St. Michaels Waterfront

Author's Comments

There is a particular quiet to St. Michaels at six in the morning, before the shops open and the day-trippers arrive from Annapolis. The Miles River sits almost flat at that hour, and the skipjacks at the museum dock look less like exhibits and more like what they actually are - working boats that have been doing this for a century and a half. The screwpile lighthouse at the museum entrance is the obvious foreground and I will not pretend otherwise. It works. The hexagonal shape catches early light well, and the reflection in the harbor, when the wind cooperates, is one of those compositions that almost makes itself. But I find myself drawn more to October and November here, when the working oyster boats come back and the tourist season softens. The light gets longer and lower. The water turns a slate color that reads beautifully against weathered wood and white hulls. A skipjack under sail on the Miles in late fall is a photograph I have chased more than once and not entirely caught. Golden hour does what golden hour does. The masts go warm, the harbor goes complicated, the town itself recedes into silhouette if you position yourself right along the waterfront path. Walk past the museum to the quieter docks on the far side of the point. Fewer people find their way there, and the compositions are less arranged, more honest. This is a town that has been photographed thoroughly, and the photograph worth making is usually the one made a little earlier or a little later than everyone else.

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