It sounds silly, but I wished we would have had a couple more stormy days during our time in Maine. We had only one day that made watching the surf real fun. A great place to photograph into the surf is the Southeast shore of Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park. It is supposed to be the best part of the park to photograph classic rocky coastal scenes and dramatic seascapes. I just like to confirm the above statement I read in the book "The Photographer's Guide to the Maine Coast" by David Middleton and Bruce H. Morrison. This is by the way a very useful book if you go to Maine and try to find the best locations for photography.
Speaking of Acadia National Park, while we have been there it was officially closed because of the governmental shutdown. As you can imagine, this was not very popular among the people that have been up there at this time. Even the most conservative redneck that I met didn't like what the congressmen and women of his party tried to accomplish...
Acadia National Park has access from many different directions, unlike Yellowstone or Grand Tetons National Park. People took advantage of it, parked their cars outside of the park, and walked into the park wherever they wanted to. The park rangers (I saw only three of them within five days) tolerated the fact and obviously only persecuted those who ignored the road blocks with their cars.
OK, let's talk about photography. I have never photographed the surf along a shore intensively and so I tried a lot of different things, made many clicks, and finally deleted quite a few images after reviewing them in the safe harbor of our home... It was actually a very gray day and the whole time, while the waves were rolling in, I was thinking about black and white as the format for the final image. But there were these brief moments when the sun would throw a little more light through the clouds and suddenly a color image wasn't a bad idea anymore...
I hope you enjoy.