Last week, I shared some of my scouting stories, the first one, from the driver’s seat of Monty, my dad’s 1931 Ford Model A Roadster. Here are a few more vignettes of searching for interesting spots…

Sometimes, I am scouting for a particular scene, such as mist on the water or farms, but at other times, I may be scouting for color.

My mother, as some of you know, was a painter whose works are in private collections all over the country and beyond. I say “was,” because her mind has played cruel tricks on her, and she is no longer able to paint as she did for so many years. She had a great eye for a scene and knowing when to leave something out of it, just as good photographers remember what attracted them to the scene, then simplify and isolate so that there is only one subject in the image.

Mum and I used to scout a lot together. We were attracted to the same scenes, and while we may have treated or composed them differently, we brought the same passion to our renditions of those scenes. Sometimes, she even used my photographs as inspiration for her paintings.

We were out one fall day, puttering around a new area we hadn’t explored before. I looked for ridges on my maps, along with a combination of woods and open land, as that scenario suited both of us.

I found on the maps a long ridge that looked right, so we navigated to the road that traveled its length. We were in luck, as this is what we found.

The blush of late fall was extraordinary in the late-afternoon light. What set it all off, though, was an old apple tree, arty in its shape on a sloping pasture, with a fallen branch that led our eyes into the scene. I returned in winter to photograph the same scene, because it was one of those purple locations mention in Part I, but alas, someone had removed the branch. Hmmmph! How could they? Didn’t they know how arty that fallen branch was? All kidding and reality aside, I do have this shot, however, that I call “Passing Season.” It has appeared in books, sold as a fine-art print, and been admired in many a show.

A few years back, a good client sent us to Nova Scotia to photograph a huge operation they have there. We had some extra time, so went on up a few days early to photograph on our own. It was a nostalgia trip for me, as I had sailed the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia to help my dad bring back his sailboat after the Halifax Race, the lesser-known, bi-annual alternate to the famed Bermuda Race. Dad and his crew of childhood sailing buddies were exhausted from the lack of sleep that goes along with these long races, so he flew me up to Halifax for the post-race festivities and to act as first mate for the trip home. I had always wanted to return because of that amazing trip that was cut short before we ever crossed the Bay of Fundy.

When Arnie and I went up years later, we returned to some of the places I had seen on previous trips and explored additional ones, savoring the charming little fishing villages, traditional boat building, and dramatic coastline.

One of the places that was high on my list was a little fishing harbor just up from the infamous Cape Sable Island. Known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, the shifting sands around Cape Sable Island hold the largest collection of shipwrecks in North America, over 350 recorded ones since 1583, and only once since 1947 and the advent of more sophisticated navigational equipment. No wonder. It is shrouded in fog about a third of the year, is on the track for most storms that head up or down the Atlantic coast, and is surrounded by shoals. Added to that, the confluence of three major currents — the Gulf Stream, the Labrador Current, and the Belle Isle Current — keeps the sands moving so that they can gobble up a shipwreck in a short period of time. Conversely, they have been known to spit a ship back up decades or even centuries later.

So why would I want to return to these trecherous waters? Simple — it was a place where we took refuge when we had engine problems in pea-soup fog on that return trip from the Halifax Race. In holds wonderful memories for me, but that is a story in itself, too long to share in this installment. I did, though, remember the fishing village as a great place to photograph, as it was a non-touristy, fishing village.

Of course, the village had grown since I was last there, and there were now a couple of harbors, but I looked at the maps, and remembering the route in to safety from the Atlantic, got us to the right location.

It was a somewhat grown-up version of the little harbor of my memory, and produced the same colorful fishing boats tied up to the piers in the fog. Some day, Arnie and I hope to do a workshop in Nova Scotia, and we were scouting with that in mind.

The Outer Banks are a thin strip of barrier islands off the North Carolina coast that I have known for decades. When I first visited and camped on them years ago, I was not scouting for locations; I was simply enjoying their wild beauty. When we starting holding workshops there, it was time to look at them with a different point of view and seek out great locations that would give our students a variety of subjects to photograph.

Over several trips, we went from one end of the Outer Banks to the other. I was always attracted to patterns in the sand dunes. Some areas tend to produce more interesting patterns than others, so we would stop the car here and there so I could scramble up the dunes to see what they produced away from the road.

The area where I found this “fish” has been a successful location for me in terms of images. Some of you may remember “Fence Dance” that I found a few feet from here. The fence is no longer dancing, the but changing patterns of the sand endure.

It has also been a great location for the hardier of our students who join me in this area instead of another, more-easily-reached one just back up the road where those who understandably wish to avoid the mountain-goat, steep climb go with Arnie.

I am not sure what next week will bring … perhaps more of Nova Scotia. Time will tell!

So, scout, scout, scout. Look at the lay of the land, the way a location faces, the potential for subject matter. Check your DeLorme atlases and, if you have them, your top maps. Study the contours and use that information to find likely spots that will be good for you.

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