Blogodocious ramblings of a landscape photographer living in Maine.
A barometer of your artistic progress?
This is what I propose:
(1.) hang your best work on "the wall" for a year.
(2.) Look at it for a whole freaking year.
(3.) A year later... (don't worry, it'll just take a few hundred beers and a couple arguments and about 1000 to 2000 hours of doing work that you don't want to).... look at that crap on your walls again and consider if you like it as much as when you did when you first put it up there:
(4.) if the answer is: NO!: then great success! You win! You've changed! You've (read: I have) continued along your path of discovery and evolution.
(5.) if the answer is YES: then... either make more work, make different work, make better work, pull your head out of whatever grandiose holy orifice you believe it is stuck in, get a second opinion, just take it down and look at the painted walls that it was hideously blocking for some appreciating of what a "real art" is, read something, eat better foods?, drink more beer, or anything else- just don't keep fooling yourself that that is where the ultimate manifestation of your craft lies- because we can do better!
(6.) have a nice day.
Shooting the icons- a response to Tony Sweet's blog "it's crazy out there"
Hi there fellas, so I read this post this morning from Tony Sweet: http://tonysweet.com/2012/10/13/its-crazy-out-there/ that's had me thinking on it all day where he is bemoaning shooting popular locations that are the photographic icons of an area and sharing, shoulder to shoulder, the scene with other photographers. Tony just came to Acadia to lead a workshop so I was trying to follow what he was doing and see what he was making. I like Tony Sweet enough, met him up here last year when he was leading an autumn workshop and got my picture taken with him:
"me and Tony Sweet" one of the worst pictures of me ever taken I would hope- made by his assistant, (obviously a landscape shooter because the camera settings were 1/15 sec at f/6.3 iso 100. Look how bad I appear: my eyes are closed, my clothes-pinned work-pants fly is open!, my knees are dirty from kneeling and shooting and it's just a big disaster, but thanks Tony!
I like other photographers that wear bandanas when they shoot :-)
Anyways, so in this morning's post that he wrote he claimed that he would never again shoot the Otter Cliffs shot from the boulder beach that everybody who comes to Acadia makes to photograph makes. He was saying that you gotta get there early to claim your place because he's not budging and going along the lines of feeling frustrated that the place is overshot, having to stand shoulder to shoulder with other photographers making seemingly the same image, and I've felt that way too for a few years now myself. Now I'm thinking that I should reread his post so I don't inaccurately quote him and or unnecessarily slander his wisdom- imagining I just did that, let's move on. There's one particularly popular shot here on the island and in Acadia National Park that I really don't like to make much because in my mind it is The most overshot photography tourist place on the map around here and that's the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. The thing with the BHLighthouse is that there's pretty much one composition that people make and it's from the northeast side looking south toward the lighthouse which is in the right of the frame and the ocean and foreground rocks to the left.
Bass Harbor Lighthouse Google image search
I'm actually just sick of this one- one thing is that the lighthouse always leans back from wide angle lens distortion and the only thing I'm interested in seeing when I see a new take from this place is how the photographer deals with that issue and what if any weather is going on in the scene to make it interesting. Now I've shot the BHL for 11 years, and I really don't have much of a favorite image from it, but I do have a pretty good timelapse sequence.
I've shot the Bass Harbor Lighthouse at dawn, at dusk, at night, from 4 points of the compass, in video, in timelapse, long exposure, black and white, and I'll find other ways to do it too. The great thing is that it's about a 6 minute drive from me so I can go there when the weather is good, and it's a kick ass location for photography- hence it's popularity, and when people come to town to shoot they definitely should shoot it.
Back to Otter Cliffs from boulder beach and Tony Sweet- I hear ya man! And the thing is- if you weren't leading a workshop in the most popular month of the year for photographers on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park, then you would find the peaceful sanctuary of solace that landscape photography can offer- because from now on I could shoot Otter Cliffs from boulder beach naked with bunny ears on with no fear of embarrassment, because I will be the only one there that morning- I swear. It's pretty cool to see how popular photography is and how some places just draw so many photographers, but even in that case when I'm standing shoulder to shoulder with other shooters making what seems to be the same picture: I'm no longer afraid that we are making the same image because when you get right down to it, we all see the scene differently. Because we're all humans and flawed in our own ways. And the reason that I read Tony's post in the first place was because I recognized the rocks in the foreground and knew he was in town last week so I wanted to see how he played the scene. And he realized his final image with fly-paper textures and a bunch of Nik color efex filters that none of the rest of us would have used so in the end it was a completely original and interesting take on the second most shot place in the park- so kudos, high-fives, and hat's off to you sir for that! Coincidentally and as it is, I happened to shoot the same scene last week as well, which would be the only time this year that I did so because I tend to try to take the road less traveled in regards to composition and will usually shoot in the other direction like. But how can I spurn and overlook one of the best shots in Acadia- so I try to shoot there at least occasionally, even if it's shot by everybody who comes here.
"Otter Cliffs 10/10/12"
interlude: I just got back from going to make pictures, I had some good energy and the skies were pretty interesting and dynamic so I went to go photo some blueberry foliage and lichens that I saw the other day after leaving Ship Harbor and practicing seascapes- heard the sounds of the surf though and was drawn to the shore and made some long exposure seascapes first- and here's my point:
Should I not make long exposure seascapes because they've been done before, and done awesomely- should we not shoot sunrises and sunsets because they are and always will be in a state of overkill- and on and on, should we neglect making any picture because some similar photo has been done already? No way! That's what we do- we love the search for an image, love the sound of the slap of the mirror (or the sound of the sensor turning on if you are shooting mirror up), we love the pursuit of the perfect image- if we don't try we'll never find it, and it's our duty- I mean if I were ever fortunate enough to visit Yosemite would I pass up the opportunity to shoot "Tunnel View" or Half-Dome just because it's been done to the extreme? Not!
Tony might have been having a bad day when he wrote his post, and I don't blame him for it because like I said earlier I'd rather go down the road less traveled as well, and I would hope that Tony Sweet shoots this vantage point again because he does it well and he's able to put his particular spin and personality into the final realization. But it's definitely something to keep in mind- how would you put you personality into the icons of photography? And just because it's been shot before, which everything has!- should we pass it up? No way! Go get em kiddos!
That's enough of me. Go make some pictures, and have a nice day -Nate from Maine, Usa.
"Otter Cliffs and Sea Streams" This is the photo that I made that morning that I like the most- 10 minutes after the one at boulder beach and a wicked scramble down the sheer cliffside. -Bet Tony hasn't shot from here! Whatever-
Hangin' with Moe Chen on Cadillac Mountain and more autumn in Acadia imagery.
"Jordan Stream Acadia Autumn Color" this is a 3 shot shift-pan done with my 24 f/3.5 Ts-e for a wider perspective.
Right then, where were we? Crazy how sometimes the time just flies! -Anyways a week ago today my pal Moe Chen drove up from Portland to do some shooting in Acadia and I hooked up with him around 10 am cause I wanted to be lazy and slow that morning- he got a proper start at 04:00 and arrived on the island that was just about to get to peak foliage color and a forecast of overcast with a good chance of light rain. Moe wanted to shoot some running brooks and I was trying to explain to him how absolutely ripping the streams were 4 days earlier but it hadn't rained since then so things had calmed down quite a bit. So here was my approach that day- I never shoot with other people if I'm trying to make "serious work"- maybe it's because I generally don't hang out with other photographers, but it's probably more that I'm just trying to concentrate and focus and find the compositions etc= yeah right, I just like to hang out by myself in the woods! But I've known Moe Chen on the worlds webwild internets for a couple few years now, found him on Flickr back in the day, and always really love his work and wanted to kind of just talk shop about being a Maine landscape shooter and stuff. Here's some quick background about Moe- first thing is he's a Nikon shooter, which is cool but they mount their lenses backwards and the focus ring goes in the opposite direction, and there are no red rings so I'm always kind of unsure if it's a wicked sweet lens or not- but these are just personal hang-ups of mine that I need to come to grips with and I shouldn't blame Moe for that :-) Moe shoots D800, which is awesome cause I've seen the proof of the detail that is possible with those cams and he packs the Nikon holy trinity of glass to use on it (14-24, 24-70, 70-200) and I've since then done some more research on that 14-24 and am now convinced that it is the ultimate wide angle landscape lens (except for the filter mounting options which apparently poses some challenges but isn't impossible). So some day I'm gonna have to add one of those and an adaptor to my Canon 5D2. More about Moe: he's my age, he's got some tats which is all urban and cool, his profile pic is a sweet looking dog, he's got enough kids to stock a small classroom, he's got The Best Old Orchard Beach pier shot that I've seen, and he's generally just a nice guy. http://moechenphotography.com/ and here's the OOB Pier shot-
http://moechenphotography.com/p190186803/e9b4cae6
We hit it around 10:00 at Jordan Pond and walked down the Jordan Stream looking for stuff to shoot. The first thing I did on this shoot was manage to submerge my Canon TC-80N3 in the brook before I had even fired off one shot. It was unresponsive and I felt like a schmuck and was all bummed out and depressed for a few minutes thinking that I had wrecked it for good, took the battery out and after an overnight dry in front of the heater it's back to normal but that was a fright- So you see, that's what I'm talking about, I have a comprehensive checklist of considerations that go into making a photograph and distractedly babbling away about aftermarket off camera evf's or something or other I almost wrecked some gear! Back to the stream- I had gotten some pretty good shots of the waterfalls and some autumn leaves stuff a few days earlier http://nateparkerphotography.com/blog/2012/10/acadia-waterfall-walk so I had the sort of sense of satisfaction of feeling like I "had something in the can" for a while- so it was all targets of opportunity that I was looking for or maybe some more detail scenes. I was letting Moe make all the decisions for a shooting itinerary and was just like tagging along- but in Acadia you just can't go wrong, there's always a beautiful composition somewhere. So we started by just making some simple autumn brook imagery and the stream was actually running pretty nicely, there wasn't an abundance of hardwood tree color but there were touches of fall all around. 
"Jordan Stream Acadia Fall Leaves"
"Maple Leaf on Jordan Stream" I like this one really pretty good- 100mm 0.6 seconds f/14 ISO 50
About 3/4's of a mile or so along the stream there is a beautiful carriage trail bridge made of cobblestones that crosses the brook and we geeked out there for a half hour or so as there were a bunch of nice comps to be had there. Details and textures galore. At this point Moe made me feel a little better and a little more human after he dropped his cable release in the brook and it almost floated away before he grabbed it- so now the two of us had equipment issues from dumb fumbling. Crazy! 
"Cobblestone Bridge Jordan Stream Acadia"
From here we headed back to the vehicles to move on, and check some other locations on the way to Cadillac Mountain where Moe suggested we go look for some blueberry foliage color which can be wicked nice this time of year- and that was a good idea I thought because I haven't been up there since back in June- I often skip the Cadillac summit in favor of other less crowded spots in the park, for instance when we got there around 1:30 pm the place was packed! There were probably nearly a hundred+ cars up there in the 2 different parking lots, buses were backing and parking and beeping, literally streams of people were framing scenes through lcd's and stumbling around (not trying to be cocky- everybody stumbles around when you are walking on uneven granite)- so we headed down the south ridge aways to find some scenes.
Moe was cursing the place at the time about how compositionally challenging it was up there. And I definitely agree. We both took two different approaches where I went handheld on the 24 and tried to shoot a lot where Moe was being more deliberate and shooting off sticks- and at the time I was guessing that he was going to get all the shots and I was filling up my card with "snapshots". But I thought it was great compositional practice, like I said earlier- I had made a couple pictures that week that I was pretty happy with so anything else at this point would just be a bonus. This is what we saw and had to work with- there was a fairly flat and featureless sky for the most part, there were rows and clumps of blueberry foliage interspersed with granite and lichen and scrubby spruce trees and occasional spots of mini flaming maples. Essentially the wide angle scene was chaos, like nature usually is, so compositionally we were looking for patterns and motifs, so the images that I ended up liking were ones looking down. And now after reviewing what I got that afternoon I kind of feel like going back and shooting off a tripod and redoing the ones that had focus fall off or other handheld problems. Also at the time because I was hanging with an D800 shooter I think I might have been suffering from an irrational camera envy and limited my iso's to 320-400, which is silly because I could have very easily have doubled my depth of field without problems- just another symptom of losing my focus.
"Blueberry Foliage, Granite, Spruce on Cadillac Mountain."
"Blueberry Foliage and Granite Detail"
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Colors Blueberry Path"
"Cadillac Mountain autumn colors IV"
That's it for now- time to get back out and find some more leaves before they get blown to smithereens next week- have a good one and thanks for stopping by, -Nate!
Moe Chen setting up a shot on Cadillac Mountain.
Acadia Waterfall Walk-
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract VII"
When it rains, it pours, -if you're lucky and if you're making pictures of waterfalls! So on Sunday after a couple days of hard rain I headed out to a stretch of the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park that is on the west slope of Cadillac Mountain and what would have been mostly dry granite slides two months ago, was a raging torrent that was thundering with its rushing water power- it was Awesome! Here's the spot on the Google Maps- and then a bunch of pictures from my waterfall walk.
I had been downstream shooting these waterfalls in the past but this time I headed up the slope and bushwhacked along the rapids. I started shooting at about 3:00 pm and hiked up only about a quarter to a half of a mile in the next two and a half hours before the rain started up again with full force and my battery was just about dead, but the last spot that I found was a confluence of what seemed to be at least four -10 foot tall waterfalls that came together into a large glen that I felt like I would have wanted to shoot for another couple of hours just right there! That's the thing- there's so much to see and so many compositions to make that it takes forever to travel 50 feet- oh there's a picture- there's a picture, that would make a great long exposure- and you spend 10 minutes making two more images, etc etc. And one thing that you can't get from looking at these is the noise- the sounds of the waterfalls and the woods along here was amazing. There were places that the height and the shape of the falls would create such a huge thundering sound and the ground would even be shaking- this was one of the few times recently that I got kind of spooked while shooting because I would be all lost in my camera and I would realize that I couldn't hear anything at all around me or behind me except for the sound of the waterfalls so I would turn slowly to see if there would be anyone there-
The foliage is just really starting to pop around here and I've made some pretty nice autumn leaves and waterfalls images before in Acadia but this particular trip up the falls didn't really yield all too much foliage and falls combinations, I was pretty much keyed in on the water and the textures and patterns that the rush was creating- but I'll try again over the next few weeks to get some foliage and falls pictures, shouldn't be impossible-
Here's some pictures:
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract"
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract IV"
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract II" I like this one because it kind of feels like you are looking up at a tree against the sky- instead of down at a bush against the brook.
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract III"
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract V"
"Cadillac Mountain Autumn Brook Extract VI (color)"
And there ya have it! Looking forward to doing this again. Have a good one friends, and get some nice fall pictures before the snow flies!
-Nate.
Shooting in Acadia and Finally Finding a Way Down to that Spot
Hey there fellows and fellarinos, hope you're well, right then, so, I've been shooting photos in Acadia for 12 years now and sometimes I like to think that I know it like the back of my hand, along the coast at least, but I'm still able to find new places that I've never explored yet. This latest spot that I found is one that is particularly steep and rugged and I've been looking down from the road to it it for the last few months thinking that there must be a whole bunch of interesting features to photograph up close down there, but it's all cliff, cliff and more cliff and I'm not a rock climber and instead of considering breaking my legs and ankles trying to figure out a way down there, I would just drive on to the next accessible part of shore around the bend- but enough is enough with that game and last week on Thursday morning I had some extra time to go shooting early in the morning and my location (a.) didn't work out so as I was going to location (b.) I passed this spot again and finally found the way down. Here's what it looks like from the vantage point that got me interested in it- 
Acadia- bold coast and sheer cliffs.
The easiest way down was the way that the water goes- I just found a rain runoff spot and after some ducking under boughs and squeezing through some shrubberies: there was the path that all the other photographers use. Once you're down past the steep dangerous stuff and closer to the water's edge you can see where it is that you want to be going and how to get there- the terrain and geography here was completely interesting with deep cuts in the granite cliffs where the ocean would rush back thirty or forty feet to slam against the wall, and tunnels and splits and buttresses and all kinds of photo worthy stuff. And there was always a way around the bend to get across to the other side of the crazy cuts and ravines even if it wasn't obvious at first. You just had to commit to go around the bend to find them. After a while of snaking back and forth around these features I made sure to check to see that I wouldn't be cut off by the incoming tide, but my egress from there was all up so I was good to go. Right then- on with the photography!
"Acadian Coast Sunrise Breaking Storm" 9-27-12
So, this was my "process"-like. Once I got to a position that seemed the most balanced in foreground and middle distance and background- I first was responding to the sunrise and the cloud textures to the east. This whole side of the island faces east so when I shoot in the morning I'll start over here and then move across the island following the shadows throughout the morning. The scene was nice and dynamic and there was great contrasting textures in the sky and the waves in the cove in the foreground, but this image I had made time and time again before this now in other places. So this first scene was the "typical" picture. It's nice in color too- just even more "typical" to me, and the thing is- I recognize beauty all around me all the time, but the images that I want to make with my camera now are not the ones that I've made before. So, I started shooting here at @06:15 am and by the time I had realized the image that I wanted to take from here that would be new to me and exciting and challenging it was 07:14:31 am (by the exif data). And I call that pretty lucky at this time right now. It only took me an hour to find the composition that I wanted to capture. Worse would have been not finding the shot at all. here's the take that I like the most of the morning- 
"Around the Bend" Acadia, 9-27-12
Like I said- I shot the typical head-on sunrise scene, then I shot into the face of the cliffs and made some long and tall panoramas with the 24 tilt-shift and finally it was what I was facing the whole time- the giant buttress that was the other side of the mini cove that I was standing across and the character it had that became the mysterious feeling and foreboding shot that I was looking for. I shot it and stitched it from three vertical shifted images because it was a little too close to get everything in the frame on my 24mm horizontically and I didn't want to go to the 17-40 f/4.0 because I have been feeling that it's way too soft compared to this lens lately. :-(
The angle of the light was about 85 degrees perpendicular to the subject so although I was initially concerned of lens flare my filter adaptor ring that has been jammed in place since the late winter of 2011 blocked any errant rays from the front element nicely and the movement and contrast of the clouds going by made me want to shoot the scene slow with the ten stop filter. My settings were f/11 at 180 seconds at Iso 100 with the B+W 110 on my 24 3.5 ts-e which was slightly tilted. The light was diffused sunlight that was blocked by intermittent horizon clouds at about 15 degrees above the horizon (around an hour after sunrise).
Iphone- here's where the sun was...
So, I like this image ("Around the Bend")- because it feels like it has some kind of character. Almost like there's some anthropomorphic quality about this ledge- it's barnacles are like gray hairs, it's crevasses like weathered skin, and it does it's job every day. Versus the happy go lucky east facing scene with the rising sun beams all cheery and "life is so perfect for you", and "isn't that nice!", and all. Once again- it's just that I've made that picture already- that's what I'm talking about here, that's the crux of what I'm going for- I don't want to make tomorrow the picture that I made yesterday, like. So the images that I am getting ready to make tomorrow then are worrying me just a little bit! Because the morning weather is calling for my favorite: Fog! and I've been considering how to approach finding the scenes of tomorrow morning all day long today and can only really see the images that I've made already! But maybe I'll get lucky. :-)
So wish me luck and good luck to you too! And here's a hearty high-five to you fellow life-doer! I hope we do a good job tomorrow!
Have a nice day, -Nate from Maine, Usa.
One more from that morning- 
"Seaside Shapes"- 3 seconds at f/3.5 diagonally tilted.