MaineSight

Recently, my wife and I spent a day (sans children) hiking on Isle Au Haut, a 10 km ferry ride from Stonington, ME. Isle Au Haut has about 45 year-round residents, and much of the island is part of Acadia National Park. Due to it’s remoteness, it’s the least visited part of Acadia (actually, I don’t have any data on that, but I’d bet you a nickel it’s true). There are only two rangers on the island and part of their job (aside from being incredibly friendly and knowledgeable) is to make sure everyone that entered the park in the morning leaves at the end of the day on the last ferry.

This will be the first of several posts on the trip, and I’ll include a photo or two with each post.

Today’s photos, the ferns (A) and the beach rocks (B), are taken at Duck Harbor (southwestern part of the island), and Squeaker Cove, respectively.

Duck harbor was where I first noticed that Isle Au Haut has some of the largest uninterupted fields (except for large boulders and occasional trees) that I have ever seen. These fields are so densely packed with ferns (I believe in this case, hay-scented ferns) that they seem to have crowded out many other species of plants. The visual effect is amazing, and the soft overcast light made photographing the fields quite pleasingly simple.

After a short hike up and over Duck Harbor Mountain, we arrived at Squeaker Cove. Beautiful smooth granite stones line the beach, which inevitably prompts people to create little cairn scultpures, many of which you can see here.

Incidently, when we arrived at the next beach at Deep Cove, which is populated by similarly smooth granite stones, my wife stepped in such a way that two of the polished stones slid against each other and produced a noise we both spontaneously described as a squeak, hence our theory that this is behind the naming of Squeaker Cove.

I have no idea if this theory has any truth to it, but it’s a good sounding theory. So there.

I hope you enjoy the images. More about hiking on the island in the next post.

On a Thanksgiving Day family hike in Brooksville I came upon this bend in the trail and realized while photographing that even at 24mm, I am not not going to get a sharp focus across the image (at least not without a tilt shift lens), so I set up my tripod and cable release and made two exposures; one with focus in the foreground, and the other with focus farther back in the frame.

Once home, I opened the two raw images using PhotoAcute and combined them using the focus stacking feature. This is the first time I’ve used this feature, and it worked remarkably well.

I’m always struck by the wonderous green when trees first leaf-out in the spring, but this picture also carries a feeling of deep or original intimacy as the three leaves gently rest against each other as they all grow together from the same branch.

This picture was taken this morning at Popham Beach, Maine — one of the few sandy beaches in Maine. This picture was NOT photoshop-ed. Just a simple levels adjustment.

Maine Huts & Trails and MaineSight

are now accepting registration for a

Photography Workshop at Poplar Stream Falls Hut and Flagstaff Lake Hut

August 7-9, 2009

See http://www.paulandrewphoto.com/ for more details.

The first crocus of spring! It’s been a long winter and it’s nice to feel like the warmer weather is really on the way. It’s truly amazing that a little bulb can produce such a beautiful flower—and for that matter—that the universe exists at all. Reminds me of a quotation by Abraham J. Heschel:

“Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy”.

Taking my dog for a walk, I came across these cedar posts in my neighbor’s field. I liked the patterns of the posts in the snow and the shadow detail around each post in the image below. Another 30-40 cm of snow on the way tonight…

Just when I fell into the trap of thinking winter might be fading, we get another 50 cm of snow—this time heavy, wet snow that snapped tree limbs and knocked out power. Here are some of our neighborhood children on top of a 2 meter high snow pile that has accumulated this winter.

Garry Winnogrand said that “photographs do not tell stories; they tell you what something looks like to a camera”. While I think that many times he is correct on this statement (at least in its most literal interpretation) I think the following picture DOES tell a story:

End or Beginning?, Brunswick, ME

The question is: what is the story?