Watch a Cape Cod sunset over Barnstable Harbor, Sandy Neck Lighthouse
Summer sunsets are down to the final days with the arrival of fall on Sept. 22. Watch this one taken by drone over Barnstable Harbor.
“Shooting shapes and shadows again,” was a message I would often get from photojournalist Barry Donahue after his review of the day’s photos in the Cape Cod Times. I am not sure if Barry coined the phrase, but I heard it from him first. Its definition is self-explanatory, an artsy photograph, usually in black and white, and always eye-catching. It was Barry who was the master of that genre. His artful photos took center stage on The Cape Codder newspaper’s front page for many, many years.
I heard of his passing last week, and I can’t remember a time in the last 40 years when he wasn’t out there somewhere on his beloved Outer Cape with a camera. We first met in the mid-1980s. We weren’t called “visual journalists” in those days just simply “news photogs.” Newspapers were thick and most of the photos ran in black and white. Our young shoulders easily supported a pair of Nikons and the ever-present canvas Domke camera bag.
We were friendly competitors, he at the “Codder,” me at the Times. A news event on the Outer Cape usually found us both at the same place, except he was always there before I was. Many a marine mammal stranding I would arrive at late, after driving from Hyannis, just as he was leaving. “I think there might still be something to see down there,” he would quip with a smile.
Sometimes he was nowhere to be found, and I thought I had an exclusive. But no, he would arrive by water, rowing or paddling around a scene I could only view from my land-locked position. He was a familiar sight during storm coverage, outfitted in knee-high rubber boots and a yellow slicker, either on land or out on a fishing boat, capturing the ocean’s fury in any weather.
We had a long running competition for taking images of each other in awkward photo moments, changing film right when the dune eroded, camera drops, on and on. But my favorite shot of Barry tells his story, big smile, oars in the water, taking his grandson out for a row, a true Cape Codder if ever there was one.
Barry had a great eye for making photos combined with the knack for finding the right place to take them. He leaves Cape Cod a lasting legacy of fine photojournalism.