Posts in Category: Acadia National Park
10/20/2010: duck brook bridge, Acadia np
The bridges of Acadia National Park were built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to employ master stone masons out of work due to the depression. They are, real works of art…but none are easy to photograph, and Duck Brook Bridge, which spans a deep little ravine, is particularly hard. Finding an effective vantage point is particularly difficult, especially among the trees. This shot catches some of the interesting features of the bridge, and puts it in is natural context…this is a view anyone who visits could see. The leading rail of the fence was an experiment that I think works, and between exposure and Lightroom processing I managed to preserve a relatively natural and balanced look. A slight crop from the bottom was applied to eliminate the more severely out of focus rail, and to improve composition.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/400th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Recovery for the sky in Lightroom. Some Fill Light for the foreground. Blackpoint right for intensity. Added Clarity and a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
And a second view.
10/19/2010: otter cove with Birch
Otter Cove is a deep tidal inlet between on Mount Desert Island in Maine. The Park loop road crosses it on a causeway bridge about 1/3 of the way in, producing what looks like a lake on landside at high tide, and leaving a landlocked mud fat at low tide. Most of our days on our last visit in September were misty, rainy affairs, with distances fading off into fog. I did a lot of experimentation with HDR to see if I could capture the effect of the vivid foreground, the few early bright fall trees, and the persistent fog, but this is a straight on Landscape program shot.
Of course, what I like here is the sharply defined birch and the brush underfoot, the touches of color on the sides of the inlet, the glisten of the light on the mud and water and the more colorful hill in the background shrouded in fog.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/100th @ ISO 80. Landscape program. Processed in Lightroom using Recovery, Fill Light, Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpen. Cropped slightly for composition.
10/14/2010: jordan pond in fog
I have photographed Jordan Pond and the Bubbles in all weathers. It is the one hike (walk?) we never miss on any trip to Acadia National Park, partially because of its proximity to the Jordan Pond House, and a pop-over lunch (and where we generally have at least one daughter working), but mostly because it never fails to delight. This last trip we had a foggy early fall day to work with, and it was still beautiful.
Canon SX20IS all at 28mm equivalent, f4 @ ISO 80, Landscape program, and 1/200th, 1/400th, and 1/320th respectively.
Similar processing in Lightroom including heavy Recovery to restore transparency to the fog, Blackpoint right slightly, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset. The last shot, with the lens of the camera tipped well down, required some distortion correction to bring the water horizon back somewhere near level.
10/7/2010: Great meadow / fall fire
In lean times I would definitely make four posts out of this series. The fact is that my trip to Machias and Bar Harbor, though the weather was not what you think of as photogenic, was very productive. I have a lot of images I want to share.
This is Great Meadow in Acadia National Park (more a marsh than a meadow) as the first of the fall colors are just beginning to show. Young maples and birches, in low wet ground, always take fire first.
Canon SX20IS at various zoom settings for framing. The last image is a three exposure HDR using Photomatix. All processed in Lightroom with Fill Light, Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance and Sharpen.
9/7/2010: Margret Todd at anchor
I have many shots of the Maggy Todd taken over the years I have been visiting Bar Harbor. We even went out on her one year, for a sunset cruise along the bay. Here she is contrasted a bit with her slip mate…the Tiger Shark, a lobsterman loading traps for the day.
Canon SX20IS at about 50mm equivalent @ f4.0 @ 1/400th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Adjusted for Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpened in Lightroom.
From Acadia 2010.
9/6/2010: Bar Harbor from Shore Path
Happy Labor Day!
The Shore Path runs a mile along the outer harbor parallel to the Porcupine Islands in Bar Harbor. It always offers some lovely views in almost any weather, from deep fog to sunny morning. This is the later of course. We were up early to meet daughter #1 when she opened her shop on Maine Street, and took the Shore Path to improve the time we had to wait.
This is just a straight Landscape mode shot from the Canon SX20IS. F4.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 80. I zoomed in to about 120mm equivalent for framing.
Standard treatment in Lightroom. Some Recovery for the sky, Fill Light for the shadows, added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Acadia 2010.
9/5/2010: Jordan Pond and the Bubbles
Happy Sunday!
The three mile loop around Jordan Pond is one of my favorite hikes (walks?) in Acadia National Park, and that is saying quite a bit as there are a lot of hikes in Acadia that I really like. Of course, the fact that we have had a daughter (or two) working at the Jordan Pond House the past 6 summers only adds to the attraction. It does not matter how many times I walk this walk…there is always something new to see, even if it only the angle of the light, or the pattern of the ripples in the sun, or the way fog drapes the cedars on the south shore. Always something new. But then new is a gift we receive from the author all things new, inside, before we can see it outside. Or at least that is the way I see it.
This is another experiment in HDR using two SX20IS exposures 3EV apart and Photomatix to blend them. Final adjustments for Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance and Sharpness in Lightroom, plus some distortion correction for the challenging perspective.
From Acadia 2010.
9/4/2010: Frenchman’s Bay from the Narrows
Here is an interesting comparison of similar HDR shots from 1) the Canon SX20IS/Photomatix combo, and 2) the iPhone 4 with the ProHDR app.
Frenchman’s Bay separates Mount Desert Island from the Scodic Peninsula to the north, and is almost the closest thing we have to a fjord in North America. (Our only actual fjord is just one range of mountains south in Somes Sound, which splits Mound Desert Island.) These shots are taken from The Narrows, where the Route 3 bridge joins Mount Desert Island to the mainland.
With a little work in PhotoGene on the iPhone or Lightroom on the laptop, I could adjust the color balance of the two images to match. It is something I am learning. ProHDR leans towards the warm, and Photomatix leans toward the blues, maybe too far in both cases. The Photomatix shot has already had considerable toning down of the blues.
In comparison, I like the perspective of the iPhone shot better, with its slightly longer lens it brings up the far shores of the bay much more prominently. Having seen this comparison I would now use a longer setting on the zoom of the Canon SX20IS, which was at its widest, 28mm equivalent here.
(By the way, Apple just announced that the next version of iOS for the iPhone, due out next week, will include built in HDR for the Camera, using up to 3 exposures. We shall see how that compares to ProHDRs renderings.)
One thing that this comparison demonstrates pretty dramatically is the quality of the lens and sensor on the iPhone. You expect this kind of quality in today’s P&S offerings…but this is, in my opinion, pretty amazing for a phone!
9/3/2010: Cadillac Mountain
On the way back from dropping daughter #3 off at College, we stopped for the afternoon and night in Bar Harbor…mostly to see daughter #1 and #2. Daughter #1 lives there, and daughter #2 is working there in Acadia National Park for the summer. No visit to Acadia, of course, is complete without a drive to the top of Mt. Cadillac. Even though we only had a few hours there, after a hike around Jordan Pond (also a must as far as I am concerned), we drove to the summit on the way back to Bar Harbor and dinner. It was not a pristine day…there was a good deal of haze over the ocean, but the late afternoon/early evening light was interesting on the stone of the peak.
This is an HDR using two exposures and Photomatix Lite. In realty I am not sure I gained much through the two exposures. I am pretty sure I could have adjusted a single exposure in Lightroom for close to this effect. Still, the tone-mapping for detail in Photomatix certainly brought up all the character in the foreground rocks, and I am certain I could not have pulled up the greens in the trees to this level. The greens have always frustrated me in shots from Cadillac, since exposing for rock and sky always leaves the greens running toward black. Keeping the greens vibrant gives this shot three strong layers instead of two. This is good.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. Two shots separated by 3 EV using the Exposure Compensation dial.
Photomatix as above. Adjusted for Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpness in Lightroom.
From Acadia 2010.
6/23/2010
Seawall Beaver Pond
The active beaver pond behind the Seawall at Acadia National Park is always picturesque. Here the beach roses set off the foreground and enough of the pond peeks over the hedge to make an interesting composition. Since the sky was largely featureless on this overcast day, I cropped most of it out, which gives an intimate feel to the landscape.
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Landscape program.
Besides the crop, in Lightroom 3, Recovery for the sky (though it did not help much on this day), Fill Light for the foreground, Blackpoint just barely right, added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Acadia 2010.