Larry Glick is on a boat with his friends. His friends are fishing, but Mr. Glick is not. Instead, he’s watching another boat, and a fisherman, through the lens of his camera. The fisherman is reeling in a striped bass on choppy waters, surrounded by fog. It takes a long time, and Mr. Glick is watching and wondering. Will he net it? Lip it? Gaff it?
The fisherman leans over the side of the boat, his other arm crooked upwards for balance, and barehands the fish around the gills.
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For Larry Glick, a seasonal Vineyarder, Island photographer and Gazette contributor, photography has always been about capturing a moment in time. He doesn’t shoot “with a machine gun,” he says, but waits for the right moment, the split second when light, movement and reflection are just right.
“For me, it was about sharing the beauty of Martha’s Vineyard,” he said. “It takes time, and you just need to be out there. You can’t rush it, and you can’t be looking for something. Everything just has to align.”
Mr. Glick is a member of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association (MVAA), a nonprofit collective of artists that showcase their work at the Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown. This year, he will take on the role of president of their executive board, where he hopes to bolster mentorships between established artists and new artists in the collective, as well as with young Island artists.
The MVAA currently has more than 50 members, and gives yearly scholarships to graduating high school senior artists.
“I think the beauty of this organization is that we can learn from each other, enjoy each other’s company and grow because we have each other’s support and direction,” said Kirsten Stevenson, the association’s director.
Mr. Glick’s work was on display at the Old Sculpin Gallery last week. The exhibit was called Reflections and compiled shots of water, boats and windows from around the Vineyard.
He gestures to his corner of the Old Sculpin Gallery, where his photos are hanging. “C’mon into my office,” he says.
The series includes a colorful, near-abstract reflection of boats and buoys in the harbor, a Menemsha fishing shack window, onto which the sunset looks painted, and a lake in West Tisbury where the blue behind clouds is not in the sky — that’s covered by a fall tree — but in the water.
“I was walking with a friend, this is in West Tisbury, I saw this, and I’m like, “Whoa! Wait a minute!’” Mr. Glick recalled. “I have learned over time to have a camera on your shoulder.”
Mr. Glick bought his first camera at 13 years old: a Fujica ST701, a 35 mm film camera.
He was the designated family photographer, but shot other things too. On the Vineyard during the summer of 1974, Mr. Glick was taking shots of his friend water-skiing in Edgartown harbor when they passed a movie set with a giant shark in the water.
“We didn’t know what it was, but we’re like, that’s interesting. So I said, ‘well, go by slow. I want to take a photo,’” he recalled.
In 2014, when Mr. Glick bought his house in Chilmark, he remembered his slides from that roll of film. That’s when he rediscovered the photo, and realized he had captured a moment from the filming of Jaws.
“I can’t tell you how many of these I sold at Jaws 50th last year,” he said.
Mr. Glick continued to take photos in college, at Tufts University. He worked for the school’s newspaper and also played baseball, which is how he met a number of Boston Red Sox players, who would work out at the Tufts’ batting cages. This was the late 1970s, when upper box seats at Fenway were $6.25, and bleachers $2.
He flips through a worn, brown leather folder, pulling out photos he took while working for the team: Butch Hobson sliding into second; manager Don Zimmer, a wad of tobacco in his lip, getting thrown out by an umpire; a long exposure layering the ghostly images of pitcher Dennis Eckersley winding up, throwing a pitch and then getting hit with it. Mr. Glick is still friends with many of those players.
Mr. Glick put the camera down over the course of his career in business. He earned his MBA from Columbia Univeristy and then spent much of his career at his family’s car dealership in Worcester, doing promotions and commercials with Red Sox player Dwight Evans.
In 2014, he had lower back surgery, and was faced with the prospect of time on the Vineyard without tennis, biking, running and golfing. His friends asked him, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna get back into photography,” he answered.
Mr. Glick took a photo bootcamp with Vineyard photographer Alison Shaw, learned to edit his photos and started an Instagram. He began freelancing for the Vineyard Gazette, and has had photos in publications across the Cape. He juggles it alongside his payment processing business, ducking into a Menemsha fishing shack to take a Zoom call before getting right back out there to capture Meet the Fleet.
His shot of a harvest moon filling the Edgartown Lighthouse is on display at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Sometimes he shoots with a drone, capturing from above the dozens of colorful dinghies pecking at a dock. Often, he photographs families.
“With young children, [you’re] still trying to capture a special moment,” he said.
In Menemsha one summer, he watched his own grandchildren sitting with his brother’s grandchildren, each kid holding two popsicles, the melting treats dripping all over their faces and arms.
“His is dripping, she’s looking away, she’s in another world, and he’s already finished his,” said Mr. Glick, pointing at a photo of the the four kids frozen in time. “It was a moment unfolding. My camera was in the car, I ran to get it, and I didn’t want them really to notice me.”
Only one of the four kids notices the camera that he lifts to his eye, focusing.
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This article appears in August 14, 2026.