Earlier this month I posted about a visit to Cape Ann, northeast of Boston. The post was mostly about the village of Rockport on the coast and its harbor (see the Rockport post). Well, there’s much more to see and photograph on the Cape, itself, and I offer some examples.
The coast line continues rocky, punctuated by the occasional safe harbor for recreational craft as well as a few commercial fishing boats. This harbor is called Lanes Cove, and it opens into Ipswich Bay. Note the granite blocks which form the breakwaters.
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Beaches are rare and seem to be more of a crushed granite (as seen above) than the quartz (silicon dioxide) of our South Jersey shoreline. The image below is typical of the Cape Ann shoreline.

———————–Wavelets coming ashore.
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But between the rocks here and there are old friends…the Beach Rose or Nantucket Rose or, properly, Rosa Rugosa, The white variety is not often seen and it was lovely.
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Besides having a rocky shoreline Cape Ann is boats…boats…boats. Here’s a pair of Gloucester dories that caught my camera’s eye.
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A pleasant drive westward took me to the village of Essex located on the Essex River which runs northeasterly into Essex Bay and thence to Ipswich Bay on the coast. Essex also makes its living from the sea including boat rides through the marshes of the river. At Essex there’s a fine Shipbuilding Museum where volunteers rebuild old commercial wooden fishing hulls. Adjacent is Burnham’s boat building shed, operated by Harold Burnham, the 28th of that family in the craft which has delivered over 4000 vessels since the 1819 founding.
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Here’s a typical scene along the river, a marine railway with an occupant and a couple of squatters.
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On the east side of Gloucester Harbor there is a small, narrow peninsula called Rocky Neck. Over the years it has become an artists’ colony and an enjoyable place to visit. Here’s a whimsical window on one of the gallery buildings along Smith Cove which is inside the peninsula. It’s a creation painted on a piece of plywood screwed on to the siding. Notice even the reflections in the bottom panes. The window box is a second piece of painted plywood.
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Here we have an “open-air” gallery on the water’s edge. Maybe “plein air” paintings are best shown in open air.
This reminded me that a few years ago I proclaimed myself a plein air photographer. It hasn’t affected my estate.
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Smith Cove is also the home of one of the boats from the National Geographic series, Wicked Tuna. The series chronicles the adventures of seven boats which seek the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna in North Atlantic Waters. Here’s one of them, Hard Merchandise, berthed next to a wall of tail fins from her catches. In her 2014 season she brought in some 3000 pounds of tuna worth about $62,000. That’s a lot of sushi.
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This schooner also made me think of James Sessions’ watercolors of Gloucester Harbor. (see my earlier post on Rockport Harbor.)
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Finally, I could not leave without capturing an image of Gloucester’s iconic 1925 memorial to the thousands of fisherman who have lost their lives over the centuries.
I was tempted to skip it because of how often it’s been published but I couldn’t pass it up with the clouds above it.
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A HAPPY ANNOUNCEMENT
I am pleased to report that my galleries on Pbase.com, experienced their six hundred thousandth (600,000) page view sometime in mid-August. I opened these galleries in 2005 and they have proven to be a great display for my work, enabling me to post far more images that I could ever have done on this blog. There’s almost no commentary other than some image titles, however, so my blog continues a role of enabling me to tell about some of my images and the related experiences. There are 359 galleries of which 193 are public; the rest are private family or institutional galleries. The public galleries contain over 2100 images. I’m grateful for all of the views that they have enjoyed.
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