Two Very Different Sunsets in Chatham

I first visited Forest Beach in Chatham last fall on a scouting trip. I’d been trying to find this beach with the weathered dune fence and equally weathered old livesafing station for a while. Chatham as a ton of Sound-side beaches, many of them quite beautiful, but this particular spot is located at Forest Beach. I’ve been back two different times so far this year with beautiful but very different sunsets on each trip.

We got a pretty big New Year’s Day snowstorm this year and after shoveling out my driveway and steps, I noticed the clearing storm might produce a nice sunset. Although it was six months away from beach rose season, I thought the dune fence might make a good foreground subject covered in snow and ice.

The beach was stunning and bitingly cold under a blanket of fresh snow. Just like I hoped, the snow had clumped on the dune grass and beach roses and plastered itself to the fencing. The storm was moving off to the east and was low on the horizon but still managed to catch some sunset light along with the tip of the livesaving station.

I didn’t stay very long on this trip because my hands were starting to freeze and the wind was really picking up but it was a great winter sunset in a place I normally don’t do very much winter photography.

The weather was much more amenable to a long stay when I returned last week in early June. I’d been keeping my eye on the forecast for a week, waiting for a weather window to try and photography the blooming beach roses at Forest Beach. The weather on this evening wasn’t perfect but it was my last chance before some travel to the Pacific Northwest so I drove out to Chatham hoping, at minimum, the bugs wouldn’t be terrible.

The beach roses were certainly still blooming, albeit maybe a tad past their peak. Some of the white blossoms, in particular, were a little weathered looking. I was able to get my tripod setup in a few different spots making sure to only stand on sand so as not to trample any of the fragile dune plants. As usual, I actually got my favorite composition on my phone but it was a place I just couldn’t get my tripod without damaging the plants.

As the sun got right to the edge of the horizon there were a few moments of light enough wind that the plants weren’t moving and some nice orange and pink color in the sky bleeding up from the horizon. A huge contrast to January and exacty the image I was picturing on my original scouting trip in October.

The real fun came after the sun sank below the horizon. I always stay at least 15 minutes after the technical sunset because I’ve seen some crazy cloud color even though the sun is down. That’s exactly what happened - 10 minutes after sunset, the high altitude clouds picked up some bright pink color and reflected it back down on the beach making everything seem to glow. The light was all behind the lifesaving station and beach roses and it was dark enough that the plants would have been blurry with the required exposure time, so I walked along the beach itself for a while and took this photo of the waves gently crashing along the shore with the glowing sky and dunes in the background.

This was one of the best sunsets I’ve seen on the Cape in a while. I explored along the marsh behind the beach for a while and found a few more spots with beach roses. The wind was blocked enough by the sand dunes that I was able to take a few more rosa rugosa photos before the sunlight finally died away.