Jeff Wignall's Travel Guide: Great Places to Photograph

Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts: Winter Weekend Getaway

If you're looking for a cozy winter weekend in a sweet little New England village, consider making a visit to Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts, a picture-perfect village along the Connecticut River Valley. In what has to be one of the most ambitious and unique museum accomplishments in New England, an entire street of 18th and 19th Century homes (most of them still lived in) have been preserved exactly as they were.

Historic Deerfield was incorporated in 1952 to sustain the work of a couple from Greenwich, Connecticut, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Flynt. The Flynt's son was a student at the Deerfield Academy in the center of Deerfield (the school was founded in 1797 and still a very prestigious school) and the couple decided to buy virtually every historic home on the main street and restore them to their original state. Today, 11 historic houses and the Flynt Center of Early New England Life display collections of more than 25,000 objects made or used in America between 1650 and 1850.  

The house museums are closed during the winter months, but the town is no less charming to visit. There is the beautiful Deerfield Inn for a cozy meal or a weekend getaway where there is always a warm fire and the smell of wonderful meals cooking to welcome guests. Also nearby, just a short drive up the road, is the fantastic Yankee Candle Company main store and museum--a really fun place to shop for candles, Christmas ornaments or just enjoy the holiday wonderland-type atmosphere. You have to see this place to believe it--the only store that I've visited where it snows indoors! Also nearby is the college town of Northampton with enough stores and restaurants (and the great Blue Bonnet Diner!) to keep you busy and fed for a very long weekend.

By the way, if you're looking for an affordable motel in the area, the Econolodge in South Hadley is beautifully kept, very friendly and with rooms starting at around $70 one of the best kept secrets in the area.

Pumpkin Time in New England

If it's October it must be pumpkin time in New England. Pumpkin farms (especially the "pick your own farms") are a great place to get nice autumny shots of pumpkins and the farms make a nice backdrop for family portraits. I spent this past Sunday afternoon at the Jones Family Farm in Shelton, Connecticut. The Jones farm has been in business since the 1850's and there is always something interesting to photograph: strawberry and blueberry picking in the spring and summer, pumpkins in the fall and Christmas trees in December. Find a local farm in your area and spend a nice autumn day in their pumpkin patch--you'll get some great photos for your collection and you'll help support small farmers in America!

Acadia National Park & the 27 (not 30) Mile Loop Drive

If you're planning a trip to New England and you haven't included a few days in the Bar Harbor area of Maine to see Acadia National Park, it's time to rethink your trip plans. Acadia, which is incidentally the first national park created east of the Mississippi, holds some of the most spectacular and unblemished landscapes in all of New England. I've been to Acadia many times and this place is so huge, so mystical and so visually powerful that it's almost impossible to describe. And while I will always think of the southwest when it comes to expansive views and far horizons, Acadia can hold its own against any western landscape destination. It's that incredible.

One of the best ways to see the park is to take the 27-mile park loop (which is often informally called the "30 mile drive"), one of the most extraordinary scenic drives in the East. The ocean views from the high points on the loop (like the scene here) are just awe inspiring. But beware, in high summer on a sunny day, you won't be the only person on the drive (or anything close to that) and while you won't have any competition for places to put your tripod, it might take you a few minutes to wrangle a parking spot on the side of the road.

Visit the "photos" section of the official site and then do some Flickr searches on the park name and you'll find lots of great photos. There is lots of fine camping in the park but if you're an inn person, there are some wonderful places to stay in Bar Harbor and my favorite (and it's one of my favorite inns in the world) is the Ledgelawn Inn. And before you leave Bar Harbor you must visit Cool as a Moose, the most fun t-shirt store in Maine.

Norman Rockwell Museum: Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Norman Rockwell was probably America's best known illustrator and almost everyone is familiar with his great Saturday Evening Post covers. But Rockwell was also a much more profound artist--in terms of both skill and political convictions--than most people give him credit for. Rockwell had an ability to take ordinary and extremely familiar situations and turn them into iconic images that reflected, I think, the character and the true emotions of the events they depicted--everything from a Thanksgiving dinner to racial events in the American south (look at his great work Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi).

Rockwell lived much of his life in Vermont and Stockbridge, Massachusetts and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge is worth a trip from anywhere. The museum holds the single largest collection of Rockwell's works (more than 700 paintings) as well as an archive of more than 150,000 photos, letters, etc. The lower floor of the museum has a gallery of all of the Post covers and there is a continuous biographical video playing. The main floor is a beautiful collection of galleries that showcases many of Rockwell's finest paintings. My favorite is a long panorama of Stockbridge at Christmastime (you can even see the Christmas tree shining from the artist's own livingroom window)--it's a soulful, masterful painting. There is no better painting of an American town.

Just a short walk across the beautiful museum grounds you'll find Rockwell's actual studio (see photo) that was moved to the grounds from town. You can go inside the studio and see the room where the great artist painted most of his famous works. Fascinating. The grounds are beautiful too and very photogenic--rolling Berkshire Mountains and pretty gardens all around. The museum also has a great gift shop and cafe.

The museum and the town of Stockbridge make a great weekend getaway and the place to stay in Stockbridge is the Red Lion Inn--easily one of the nicest inns you'll find in New England (or anywhere else for that matter) and the food and service are superb by any standard. The inn is literally awash in fascinating antiques and there are Rockwell paintings and prints on almost every wall. In fact, Rockwell used the inn as the setting for many of his most famous paintings, including his famous "Freedom from Want" (one of the Four Freedoms series).

Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration

The Mystic Aquarium, just off of Exit 90 on I-95 in Mystic, Connecticut is a great place to spend a day shooting if you're a frustrated photographer waiting for spring to bring some life back to the landscape. I'm not a big fan of zoos or aquariums (in fact, I hate most zoos for the miserable way that animals are treated), but the folks at Mystic have done a very nice job at creating an environment that is truly educational and seems to be considerate to its living residents (at least I hope that's true).

There are some great indoor displays, including a very beautifully designed and lit tidal pool recreation and some extraordinary sea life displays and aquariums. There is not a lot of light indoors and you're not allowed to use flash in most areas, but if you set a high ISO (I used ISO 1600 on my Nikon D70s) and haves steady hands (or a good IS system) you can still get fun shots. In fact, I used one of my indoor tidal pool shots in my new book Exposure Photo Workshop (Wiley, March 2008) and it reproduced beautifully. There are aslo some nice outdoor displays for beluga whales and another for South African Penguins (shown here); these are very accessible displays and if you have a 70-300mm zoom you'll be able to get close ups (and then some) of both the whales and the penguins. You can also go into the penguin house and shoot photos of them underwater through a thick plate glass (the lighting there is surprisingly bright).

The Mystic Aquarium is open daily except for Christmas and Thanksgiving and my advice is to call and ask when school groups won't be coming! I've been there when the kids on on field trips and it's a drag. Check out their visit page for lots more info.

Galilee, Rhode Island: Pretty as a Picture

There are few things in life more relaxing than spending a quiet afternoon sitting by a harbor, eating seafood (followed by great ice cream) and watching the sunset over a classic New England fishing wharf. And there are few places in New England that are as perfect for that as Galilee, Rhode Island. You just couldn't ask for a prettier or more picturesque place to watch (and photograph) the sunset.

Tucked into a quiet inlet near the mouth of Narragansett Bay, Galilee is home to one of the largest commercial fishing and lobster boat fleets in New England and just walking the wharves and admiring these huge working boats is like stepping back in time to a simpler, more sea-faring New England (if you ignore all of the radar gear on the tops of the boats). In fact, according to an official website, each year more than ten million pounds of fish and shellfish are processed in Galilee and trucked to markets along the east coast.

Located on Point Judith and officially a part of the town of Narragansett, the village is also the base for the ferry (see photo) that runs out to Block Island--a popular summer island off the Rhode Island coast. The town is a short drive from a nice scenic section of Rte 1. It's close enough to daytrip here from Newport or from Mystic, Connecticut. (more text and photos...)

Hundreds of Thousands of Daffodils!

If you happen to be passing through the northwest hills of Connecticut in mid to late April there is a fantastic secret garden that you must take an afternoon to visit. Located on the outskirts of Litchfield (technically I think it's in the town of Northfield), the Laurel Ridge Foundation is a public park that literally erupts with what appears to be hundreds of thousands of daffodils. It's an extraordinary sight to behold.

I'm a little sketchy on the details of how the park and foundation were started, but as I recall it was begun by a husband and wife around World War II who began with a few small plantings of daffodils--and then kept adding and adding and adding! And the daffodils did what daffodils do: they reproduced themselves with great zest and now they literally cover acres and acres of rural Connecticut hillside each spring. (more...)

Stonington, Maine: New England’s Most Scenic Harbor

If someone were to ask me what the most scenic harbor in New England was, I probably wouldn’t hesitate long before I replied: Stonington, Maine, on Deer Isle. Photographically speaking this is one of the prettiest and most accessible harbors you'll find in Maine. Stonington is also one of the most peaceful and undeveloped (in terms of tourism) seaside towns in Maine (and probably all of New England). In fact, I hesitate in even writing about this picture-perfect village because I don’t want to be responsible for one iota of development there (but all pretty towns depend on tourism at some level to survive and photographers tend to be good visitors). 

The town of Stonington (population 1,164 as of July of 2005) is at the far southern tip of Deer Isle and you have to cross a series of small bridges and causeways on the Blue Hill peninsula to reach the town. Once there you will find surprisingly few tourist amenities—though there are a handful of nice (but very small) restaurants, several very nice B&B’s, a few gift shops and ice cream places. You can buy groceries at the Burnt Cove Market—a store that appears to be the social center of the town (and the place to get pizza to go if you’re heading down to watch the sunset at the harbor).

John Steinbeck wrote of Stonington in his wonderful book Travels with Charley:  “Stonington, Deer Isle's chief town, does not look like an American town at all in place or in architecture. Its houses are layered down to the calm water of the bay.”

Steinbeck was exactly correct: While Stonington is pure New England in charm and character, it does have the look of a Nordic village or perhaps even a Mediterranean one. The harbor is surrounded by a steep hillside dotted with homes and cottages of many colors and late in the afternoon the hill is illuminated with a soft, golden light that has brought droves of artists here for decades. Fortunately for photographers the hillside and harbor catch the last rays at nearly the same exact times.