The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

I’ve posted new images of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Cape Cod, being home to some of the most popular beaches in America, is quite crowded during the summer, when for instance the population of Provincetown swells from 3,000 to 60,000. However, during my March visit, the huge beach parking lots were mostly empty. I found the place to be quite peaceful and unhurried.

The Cape was so much off-season that most of the motels that I saw on the way to Provincetown were closed. On the first evening, after photographing past sunset on the beach, I drove around for over an hour, looking unsuccessfully for a motel. I realized only latter that there are surprisingly none in town, only rather pricey Bed and Breakfast lodges. Fortunately, a woman at a pizza restaurant in Truro pointed me to the Cape Inn (508-487-1711) found by taking Snail Road (first on left after the sign “Entering Provincetown” on Rte 6. The place appeared ran down from the outside, but the room was actually fine. It is out of the way of the main road, so you’d be unlikely to find it by accident, but it’s the only inexpensive lodging during the winter.

I found it particularly challenging to try and capture in a short amount of time the beauty of the Cape, which is a gentle mix of scenery and human presence. I imagine that one needs to spend enough time there to appreciate the soft variations of light. It didn’t help that Joel Meyerowitz had captured this atmosphere, in his landmark, and defining work “Cape Light” that helped establish color photography as a contemporary art form in the 70s. Eventually, I think I captured the sense of the place mostly through the modest sand fences that border most beaches on the Cape.