MaineSight

This was taken on a wonderful overcast day in Brooksville, Maine on some land recently donated to the Blue Hill Heritage Trust.

Unfortunately, I mistakingly left my tripod at home, and this image was handheld  ISO 800 for 1/30 second at f/10.

I took a short sunset paddle tonight in Frenchman Bay. I’ve never photographed while paddling, but I decided to try to get over my inhibition about mixing salt water with photography. I’m still nervous while attempting to photograph while paddling—even though it was calm when I went out. I’m constantly paranoid I am going to drop the camera or capsize as compose a photo.

Here are a few photos from a day trip to Little Cranberry Island, Maine. On the south shore of the island, there is an amazing 2 km long beach littered with small smoothed stones polished from many tidal cycles.

The view of the bubbles from the south end of Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park. A great place to end a hike—they have fantastic tea and popovers, and kids can run around on the lawn and rumpus. This photo was taken with a Canon G10 on a tripod while I stood in the middle of the pond to get this perspective.

At low tide, there are hundreds of these starfish on the barnacle encrusted rocks in Hancock, Maine. I’ve read (in a book by Thorton W. Burgess) that a single arm of a starfish can re-grow an entire new starfish. How does that happen? Wouldn’t that mean that the starfish’s arm has to first grow a new stomach so that it can gather food for what must be a pretty seriously energy intensive re-building process?

Are the daisies out early this year in Maine? In any case, they are all over in the fields now, and I spent a good 45 minutes looking through the viewfinder till this composition struck me as pleasing.

While waiting to pick up pizza, I took a quick drive along Blue Hill Bay, and made this image of a rowboat tied up in the bay.

A few weeks ago, I visited the two Maine Huts that the August MaineSight workshop will be located at. I had the good fortune to meet John and Cindy Orcutt, who were caretaking at the Flagstaff Lake Hut. John is an Architect (and excellent Photographer!) and Cindy is a Landscape Architect, and together, they designed the Flagstaff lake hut and its grounds. John gave me a personal tour of the good photographic spots in and around Flagstaff Lake. John and Cindy also told be about a funny but true aphorism they called the “three f’s of Photography”.

These are the three things (that begin with the letter ‘f’) that get in the way of outdoor photographers: Food, Family, and Friends. As nature photographers, we want to be outside when there is the best light—sunrise and sunset—and this is usually around the time we want to eat some food: breakfast and dinner. Getting up early, means that if your family is along, taking care of kids also interferes—or at least means that your spouse has to be willing to take over that role. And friends, well, they want to stay up and visit with us, and you’ve got to go to sleep early to get up before sunrise.

Fortunately, sunrise is pretty darn early in Maine at this time of the year, and breakfast doesn’t really interfere. Here’s a photograph I snuck at 6 am this past weekend when my family was up  visiting family and friends in Blue Hill, Maine:

A view of Flagstaff Lake from the Birches Trail peninsula a short walk from the Maine Huts & Trails Flagstaff Lake Hut. This is where days 2 and 3 of the August 7-9 workshop will be held.

Tomorrow is my last class of the semester, and I head off to Poplar Stream Falls Hut and then Flagstaff Lake Hut for Saturday night. I’ll be scouting out good spots for the August Photographic Workshop that Rick Holt and I will be teaching. I hope the steady rain stops and I get some breaks with just overcast. I think I’m bringing an umbrella.

The photo below is totally unrelated to my trip, but I thought I’d post it anyway. It was taken last summer at Popham Beach on a spectacularly foggy morning.

Popham Beach, Maine