Blue Hour Cliffs....

I recently took a day trip to Acadia NP. The purpose was to photograph these cliffs with the golden light of the setting sun hitting them. Unfortunately clouds moved in, blocking the sun when the light would've been at its best. I decided to wait around till blue hour and got this image. I ended up walking the trail back to the vehicle in the dark.

Acadia Sunset....

Here’s another from last autumns Acadia trip. The first evening there I was photographing by Thunder Hole but I really didn’t like the photos I was getting, the sky was kind of gray and there were a lot of people milling about. I packed up my gear and headed out on The Loop road. I hadn’t driven for 10 minutes when I noticed the sky starting to light up. I pulled off into the first turn off which happened to be Otter Point, by this time the sky was on fire. I hurried and got the camera gear back out and rushed down the trail from the parking lot to the actual point. When I got everything set up and started taking photographs this was the only color left in the sky. Lesson learned, get to a place early and stick it out.

Solitude Can Be Found......

Acadia National Park can be a very busy place during the fall, making this image was the only time I had the whole area to myself. It shows that it is possible to find solitude in one of the busiest national parks in the country, you just need to find the right spot and the right time of day.This is The Bubbles and Jordan Pond. I was hoping to get a picture of the milky way over The Bubbles but it happened to be straight overhead going from left to right. This photograph is a combination of two, the sky and foreground are seperate exposures. The sky was f2.8 for 30 seconds at ISO 3200 and the foreground was a ten minute exposure at ISO 1600. It was very breezy on this particular evening, causing ripples in the water, so the stars were not reflected on the pond surface.

Contributing to the Illusion.....

This photo was taken on top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. I had never been to the top before despite being in Acadia a few times. I must say it was the least favorite part of my trip. In the past, just about every photo I’ve seen taken from the top of the mountain does not include people so it gives the feeling of solitude. Well, that’s far from reality. The top of the mountain has three or four parking lots and I actually had to drive around a bit to find a place to park, it was like being at the mall. After parking you discover there are hundreds of people milling about all over the place, far from the solitude you’d thought you’d encounter. This photo was taken at sunset so I’m sure at sunrise there would be less people, not everyone is an early bird. On the drive back down I pulled over at one point and walked a little way off the road and I found this spot which I had all to myself, so for a little while I could imagine I had the whole mountain to myself. You could also say I’m just as guilty as all the photographers before me by posting this photo, I’m contributing to the myth of peace and quiet on top of the mountain.

Aptly Named.....

Here's another Acadia photo taken at sunrise on Boulder Beach. The name is informal, you won't find it on any maps but this beach has turned into an iconic spot for photographers and it's way "over" photographed now. The morning I was there, there were 5 others. One of the photographers I follow on Facebook was there the following week and said there were two dozen photographers on the beach. I would've left. I remember my first visit in the 90's I had the whole area to myself for hours. Oh, the good old days. The one thing I had forgotten was how small the beach actually is, most folks photograph it with wide angle lenses giving the illusion of a much larger area. I just can't imagine two dozen photographers in that small space.

Acadia By Night...

Here's one of many photos I took while in Acadia. I had gone to Jordan Pond and The Bubbles to do some night photography and was on my way back to the motel. The Milky Way wasn't visible over The Bubbles, like I had hoped but when I drove through this open area it was in view in all it's splendor. I recently purchased my first full frame sensored camera so I was finally able to take full advantage of my 16-35mm wide angle zoom at its widest. On my crop sensor camera I was only getting the equivalent of 28mm at the widest, (the camera geeks will know what I'm talking about). Now I can get so much more of the sky than before, I'm loving it.

Fellow Photographers...

This past week I spent three days in Acadia National Park, I had been there before but it had been nearly 20 years. the purpose of the visit was to get new images for my upcoming calendar. The park offers a wide variey of photo subjects, from forests to mountain views to sea side cliffs and everything in between. On Tuesday I went to Otter Point to photograph the sunset and the crashing waves, hurricane Joaquin was far out to sea but was causing some very high surf. I took a lot of images of the waves crashing against the rocks, some of which I'll post at a later date. At one point I turned around and saw some fellow photographers taking pictures of the sunset from a different vantage point. I thought the three folks and the unique cloud above would make for a nice compostion and this the photo I came away with.