One of the most popular summer destinations for east coast vacationers is also a great place for nature photographers during the off-season. Cape Cod has amazing beaches, rustic fishing harbors, deep forests and abundant wildlife. Photographers will find classic New England villages and gray-shingled beach cottages on remote Atlantic headlands. Enjoy a quiet April or October trip to Cape Cod with off-season rates. You’ll have the beaches and trails to yourself and you’ll discover more photographic opportunities. The Atlantic Ocean is east of the cape. Nantucket Sound is south of the cape. The Outer Cape protects Cape Cod Bay. Southwest of the cape, between Bourne and Falmouth, is Buzzards Bay.

With ten days of exploring Cape Cod, driving a thousand miles of back roads, and hiking a lot of trails, I found some great photography. It’s a fascinating place with remote windblown beaches and local wildlife to photograph. Directions to all the best photo locations are included in my Photograph America Newsletter Issue #110 - Photographing Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

Cape Ann is thirty-miles north of Boston. The North Coast of Massachusetts has many great locations where photographers can find fascinating subjects to explore. Deep-water harbors along the Massachusetts coastline were the only points where early settlers arriving from England could safely disembark. Gloucester was America’s first working seaport. It was settled in 1623, three years after the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth. Many of the towns and villages across Cape Ann still have homes that date back almost three hundred years. With a little searching, you can find harbor scenes with handmade wooden boats, forest scenes and rocky coastlines that are reminiscent of bygone days. Any time of year is perfect for your next photo trip to Cape Ann.

Less than an hour’s drive north of Boston, Cape Ann is actually an island, separated from the mainland of Massachusetts by the Annisquam River, a saltwater channel between Gloucester Harbor and Ipswich Bay. The towns of Gloucester and Rockport are located on the island and other historic towns are scattered across the mainland side of Cape Ann. My plan was to visit and photograph Gloucester, Rockport, Essex, Ipswich, Newburyport and Plum Island.

Many of my previous newsletters on Utah covered red rock desert locations with bizarre geological formations, sand dunes, and cacti. For this newsletter, I traveled to northern Utah’s Wasatch Range on the western edge of the Colorado Plateau, the boundary between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin Desert. Late September usually brings the peak of fall color to these mountains east of Salt Lake City where canyon roads climb into evergreen forests and through groves of aspen painted in shades of orange and yellow, from late September into early October.

The most easily accessible autumn color locations on these rugged mountain peaks are southeast of Salt Lake City, east of Interstate 15, and south of Interstate 80. Like autumn color everywhere in higher elevations, the season is short here. A warm and dry summer or a wet and cool summer can change the date of peak color from mid-September to mid-October. I left home on September 28 and saw the peak of color arrive two days later in most of the locations I visited.