(Photo gallery at bottom)
Long before I started writing fiction, I was walking around with a camera. That habit trained me to notice light, edges, and small telling details—the same raw material I now use to build scenes with words. Photography taught me how much of storytelling comes down to noticing what most people walk past.
So it probably wasn’t an accident that one of the central characters in The Washashore—Wren Bradford—sees the world through a lens. Photography shows up in the books the way it shows up in my life: not as a hobby, exactly, but as a way of paying attention.
That’s also why nearly every photo you see on this site and in my social feeds is my own (or, occasionally, taken by my talented wife).
Training
I’m self-taught. No formal training, no credentials—just decades of looking at the world in terms of composition: lines, light, balance, negative space. I think about photography constantly, especially on the Outer Cape, where the magic referred to as Cape light makes even ordinary scenes glow with possibility in the early morning and late afternoon. (Examples of photos capturing Cape light at the bottom of the page.)
Equipment
My primary camera is a fairly basic Nikon D5500—I have two of them—paired with several good lenses, including a big, heavy daily-driver 16–80mm that’s versatile and razor-sharp.
But my favorite lens, by a wide margin, is an old manual f/1.2 50mm prime Nikon first made in the early 1980s. No autofocus, no electronics—to use it, I have to shoot fully manual. That lens drinks light. It renders images with a soft, warm, buttery glow and a wickely shallow depth of field I can’t replicate any other way, especially in Cape light. (You may recognize the term “shallow depth of field” from an early scene in The Washashore, where Wren explains it.)
Day to day, I also shoot a lot on my iPhone—some of my favorite photos were taken that way. The best camera is the one you have, so I keep my iPhone hardware current to take advantage of yearly improvements. I also keep a drone around for the occasional aerial shot. And having two Nikon bodies helps: I can leave one set up for the old 50mm and the other for a more flexible lens, though carrying both isn’t practical for everyday walks in soft sand. It’s worth it for travel though—Venice remains my favorite place in the world to wander with cameras. Both Nikons also got a serious workout during our van travels around the U.S. and Canada from 2021–2025. (Example travel posts, including Venice in my personal feed and on our van travel feed).
Workflow
I’m not a heavy editor. I don’t own Photoshop and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. I’ll crop occasionally, adjust shadows or contrast if needed, maybe remove the occasional distracting piece of flotsam from the foreground. But that’s as far as I go. I’m more interested in getting a true reflection of the moment.
Daily Routine
Our dog routine happens to be ideal for photography. They have us out early every morning, which means I catch good light. They like to be off leash, so we gravitate toward quieter, more remote places—they chase scents and I look for compositions and small details worth keeping. Wind permitting, the Atlantic-facing dunes are always a favorite. Otherwise, it’s one of many forest trails in the National Seashore.
Midday walks are usually a bust: high sun, harsh glare. (Wren complains about this in The Washashore too.) Late afternoon, the light comes back. Most days it’s just the iPhone. Some days it’s the Nikon with the old 50mm. On rare occasions, the second Nikon or the drone joins us.
In the end, photography and writing are doing the same work for me—both are ways of paying attention to place, of slowing down long enough to notice how light falls across dunes, how weather changes a mood, how small details quietly carry meaning. When the camera isn’t in hand, the habit of looking still is. And when I sit down to write, I’m still trying to do what I do on those walks: see clearly, choose carefully, and trust that the right details will tell the story.
A few examples of that light—and that habit of looking—are below.
Cape Light Gallery
If you are interested in ordering The Washashore you can find it at—or order it from— these local bookstores: Wellesley Books (Wellesley, MA), The Bookshop of Needham (Needham, MA), Provincetown Bookshop (Provincetown, MA) and Elm Street Books (New Canaan, CT)
Or if you want the convenience and speed of online, but still want to support local bookstores, grab The Washashore through Bookshop.org
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