In this Live Event, I will take you on a trip through Acadia National Park. I have never had a photography experience quite as difficult as this one in a National Park. There were so many things stacked against me on this trip from canceled flights, to white-out fog conditions, to less than ideal sunset conditions.
My disposition on this trip was all over the place. Because of that, my inspiration and artistic vision were a little lacking. It was a struggle to pull myself through much of what I was faced with.
So, did I make it out with anything noteworthy? You will have to watch to see. Either way, I came out with some incredible teaching moments and I am going to share those with you during this event.
I was In Acadia around same time 🙂 Still going through the recording.
Nice! Pretty busy, huh?
We went to Acadia in June 2 years ago. Much less crowded in June, a little chilly, but the weather was great most days. We had a wonderful time.
That’s good to know!
Good morning Blake,
Welcome to Maine!
Before COVID I’d drive to the park 5 or 6 times a year. I live roughly 4.5 hours away outside Boston.
Fog and rain on coastal Maine; nope, we never see it! Seriously, I’ve seen many foggy and rainy days and nights trying to photograph the park. My last trip up in mid-July Elsa decided to visit. I came away with a few good sunrise photos, foggy photos in Bar Harbor before sunrise and a few so-so images. I just go with the flow and think creatively.
Another tip, check the cruise ship schedules. I’ve seen 3 cruise ships riding anchor on different days. Bar Harbor gets a bit crowded. Offseason, most eats close down and the park’s pretty barren.
Jealous, no crowds at Bass Harbor Light; you’re kidding………….. Watch the night fog photos here because the red beacon lights everything up with with a reddish hue.
Rich
Awesome to be that close! There were very few people at the lighthouse, well at least what I would consider very few. Only me and one other serious photographer for the sunset and the noon shot, not photographers, just tourists.
I had my wife drive the Jeep into the parking area, so she waited in line while I ran down to the lighthouse. Really shaved off time.
Blake, I hope you didn’t just jinx my trip to Acadia in October with OC! Have you done any videos on trip planning/scouting?
RMNP will be great in Sept. Be prepared for potential fog. My first trip there was in during a Sept and my scenes looked like your Acadia after having seen all the epic shots online. Be sure to stop by Smokin’ Daves BBQ in Estes.
haha! You’ll be fine! I am not sure if I have done a planning a photo trip video. Something tells me one of my live events may have covered this in the past. Hmm, let me look into that. I may need to make a short course on that for f.64 Elite either way.
Thanks for doing this video, Blake. I got a lot of tips out of it even though you didn’t get portfolio quality photos. Checking the tide levels was not something I had thought about. Travel expenses was good to know. You gave me an itinerary to follow and where to shoot sunrise vs. sunset. And you proved that bad photography conditions don’t happen only to me.
Maybe not portfolio-worthy on the scale of epic, but I do think there are some real keepers in there. Actually, some of those fog images are very balanced and would probably sell well, more so than those epic sunsets. I guess it all depends on the crowd, right?
Glad you got some pointers out of it. The tide is very important here and most books I read didn’t really talk about the tide as a factor. I have no clue why, but IMO this is a high tide park for all of MDI and Schoodic Point on the other side of the park.
Thanks Blake….I was in North Carolina the same time you were in Acadia. My favorite thing is hiking with my camera to take both landscape and nature shots – we did one 5-mile hike where a mile in, the sole black cloud in the sky opened up right above us. It poured on us for 3 of the 5 miles, and I was GRUMPY. I didn’t care about getting wet myself, but was trying to keep my camera dry and was annoyed that I was carrying essentially useless weight. My husband had to remind me that it was still fun, we still got to see beautiful things (even if I couldn’t photograph them) and we were still on vacation together. Sometimes undesirable weather does give us perspective on what is most important! As always, appreciate your honesty and information.
Sometimes you just have to stop and reflect on what is right in front of you. It’s a hard lesson to learn, right? Lol
Thanks for sharing your experience Blake. Nice to know I’m not the only one who plans, hires cars and drives to locations only to have the weather mess all that planning up! 🙂
haha, right? It is what it is sometimes 🙂
Thanks for sharing Blake. Being in Australia, Acadia is probably not somewhere that I would be going, but still many useful tips that work here.
One tip that I learned with living on an island continent with lots of rocky seascape locations: When walking on wet rocks there is always a risk of slipping (as you noted). Wear a pair of rock boots – typically neoprene outers to keep your feet dry but, most importantly, the base is covered in spikes. Here many rock fishers wear them so they don’t slip. They are not much good for hiking any distance, but well worth changing into if you’re going onto the rocks.
Also here, many of our rocks are very dangerous if you get swept off. In many places, rock fishers must wear a personal flotation device due to the number of deaths as a result of them being swept into the ocean. They are not expensive and just like wearing a fanny pack that might save one’s life.
Hey Blake, I do not know if you will see this but I just got to watch this in mid Oct. We took a family vac from Va and drove to Maine and Vermont at the end of August early Sept. We Stayed in Bangor and drove To Bar Harbor each day for 3 days. The cost of hotels in Bangor were a lot lower maybe half that cost. It did take about an hour 20 minutes to 1 1/ 2 hours to get there each day. But saved a lot on the hotel and we stayed in Bar Harbor till maybe 10 or 11 each night. Did not get any sunrise shots since we had family but sunsets were great. Will have to send you a bass harbor sunset to critique in the future. I got to Bass head later (like 1 hour later) than I wanted because someone slid their large rv across that one last road going right to the light house blocking both lanes. We had to park a mile or so away and walk in. My wife even mentioned leaving and coming the next night but I decided to go ahead and try that night. Lucky the next night was all fog just like you had. When we got there, maybe 75 -100 people were there with a large number on the rocks. I was able to get on the rocks , luckily with a high tide that you mentioned. Never even thought about that! I did have 7-8 people in front of me to clone,heal.etc out of the photo. We had a spectacular sunset.Had no place for a tripod with so many people. Thanks for the tips, wish I had seen this before I got there. I saw it had just come out as we were leaving. We had great weather most of the time. Although I just missed getting Egg head lighthouse photo due to fog the next day. You are so right, having the right frame of mind is important. Thanks again for all you do.
Awesome! Glad to hear your experience went well. This time of year can be tricky because of the Fall color there. I know the hotels weren’t cheap, but yo also have to factor in your hourly rate 😉 How much is my time worth? That’s kinda what I was thinking although, I do NOT make $600 per hour, haha!
I just watched this video and loved the presentation. Loved it. I am curious about the final location: the pond with the sunset and the hills in the background. You went on a different day and there was to much fog, same with another location, the lighthouse, could you have blended images from those two dates to get a slight amount of fog and still see what you wanted to..by using opacity? Sorry if my question is confusing. I am still learning the software and everything.
Great thinking! I actually would probably use the ZSE7 to make fog with buildups of fogging brushes. I showed a demo of that on the critique this month.
Here’s the link, It was crit #7
https://f64elite.com/november-2021-critique-session-2/