Exploring Maine

Hello!

I recently traveled to Maine to visit my friend and her family.  That means I was able to visit Acadia National Park with my camera in hand.  I am hoping to visit many more national parks as a photographer in the future.  I visited plenty of them when I was a child (thanks Mom and Dad!), and I recently went to the Smoky Mountains (see my photos from that trip here: Smoky Mountains).  I have no deadline for this hope, just something that I would like to do as a photographer--a skill certainly did not have at the age of 9.

Whenever I travel anywhere (even a local park for a simple walk), I always want to be there for the sunrise.  Sunrise and Sunset are the best times of the day to take pictures, and it is so worth it for me to get up at insane times in the morning.  I arrived at the park around 4am.  The sun was scheduled to rise at 5am, and the hour of light before that time is photo-gold.

Now everyone will tell you that Cadillac Mountain is the best place to watch the sunrise.  That's probably true.  BUT, I did not want to be around other people because of obvious health reasons and I didn't want to share my photographic space with 200 hundred other people.  After some research (aka Google searching), I decided to head to Boulder Beach for my sunrise photos.  I was mostly alone.  Only 4-5 other people even came to the "beach" for the sunrise, and we all pretty much kept our distance from each other.

A big reason I chose Boulder Beach was to practice long exposure technique.  I always enjoy trying this technique, and I love the look of "soft water" in photos.

(want to see more soft water attempts?  Check out my Smoky Mountains post!)

The boulders of Boulder Beach were described online as the size of bowling balls.  That is true for about half of the boulders.  The other half, however, are the size of bean bags (the kind you sit on, NOT the kind you throw).  That made maneuvering over these things a lot harder than I anticipated.  Not only were they rather large, they were wet and very slippery.  I ended up simply crawling over them on all fours.  It didn't seem smart to try and walk, end up slipping, and breaking something.

The cliffs next to Boulder Beach, which I did end up climbing.

Distant view of Boulder Beach.  After the sun had properly risen, I walked for a bit on Ocean Path, which has plenty of options to walk out on the Otter Cliffs (south of Boulder Beach).  You can see that the "beach" is not large.  I also like this pic because, after zooming in, I saw that one of the other photographers on the "beach" was taking a picture of me as I was taking a picture of the "beach."  At least I think he was.  I was pretty visible in my purple hoodie on the edge of a cliff.  I do hope that he got a good photo 😊

After Boulder Beach for the sunrise, I ventured over to Jordan Pond. and walked the Jordan Pond Path.  The first part follows these planks that are narrow and uneven.  I almost sprained my ankle plenty of times because I was looking around almost walked off the planks!

From almost every vantage point on this path, there are beautiful views of the "Bubbles."  These are two mountains next to each other at the north end of Jordan Pond.  I assume they got their name because they really do look like two bubbles!

Probably my favorite shot of the Bubbles.  It was fun to get them centered in between the other mountains on either side of them with the rocks in the foreground.  Centered compositions just make me happy 😀

This photo I am really excited about!  It was with this photo that I attempted (and mildly succeeded) a new technique called focus stacking.  I took three photos of the same scene, each with a different part in focus (mountains, rock in the middle, rocks in the foreground).  Then I directed photoshop to blend the three together, using the in-focus parts of each photo to create one image.  I was a giddy child when it came out😁  I will definitely be trying this technique again in the future!

Once I finished the Jordan Pond Path, the park was starting to fill with people.  Because of that, I decided to say farewell to Acadia.  But I did do local exploring with John and Cynthia later in the day.  We hiked Bald Mountain, just a few minutes from the house.

Once we got to the top, I had some fun with my camera 😄

John would make a good model!

I lent Cynthia my old (my very first) DSLR camera and started to teach her the basics of exposure on manual mode.  She was having fun with her camera, too!

Reflection in the sunglasses is always a fun shot for me. ❤

💜Till we meet again, Maine💜