It is also famous because of the purple sands that appear at high tide. The sands get their color from tiny crystals of pink pyrope garnet.
Matt and I had hiked from the road to the Atlantic Ocean out on Plum Island. The sky was a bit overcast that day, which I have always found can be better for landscape photography. The clouds help to provide depth and layers to your photos. As we were returning to the trailhead, I thought that the landscape looked absolutely dramatic. I took this photo in the hopes of being able to use the stark contrast of the sand and grasses with the sky and clouds. This photo reminds me a lot of one of my favorite black and white photos which I took in Kampinos National Park just outside of Warsaw, Poland. That photo had contrasting grasses and snow instead of grasses and sand.
Plum Island is situated on the northeast coast of Massachussets. It gets its name from the wild beach plum shrubs that grow among its sand dunes. It is also famous because of the purple sands that appear at high tide. The sands get their color from tiny crystals of pink pyrope garnet. Pyrope is a mineral of the garnet group. It can vary in color from blood red to black red to orange red to pink to purple to black. The island is a part of four different cities: Newburyport, Newbury, Rowley, and Ipswich.
Plum Island is a favorite for people who are bird watching or trying to take photos of birds. On the day that Matt and I visited, we saw a group of people with supertelephoto lenses. Supertelephoto lenses are lenses with a focal length over 300 millimeters. For perspective, many cameras come with a 55-250mm as part of the starter lens pack. The photographers that we saw had lenses that were easily 600mm long. (We may have even seen some 800mm lenses, which would be the longest in Canon’s telephoto lineup.)
Take a Closer Look
Plum Island serves as a barrier beach. It shelters the Plum Island River, the mouths of the Parker River, Rowley River, Eagle Hill River, and Ipswich River, as well as Plum Island Sound. The tides can vary greatly here, so a “Great Marsh” forms between the tides. This place is covered in grasses, and it will only become submerged in a few inches of water during high tide. This area is a favorite of shellfish. This Great March extends to the barrier beaches of Castle Neck and Coffins Beach.
This Great March extends to the barrier beaches of Castle Neck and Coffins Beach.
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