In my new piece, “Judson’s Post”, I bring you to the shores of Long Island Sound where calm waters lap at boulders in the shallows. Facing inland, we see the Stratford Point Lighthouse standing tall upon the distant hill behind a seawall of piled rip-rap and a white picket fence. Although the current Stratford Point Light was guiding sailors near the mouth of the Housatonic River since the late 1800s, the history of Stratford Point as the site of a maritime beacon stretches back much further.
Stone and metal lighthouses generally came about beginning in the early 1800s, replacing a generation of earlier wooden lighthouses that had been built during the later 1700s. But colonists and merchants had been navigating the New England coast since the early 1600s and, in an era before lighthouses, they too needed some means of avoiding coastline hazards or locating harbors from afar.
During the earliest colonial years, a great bonfire was lit on Stratford Point during foggy nights whenever a ship was expected to arrive. At some point, an iron hearth was attached to the top of a tall post, elevating the fire above ground level for increased visibility. It wasn’t until 1822 that a true, 28-foot wooden lighthouse was built on Stratford Point. And if that sounds like a long time ago, recall that the settlement of Stratford was already almost two centuries old at that point. The current cast-iron tower replaced the decaying wooden lighthouse in 1880 and has stood on Stratford Point ever since.
I titled “Judson’s Post” (photo at top) in honor of Theodore Judson, who was in his early 30s when he assumed the duty of lighthouse keeper at Stratford Point in 1880. He was just shy of age 70 when he finally retired in 1919, having manned the lighthouse for almost four decades. A truly impressive run by anyone’s standards!
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When I saw some images of the Point Judith Lighthouse come through on the Instagram feed of another Connecticut-based photographer earlier this year, my reaction was immediate: “I need to go there!” But as if the scenery wasn’t going to be exquisite enough, the location of the Point Judith Lighthouse at the mouth of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay made this shoot even more exciting. Why? Despite the fact that Rhode Island is a neighboring state, and was for some number of years only about an hour’s drive away (I live a bit further away now), I had somehow never taken a single photograph there. And it isn’t as if I was intentionally avoiding the ol’ Ocean State. I suppose that I was just preoccupied with other subjects over the years; meanwhile, Rhode Island and all of its compact beauty somehow managed to slip through the cracks. That was all going to change with the Point Judith Lighthouse.
When I selected a date in February for the shoot, I entirely expected that it would be cold. What I could not have imagined was that the thermometer on my dash cluster would read -5°F as I headed east and crossed over the Connecticut border in the frigid darkness before dawn. I had planned for the worst, though, and was decked out from head to toe in three layers. Furthermore, I knew the oppressive winter temperature was just as much of a blessing as a curse: it was a pretty sure bet that I would have Point Judith entirely to myself.
Indeed, there wasn’t a soul to be found when I parked my car at the end of the windswept peninsula. And even though I had done some measure of research ahead of my visit, the scenery at Point Judith proved to be even more exciting than I could have imagined. Take, for example, the beautifully-smoothed boulders piled upon the shoreline in my pieces “Dawn on Point Judith” (at top) and “Narragansett Shores II” (above). Strange as it may seem, there just aren’t beaches that look quite like that in Connecticut.
The Point Judith Lighthouse stands upon the distant horizon in those photographs, but plays a more prominent role in the composition of “Point Judith Wintertide” (above). In this piece, wind-carved grooves in the snow weave through the beachfront beside the tower and the coastal landscape is steeped in the warm colors of dawn. Despite being over 150 years old and having guided seafarers for some six generations, the venerable Point Judith Lighthouse is well-maintained and practically looks as if it had been built less than a decade ago. In an era when tight government budgets can sometimes result in historic lighthouses decaying or being shortsightedly off-loaded to private parties (and lost to the public forever), its refreshing to see that the lighthouse at Point Judith features a level of care and accessibility that is befitting of an age-old maritime relic.
Just how important was the Point Judith Lighthouse in the hey-day of New England’s maritime era? Between June 1871 and June 1872, for example, the keeper at Point Judith kept a tally of every vessel that passed the Point: the final count exceeded 37,000! So although shipwrecks did still occur occasionally off Point Judith, sailors navigating in the vicinity were statistically rather safe thanks to the presence of this wisely-positioned navigational aid.
Oh, did I mention that it was pretty damn cold out there? “Sweet Dawn, Bitter Cold” (above) sums it all up. Only about a dozen feet from the breaking waves, these seashore boulders were glazed with a thick, smooth shell of opaque ice. To be at Point Judith on that February morning at dawn, seeing it entombed in snow and ice and raked by frigid winds blowing in from the Atlantic, I certainly found a renewed appreciation for the brutal elements endured by the mariners of old.
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In my new piece “Lynde Point Seascape” (above), the Lynde Point Lighthouse stands sentinel on Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Connecticut River, its column of neatly stacked windows peering towards the sea from a 65-foot brownstone tower. Foreboding clouds loom overhead, while large slabs of wave-thrown ice batter the nearby seashore.
This is just one of my newly-released works featuring the stately Lynde Point Lighthouse in the context of a frigid New England winter. Built in 1838 to replace an older, dilapidated wooden tower, the present beacon at Lynde Point has remained an active aid to maritime navigation for more than a century and half, even as the land surrounding it transitioned from farms and pastures to lightly-wooded suburbs and sizable beachfront cottages.
But just as captivating as the lighthouse during my visit were the chunks of ice drifting on the waves and settling upon the seashore. From jewel-like bits to massive slabs more than 10 feet across, these bergs drifted down the Connecticut River from the state’s interior, only to quickly wash up on the seashores at either side of the river’s mouth.
Days tossing about in the ocean water left some of the ice slabs beautifully polished, their burrs and edges having melted away to reveal a smooth, glassy finish which glistened even in the faint light filtering down through the heavy morning clouds.
As you can see in my panoramic piece, “Saybrook Vista”, the conditions on this particular morning didn’t exactly offer stunning sunrise colors or dramatic side-lighting. Instead, I was offered some moody, exquisitely-textured cloud cover and only the faint, cool-toned light that was able to filter through. Sure… it’s not the sort of glorious morning that makes you want to lay out a beach towel and stay the afternoon. Then again, would we really expect that sort of idyllic day in late Winter? This is true New England in all of its elemental glory; these are the somber, overcast skies and cold, wind-swept beaches that were part of everyday life for Connecticut mariners of old.
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