Solomons Island Waterfront

Author's Comments

There is a particular kind of Maryland light that happens where the Patuxent opens into the bay, and Solomons holds it better than most places I have photographed. The village sits low on the water, so the sky does most of the work. In late September, an hour before sunset, the Back Creek boardwalk turns into something I find hard to leave. Skipjacks and workboats rest at their slips with their rigging catching the last warm light, and the water goes pink and grey in uneven patches as the wind decides what it is doing. I tend to start at the northern end of the boardwalk where the working boats are, then walk slowly south. The recreational vessels are prettier in a conventional way, but the photographs I keep are almost always from the working end - rope coiled on weathered wood, a hull that has clearly been repainted more than once, a waterman loading coolers without looking up. The bridge to Calvert County is worth the walk across for the elevated view, especially if you time it for the moment the channel markers start to blink on against a sky that has not yet given up its color. Solomons does not get crowded the way St. Michaels does, and I am grateful for that every time I come. It feels like a place that is still primarily about the water and the boats rather than about the people who come to look at them. Stay for dinner. Walk back out after dark. The rigging lights on the masts make a kind of constellation that the camera can almost catch.

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