Back to the only stormy day

 

I like to come back to the only stormy day we had up in Maine at Acadia National Park. The rocky coast between Otter Cliff and Thunder Hole is a great place to watch the surf on a day like this. I used my polarizer in front of the lens and closed down the aperture to f/16 in order to extend the exposure time to 1/3 s. I know, you can make the water even more silky by using a neutral density filter but I just liked to keep some of the dynamic in the movement of the waves. I do have several ND filters in my bag but I was happy with the results and in particular with this image. It was actually the last shot I made after almost two hours of having a blast on these cliffs. It was gray most of the time but the light just picked up some quality for a few minutes at the end of the day. I hope you enjoy.

Talking about Acadia National Park and more stormy days...

 

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.

The other way to use a tide pool

 

I showed you an image of Pemaquid Lighthouse before (click HERE for the older post). This one was made the evening before the first one. This beautiful lighthouse is one of the most iconic places at the coast of Maine, great for photography at sunrise and sunset. Having enough time on hand I experimented a lot with perspectives, exposures, and depth of field. If you follow my blog regularly you may have read yesterday about the interesting role the tide pools can play at low tide for your photography. Finding a tide pool that reflects the subject, which is without any doubt the lighthouse in this image, can make for a much more interesting photo than the one that another photographer makes just three feet away from you. Well, I can promise you this will not be the last picture of Pemaquid Lighthouse I may publish here in the blog. It is way too pretty... ;-)

Light in the tide pools

 

We were extremely blessed with the weather during our trip to Maine. It was very mild the whole time and most days there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. As you know, we photographers don't really like this, because a plain blue sky during the day provides less chances to make dramatic images that tell a story. But it wasn't a hopeless case. There are ways to find light if we keep our eyes open.

The constellation of the moon made sure that we had low tide in the morning. This can make sometimes for a not so pleasant foreground but it also allows to go closer to the water and leaves tide pools between and on the rocks along the shore. And this is where you can make the click. If no wind ripples the water you can enter a world of colors and interesting subjects below the water surface. Beside all kinds of shells, colorful stones, seaweed, and the occasional crab can be found. If you can keep reflections out of the frame you have your image that tells the story about the life and beauty in these tide pools.