Trip to Acadia National Park
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| Stop along the Park Loop Road ISO 400, Focal Length 20mm, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/400s |
Last weekend my husband and I went up to Acadia NationalPark, in Maine, for a long weekend to celebrate our anniversary. We chose
Acadia because we thought there would be some fall colors and really why not go
to Maine in the fall.
The park is nice and has several pull-offs along the park
loop road, however to really see the park you need to rent a bike (which the
park does not do) so you can access more of the park via the carriage roads. If
you don’t utilize the carriage roads, you can do the park loop road in about a
day. We did not rent a bike so only
accessed trails via the parking lot trail heads. We did a few hikes, one long hike around
Jordan Pond, as short one down to Boulder Beach, and medium length one up to
see Bubble Rock. The hike around Jordan
Pond was relatively easy except for the part where you had to crawl across some
large rocks. After the hike around the
pond we ate at the Jordan Pond House, which is known for its popovers, I was
not impressed. I was expecting more from
the popovers, by how they are raved about in the reviews, but they were just
kind of bland. Actually, most of the
food we had in Maine was unimpressive, including the lobster. The only good place we ate was at the Mexican
restaurant near the Bangor Airport. But
I digress, the hike to Boulder Beach was easy once we figured out where it was
located on the map. I wanted to go
there, because of the large rounded rocks about the size of bowling balls or
larger that make up the beach. It was
interesting, but since the sky was overcast and cloudy, the light was not good
so the pictures are not as nice as I would like. The last hike we did was up to Bubble Rock
which is a boulder precariously perched on the edge of a cliff. The hike was moderate and definitely went up,
but the view from the top of the trail was nice. Overall, the hikes were nice, but if I went
again I would definitely rent a bike, so I could see more of the park.
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| From along the path around Jordan Pond ISO 400, Focal Length 18mm, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/500s |
I was not overly impressed with the photos I took because
the sky was just grey, overcast, and extremely cloudy in the morning and evening
due to the hurricane off the coast. We did not have any good sunrises, nor
could we see the any of the night sky due to the cloud cover. It was clear briefly in the afternoon, when
there was a break in the bands of clouds from the arms of the hurricane. I shot the whole trip using a Cannon D70
with an 18-200mm lens set to ISO 400. My
most common focal length was 18mm, my common shutter speeds were 1/200s and
1/500s, and my most common aperture was F8.
I just tend to shoot wide so that is why I tend to have a high number of
photos shot at 18mm. The reason from my
shutter speeds being so high was to freeze the waves breaking along the beach
and rock cliffs. It takes several photos
to get the best wave shot, so I did have a lot of shots I just discarded
because they were basically duplicates.
I used a high aperture so I could get the best depth of field without
having to focus stack on my landscape photos. I did have a tripod with me, which my husband
ended up using for a few of his shots. I also had filters with me, which did me
absolutely no good; because, I did not have the filter holder with me. I forgot to pack the filter holder. I used to
have the filter holder always on my camera but it doesn’t work with my lens
hood, so now the filter holder isn’t always on my camera. That
was a little frustrating.
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| Boulder Beach ISO 400, Focal Length 18mm, Aperture F9, Shutter 1/200s |
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| Thunder Hole ISO 400, Focal Length 50mm, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/320s |
While going through my photos, I did find that several of
the photos looked good in black and white, so I did do several
conversions. (You can see all the photos here.) The other thing I noticed
was due how the sunlight was diffused through the clouds it was hard to pull definition
out of the wave crests. This was mostly noticeable
with the shots taken at Thunder Hole, where the waves were mostly thick sea
foam. I found at Thunder Hole, it wasn’t
the big waves that were interesting but the way the water cascaded over the
rocks after the wave crashed and was going back out to sea.
Now besides the rocky shore line, which I personally love to
photograph, there were supposed to be fall colors. Well due to climate change and the weather
staying warmer longer into September there were no fall colors. According to the past reports the time we
picket to go would have been right at peak or just starting peak fall colors,
this time the trees were just barely starting to turn. I did find a tree that did change, it was a pop
of red in a sea of green. I think that
was one of the reasons I was slightly disappointed with my photos, I was
prepared for bright pops of color but all I had was shades of green. Don’t get
me wrong the park is still beautiful in green, I was just expecting oranges,
reds, yellows, and Maine’s purple leaves.
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| My lone red tree ISO 400, Focal Length 185mm, Aperture F11, Shutter 1/100s |
We would go again, but for longer than two days. I would
also plan a little better so we could do some other activities like take a carriage
ride through the park, do some biking on the carriage trails, and do a sea kayak
tour.
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