Continuing upon yesterday’s post, Thursday was quite brilliant on MDI.  The image above was made at the north side of Bubble Pond shooting southwest.  The morning mist was just beginning to thin out which made the mountains more visible and enhanced the layering evident in this image.

Unlike the previous morning, there was little wind to disturb the water, so I made a few images of the pond itself – again facing south – with my 12-24 zoom.  What wind existed was coming from the north, so if you look closely you can see a few ripples towards the southern end of the pond.  At first I wasn’t happy about this, but it was minimal and seems to help add a slight delineation between the actual mountains and their reflections.

After heading to Bangor mid-afternoon to pick up my friend Steve to shoot with me for the next few days we ended up near Bass Harbor at a marsh called, appropriately enough, Bass Harbor Marsh.  As you can see in this image, the directional light was nice and warm.  What you don’t see is the two of us standing on the side of a busy road with our cameras and tripods making these images with vehicles speeding past us only a couple of feet away.

The breeze at this location was quite a bit stronger than these images may imply but at the surface of the water the air currents fortunately made only ripples.  I particularly like this image because of its layering and the color difference between the marsh grass in the middle and in the foreground.

This composition is obviously of the same marsh but here we can better see how expansive it is.  Little did I know that this was about the best sunlight I would see for the rest of the trip.

After leaving the marsh we headed to Bass Harbor Head Light with my primary intention being showing Steve the lighthouse and the view from the rocks in front of the lighthouse.  With little intention of shooting much of anything, we got out of the car and I grabbed my tripod, camera and a wide to normal zoom, just in case.  We climbed down the wooden walkway to the rocks at the water’s edge and it was at that point I almost thought we were at Mallory Square in Key West.  There were people everywhere and unfortunately for the photographers in the group, most of the people were not there to photograph the lighthouse, but to simply sit on the rocks and watch the sunset.

Because we had gotten there so late I had very few options in where to set up, but some nice people called me over and I settled in between them.  It was a nice location and I made some decent images, but no wall-hangers.  As the sun fell under the horizon, people gradually began leaving, even many of the photographers.

I always find it strange that photographers put their gear away as soon as the sun goes down, because that twilight period between sunset and the dark of night can lead to some truly brilliant images.  Most everything at this time is rendered a brilliant ink blue, and as long as one is using a tripod, and using it correctly, incredible images can result.  At this time of day man-made light and natural light are somewhat balanced in intensity, and as you can see here I was able to get some detail of the lighthouse itself but not render the beacon too light.

There were about five of us left who knew of this incredible light.  I eventually managed to get into a better position to allow me to include more of the water in the image and snapped away.  This image is one of the best from this session, although I wish the tide had been a bit lower,which would have allowed me to choose a wider range of perspectives.

If the image you see here was made in pitch black, the beacon would either be over-exposed if I was exposing for detail in the rocks and lighthouse or  the beacon would be properly exposed but the rock and lighthouse would be jet black had I exposed for the sky.  I used a polarizer for this image, for two reasons: 1) to enhance the inky blueness of the sky, and 2) to give me a longer shutter speed so that I could render the waves very softly in the image.

Overall, this was my most successful day of this trip and I came away with a number of images I’m satisfied with.

© 2009 James A. Fraser