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Jordan Pond and The Bubbles, Acadia, Maine by Rob Hanson on 500px

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In the relatively small area that is Acadia National Park, beautiful scenes are everywhere. It’s also one of the nation’s most heavily visited parks, so people are everywhere, and most of them have cameras to capture their share of the scenery. And like most parks, there are certain areas where people are ‘funneled’ into one small section that reveals a highlight.

Such is the case with Jordan Pond and “The Bubbles”, those two small peaks across the water. What you don’t see in this picture are the hundreds of other visitors strolling along the carriageways and paths leading along the pond.

The views in this place are archetypal, and have been photographed probably millions of times. As such, it’s difficult to envision a new approach, a new angle or lighting that would present the subject in a unique way. Sometimes I wonder if that’s even possible without creating an abstract rendition.

We take the shot anyway, hoping to capture this particular scene, on this particular day, with those particular clouds. Perhaps get down low to see it from a worm’s eye view. Maybe add on a neutral-density filter to smooth out the water.

In the end, whether or not we come up with an image that is utterly unique or one that’s fairly commonplace, we can appreciate having been there that day, experiencing nature’s beauty as the light changes with the passing clouds, knowing that each of these moments IS a completely new and unique experience.

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During our recent trip to the Pisgah National Forest, our travels were hobbled by the so-called “government shutdown.” While we were free to travel the roads within the forest – really, how do you close a forest – signs of the shutdown were visible. In some cases, literally signs, such as “Campground Closed.” In other spots near attractions, garbage cans were overflowing with trash, barriers were set up, and restrooms and picnic areas were locked. Utterly ridiculous.

We had to find whatever we could, despite the circumstances, in order to salvage the trip.

Near the Cradle of Forestry location, we found this nice pair of cabins just off the road, set up as an example of early life in this area. Yup… Closed. That didn’t stop us from standing just outside the fence to frame up a photo opportunity.

Given the old nature of the scene, I decided to go with a Wet Plate look (collodion process) after merging and basic processing. Switching back and forth between this and the standard color version, this idea stood above all other attempts, although the color version was compelling in its own right.

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“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ― Anton Chekhov

This particular location just keeps cranking out the beauty. Taken from our campsite late on a September evening, 2012.

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Tree. Wood. Ore. Metal. A wagon forged by the hand of a man. All will decay. Nothing lasts forever.

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We descended to the bottom of the trail shortly before 5PM, knowing our target. Placed near the equipment shed for the old Stone House, these wagons have been in place and deteriorating beautifully for years.

Unfortunately, since it was 5 o’clock, a few maintenance people were converging on the shed, parking their trucks in all the good spots. Problem. I didn’t think twice before walking up to one of them and jocularly saying, “You know, I traveled over 1,000 miles just to shoot these wagons.” Oh… you’ll move your truck? Why, thanks!

The guys were talking together, but surely also sizing up these people from ‘Away.’ One of them, an older gentleman in bright red suspenders who looked like a cross between Albert Einstein and Kris Kringle, was Frank. I know this because he had a huge sign made of welded pipe running across the back window of his pickup truck – his “Office”.

The sign said, “F – R – A – N – K”

I asked him, “Are you Frank?”

“Nope. I’m Ernest,” he replied in a deep New England accent.

“Somehow I doubt that,” I said as we shared a knowing laugh.

And with that, we were introduced to Frank Eastman, a colorful local who has tended the grounds of the Stone House for several decades. After the other guys went home, we chatted with Frank for quite a while. He had worked with the Maine DOT for many years. We talked about how someone had once offered to restore the wagons for display, but Frank had declined, preferring to see them decay in their natural form. After a time, he felt comfortable enough to let us in on a local trail secret — a waterfall that most people don’t know about — and he asked if I could shoot it for him someday.

That’s for next year, when I’ll likely meet up with Frank again. Some people you just want to keep in touch with.

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We consider this our back yard when we’re camping in New Hampshire.

In a large campground that is often overrun with RVs in certain places, there is one loop we’ve found where the sites are large and private, no RVs allowed, and it has this brook running along the back of the site. After a long day of hiking, or on days where we just don’t feel like hiking at all, we spend some time along the rocks, listening to the running water, watching the autumn leaves fall, and soaking up a few patches of warm sunlight.

If I had any wish at all, it’s that we’d spend even more time in this spot. Really… why go driving around from one place to another when you can just spread out on a rock and soak up nature’s beauty? No driving – no effort – no worries.

We were in this same spot one night, watching the stars in the opening of the canopy, when a large owl flew into a branch just over our heads only a few feet away. He regarded us for a while, as we did him. After a couple of minutes, deciding that we were way too big for dinner, he flew off silently. Since then, we have a new name for the brook.

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This image came from three long exposures shot with a 10-stop ND filter. At f/10, 17mm, shutter speeds were 30s, 121.5s, and 291s. Those three gave most HDR tonemapping programs the fits, so I spread the exposures on each end by converting to TIFF in ACR, generating an even wider dynamic range. Seemed to work well. Post in PS-CS6 involved masking in elements of various tonemaps created with both Photomatix and HDR Efex Pro 2, spiced with Nik Color Efex Pro.

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…Annnnd, we’re back!

About a month ago, I posted the previous image Into The Dark, mentioning how we unplug from all the conveniences and trappings of modern culture. When we do this, we like to travel around the less visited spots in New England, sleeping in a tent, soaking in the scenery from some of our favorite places.

About the second week in, we traveled up to far northern Maine, just short of the Canadian border, to Flagstaff Lake, near the Bigelow mountain range. This is the view from our campsite. If it looks a bit familiar, it’s the same location where I shot Flagstaff Lake Sunrise in 2009.

When you have a great scene in front of you, it’s tempting to try to recreate a previous success. I fought the urge to do just that, trying my best to come up with new compositions and angles. Besides, the conditions never seem to cooperate for a repeat performance, so I cleared any previously held notions and just regarded the new view, the clouds draping the mountains, and yet another spectacular sunrise event.

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Click on the image above to see it larger in a new window on my Waterscapes Gallery.

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When on an extended camping trip, one’s next move is usually determined by the weather. In this case in northern Maine, with no internet access or NOAA weather radio reception, we weren’t sure whether or not to stay another day.

The sunset told us to stick around a while… which we did.

This was taken during a superior sunset from Dunn Point at Lily Bay State Park, on Moosehead Lake, northern Maine. During that time, we were visited by ducks, beavers, loons, and one very curious red fox.

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For this image, I combined outputs from two different HDR processing programs, HDR Efex Pro from NIK Software, and Photomatix Pro 4. HDR Efex Pro did some wonderful things for the water and mountains, but Photomatix Pro brought out the drama in the sky.  Using these two outputs, along with the shadowmapping process (see tutorial section), I created a decent composite. A few adjustments were made to desat the sky, smooth out the water a bit, and Topaz Detail and Topaz Adjust were used to bring out some of the finely structured, subtle details here and there.

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[A larger version of this image can be seen on my gallery at SmugMug,  here (Opens in a new tab/window)]

This image represents to me, 1) a continuation of a series of shots taken on one spectacularly cold Maine morning, and 2) a chance for further experimentation with blending output from two different HDR programs.

As for the first point, I had to drag myself out of a very warm, very comfortable, downy sleeping bag to shoot the sunrise.  Strong coffee is my friend.

To the second point…

This was taken from a set of three brackets (ISO 200, f/2.8, +/- 2 EV.)  I ran the set through Photomatix Pro 3 and created several different tonemap files.  One of the tonemaps was a Shadowmap for later use, one a Vivid (saturated) version and one a “nice” version (“nice” because I just thought it looked nice.) After producing those tonemaps, I also fed the brackets into HDR Expose, adjusting settings until it looked just right.

The output from HDR Expose was quite good on its own, but I thought it could use an extra touch, so I went to the Photomatix output to take a look. As it sometimes turns out, while the output from HDR Expose was solid, clear, and ‘true-to-life’, Photomatix output often has more punch and detail due to the available microcontrast settings.  There’s just something about the tonemapping process that jazzes up certain features.

Using the Shadowmapping technique, I layered the Shadowmap on the Vivid layer, toned down the saturation, and then blended it with the ‘nice’ tonemap. The result brought some subtle but necessary detail to the distant woods and some of the clouds.

When all of that looked good, I flattened the layers and copied the result on top of the HDR Expose version. Setting the opacity of the Shadowmap down to about 25-30% in Normal mode gave me a good result… other blending modes were too dark. The result was a highly realistic image — thanks to HDR Expose — with subtle but important details, color, and microcontrast from the Photomatix layer.

From there, the image took a trip into Topaz Adjust 4 for further punch-up. Using the NIK Color Efex Pro Darken/Lighten Center filter, I added a subtle dark vignette around the edges. Toward the end, I wasn’t delighted with the darkness of the distant shoreline, so I added an Exposure layer and masked it in to bring up the trees just a bit.

Surely, there are other ways to do this sort of processing, and some of them are bound to be easier paths to the same end. But each element seems to bring something to the final version, and playing around with different combinations can be both rewarding and frustrating.  Sometimes I do wonder if I should have just popped a single 0EV file into Topaz to see what would have happened.  Maybe tomorrow morning… over a cup of coffee.