“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
- William Arthur Ward
The alarm went off at 4:00AM, but I was already awake.
[SinglePic not found]Before bed the evening before, I noticed that the sky was perfectly clear and the stars were shining. With the hopes that the morning light would include a nice sunrise, I rose from bed, opened the door to the motel room, and stepped outside. The air was cold with a stiff breeze. Looking up, I saw nothing but black. No stars, no moon, nothing.
This was not good.
Like the previous day, we arrived at Otter Cliffs before sunrise with hopes that we would get lucky and the clouds would break. We sat in the car for a while, periodically checking on the progression of sunrise, but it was to no avail. Sunrise came and went without a hint of sunshine. This was an omen for what the rest of the day would be.
We left Otter Cliffs and once again drove along the Park Look Road looking for photographic subjects, but the light was uncooperative and the northerly wind was strong, so we decided to head back towards Bass Harbor and hike a couple of trails I learned about in The Photographer’s Guide to the Maine Coast, by David Middleton and Bruce Morrison. Used in conjunction with a park map which can be picked up at the Acadia Visitors Center, I found this book to be an invaluable tool for this trip, or any trip to the coast of Maine for that matter.
The first hike was the nature trail that winds along Ships Harbor, which is just to the east of the Bass Harbor lighthouse. Its a great short hike which affords beautiful views of the inlet and the coastline which you can see in the image at the top of this page. We had the good fortune of being on the south side of the island, so the area was relatively calm. Strangely, it was only during this hike that we saw the sun for the entire day. Our second hike, which was highlighted in the book as the better of the two, was on the Wonderland trail. It was surprisingly much less interesting than we had expected. Maybe it would be better in different weather.
[SinglePic not found]At the completion of our hikes the wind was still strong, so we decided to head to Sieur De Monts spring, with hopes that its location in a valley would mean that shooting would be at least somewhat peaceful. This turned out to be a good choice. The area is somewhat swampy and grassy, which meant there were pools of water all around the area into which the colorful autumn leaves fell. These pools of colorful leaves are what I concentrated on and you see some of the resulting images here.
While I managed a few interesting images on the Ships Harbor nature trail, it was Sieur de Monts spring that saved the day. Its a good thing we adjusted our sails.
© 2009 James A. Fraser