Great Britain and Europe, and also the first place in the United States to see the sunrise … every morning. What a treat. We’re headed to Lubec, Maine! So grab a cup of coffee and enjoy.

Our story begins on a ferry in the middle of Passamaquoddy Bay, a body of water located in the greater Bay of Fundy and separating New Brunswick, Canada from Maine in the United States. If Passamaquoddy sounds familiar, you’re probably a child of the 1970s, because that was the name of the fictional town in the 1977 movie “Pete’s Dragon” … and yes there was a song about it.

It’s October 20th of 2019 and I’m returning to the US from a visit to Nova Scotia with landscape photographer extraordinaire and fellow Landscape Mafia member David Brookover. Our goal is to reach Campobello Island to photograph the East Quoddy Head Lighthouse by sunset, then cross the short Roosevelt bridge to reach the northern tip of Maine. From Nova Scotia, you can drive around Passamaquoddy Bay to reach Maine, but it adds hundreds of miles to your journey. So the best, and much shorter route is to catch a series of ferry boats from L’Etete on mainland Canada to Deer Island, then from Deer Island to Campobello Island.

The sun was autumnal warm and the air was crisp and cool, especially at the bow of the boat. Small dark Harbor Porpoise were dancing in the bow wake of the ferry as we crossed the bay. We entertained ourselves by photographing the wispy clouds.

Deer Island is truly a destination. You have to make a concerted effort to reach here, and aside from the few people who use the ferry system daily, the island is inhabited by locals only most of the year. We departed the ferry, crossed the Island to the southern ferry port only to find it eerily abandoned.

Turns out, two years previous, the ferry connecting Deer Island to Campobello Island sank. It’s a critical piece of data that we had plenty of time to contemplate as we backtracked to mainland Canada and drove the hundreds of extra miles around Passamaquoddy Bay.

Campobello Island is connected to the far north-easternmost tip of the contiguous United States with a short bridge named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt visited Campobello Island often, making his summer residence here throughout much of his life, even though it’s technically in Canada. With the ferry out of service, the only way to reach the little island is from the US, making the customs entry point err … pointless. It’s a cushy job for the border patrol officer, so he happily glanced at our passport books and sent us on our way.

At the northern end of the island is the East Quoddy Head Lighthouse, or if you’re looking for it on Google Maps, the Quoddy Head Light. This lighthouse represents the entry point into Passamaquoddy Bay. The lighthouse is gorgeous, standing 51 feet tall atop a tiny tidal islet at the northern end of Campobello Island, and painted white with a cherry red St. George’s Cross on the tower, and cherry red roofs.

The Bay of Fundy is of course known for its massive tide swings. So you can literally stand and watch the tide filling in, in real time.

There’s definitely a Batman and Robin effect that comes into play when traveling with someone like David Brookover. In addition to having, franking astonishing, skills as a photographer, he always seems to know exactly where to find the perfect shot. We mount the cameras atop our tripods and make our way down a dark footpath and emerge on the perfect rocky outcropping, literally the ideal spot to make our photographs.

I was shooting my Phase One IQ180, Dave was shooting his Fuji GFX. It’s interesting to see the differences between our two photographs. We both used long exposure filters, but Dave chose a multishot pano to capture a gorgeous cloud formation that peaked geometrically right in the center of the frame. I chose a long lens and put the lighthouse right at the top of the image. I do remember him encouraging me to utilize more sky, but I was really focused on the bright green seaweed in the foreground. It’s hard to make the case for cropping out the clouds, but I felt like on this occasion, it worked.

We ended up shooting until the last flicker of light was in the sky. I remember starting with a pretty heavy stack of Wine Country Camera NDs, and by the end, I was making multi-minute exposures with nothing in front of my lens. It was a magical session with one of my dearest friends.

The next morning came pretty quickly. After a seafood dinner and a little photo editing, there was only a couple of hours to sleep before we were finding our way toward West Quoddy Head Light. This lighthouse represents the easternmost point of the whole United States. There wasn’t a soul in sight when we put the cameras on the tripods and made our way across the lawn toward the lighthouse. My instinct was to hike around to a point along the shore and photograph the lighthouse from the north. I did that, and to be honest, the image, while fine, wasn’t tugging at my heart strings. I poked and prodded at different compositions but ultimately decided I “just wasn’t feeling it.”

Dave found himself in a similar spot to mine, but he was doing some sophisticated panning and tilting using his RRS Pano Head, so that he could create a multi-hundred megapixel pano file. Dave continued to work the scene near the lighthouse and I actually started to retreat toward the pickup truck. There was a picnic table on the lawn near the parking lot, and I decided to stand on top of the picnic table to watch Dave work.

Then it dawned on me … “THE SHOT” was to put the tripod on top of the picnic table and use the massive dynamic range of the medium format plus a boat load of grad filters on the sky to get the exposure.

Before long, Dave was next to me, standing on top of the picnic table making an incredible multi-shot pano that really gives the photo a surreal perspective. Wrist-watch collectors will tell you “The tiny differences make all the difference in the world.” A barely visible line of red text on a dial might change the value of the watch by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Photography can be like that too. Subtle differences in the artistry and technique compound to create very different results, even when you’re standing right next to each other. Ultimately photography is only about perception. It doesn’t matter what camera you use, or what elements you decide to include or exclude from your composition. The only thing that matters is how you felt in the moment. Your subconscious will decide which photons to cram into the little black box.

If you’re listening for the one thing you can’t hear and then just “do without thinking” every photograph will be a self portrait of your soul.

Let that sink in, and we’ll chat again in two weeks time. Until then, stay focused.