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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Photography Events by Amy, Part 2 of 3, Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA


Part 2 of 3.  Part 1 can be seen at this link. The day dawns cloudy, cool, and quiet on my recent visit to Provincetown, Massachusetts, accompanying a photographic group tour. The tour was offered by "Photography Events by Amy."  Tour leaders were Betty Wiley and Amy Davies. I was a tag-along spouse.

I'm not generally a group tour kind of guy but, I can see the value and convenience in paying someone else to do all the logistics work to make it happen. No wonder photo tours are so popular all over the world.

Personally, I'd rather be observing from dry land than walking through cold water this morning like this fisherman.......good thing for him the tide is low.




The docks at the town wharf were quiet - for both fishermen and gulls - mostly just photographers were up and about stalking the perfect dawn images.

This quiet path to the beach is close to downtown. 


I don't know if they had the best rolls in town but, they had the best tree reflection in a shop window in town. 

Sometimes a day can turn on a dime - from raining and overcast one minute to clearing and sunny the next. Accommodations for the group had been arranged at this bayfront hotel.






With the weather improved, the group headed to dunes and beaches on the Cape Cod National Seashore. I think people on a photo tour want a safe, secure, friendly, and comfortable experience. They want to be artistically stimulated and creatively challenged and have tour leadership that smoothly and unhurriedly leads them from location to location throughout the day and takes care of all logistics so they only have to concentrate on photography. Betty and Amy were relaxed and quietly efficient in that role.

The day began with the expectation to spend many consecutive hours chasing about in varying degrees of manic obsession seeking the perfect scene(s) to photograph - light, color, shape, angle of view - often elusive but always sought after - and so the search went on, always maneuvering to be in position to capture a perfect image - or at least the raw material to fashion it into one later with post-processing.

Just on the other side of this dune we can hear the raw Atlantic crashing into the sand, nothing but thousands of miles of water between us and the European continent.  This is a great place to be on a beautiful fall day. Cape Cod can truly be a magical place - especially after most of the tourists have gone home for the season (present company excluded).

Many of us "of a certain age" recall the television series "MASH" with a character named Radar O'Reilly. As the low-ranked quartermaster/secretary/gofer and chief logistician at making things happen, he was in some ways the most powerful person there. Never underestimate the importance of good logistics. That's how you end up at the right place at the right time.

A path to Race Point Beach. (Panorama - click on it to view in full width). In case you notice the little divots on the horizon, I think my panning technique needs a little practice. An ocean horizon should not have divots. It's the seam where the photo software incamera "stitched" successive images together.

I had a thought that this scene needs a sprawling, crawling woman in the lower left quadrant a la Andrew Wyeth's famous painting, "Christina's World."  (Panorama - click on it to view in full width).

Nice fall weather that Betty and Amy arranged for this day.................

Part 3 will conclude in tomorrow's blog post.

1 comment:

  1. Your photos are absolutely gorgeous. You captured the essence of the Cape perfectly. I have never been to Provincetown but have heard so many great things. My family and I have secured a great Cape Cod summer rental for next year so I will definitely make this a part of our itinerary.

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