Acadia. Coast of Maine. and the. Where, when, and how to discover the best photography in America. Updated - July Published since 1989

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1 Updated - July Where, when, and how to discover the best photography in America Published since 1989 Pea soup was a good description of the fog covering the Maine Coast. Cold pea soup was even closer to the truth, but the weather was perfect for my needs. I was photographing the shoreline of Acadia National Park. From my perch on the edge of Otter Cliffs, I could hear a distant fog horn and the clanging bells of warning buoys, out in the entrance to Frenchman Bay. Especially loud was the rhythmic breaking of waves onto the rocks below the cliffs. The weather forecast had warned of heavy morning fog covering all of Mount Desert Island. I had not expected anything this good. The weatherman should have issued a photographer s alert because these were perfect conditions for nature photographers. My camera was clamped to a solid tripod and wrapped with a large plastic bag. It was focused on a wind-sculpted red spruce, framing a small cove, a hundred feet below. After a long wait, an off-shore breeze lifted the fog for a moment and revealed the scene I was waiting for. One touch of the cable release and I had it. To be sure, I made two more exposures in third-stop increments. Achieving the proper exposure of a foggy scene can be tricky and I did not want my photographs to be underexposed. With a faster shutter speed, I froze a flock of sea gulls passing through my frame. Next, I stacked a polarizing filter over a neutral density filter to reduce the amount of light, and was able to make several very long exposures, creating a soft mist of the moving surf. I packed up my camera and moved down the Ocean Trail toward Otter Cove. The light was still soft and muted when I set up my tripod on the edge of the cliffs to photograph the autumn-colored foliage of a wild rose growing through a tiny crack in the granite. The cold, soft, and delicate fog shrouded images of this solid-granite coastline are typical of the contrasts to be found in Acadia National Park. On the lobster-claw-shaped Mount Desert Island on the coast called Downeast by Mainers is a wonderful meeting of sea, mountains, and forests. Acadia and the Coast of Maine Hunters Cove, Acadia

2 issue 13 - page 2 Spring and autumn are the most beautiful seasons on Mount Desert Island. (It s pronounced Da- ZERT) Spring brings wild lupine, daisies, and red clover. Later in the month of June, azaleas begin to bloom. Then the colorful rhododendrons start in July. Along the coast road between Seawall and the Bass Harbor Head lighthouse, there is a forest of larch, a deciduous conifer that turns orange in autumn. The first color of autumn is usually seen in late September. By early October, Acadia National Park is ablaze with the color of maple, birch, ash, hickory, and all the deciduous trees of the forest. October turns forest floors yellow with cinnamon ferns. The open granite slopes of Maine s mountains are painted a brilliant scarlet where the wild huckleberry grows. THE WOODS AND PONDS One of my favorite trails in Acadia National Park follows the shoreline of Jordan Pond. It is an hour-and-ten-minute walk through birch, beech, and spruce forests and over a jumble of granite boulders. Start near the boat launching area on the south shore, and you will find some off-shore stones that seem to float in mid-air on a very foggy morning. The western shoreline, along the base of Penobscot Mountain, is damp and boggy. A wooden boardwalk protects the moss-covered forest floor from hiker s boots. Make this walk, if you can, on a morning when the fog is dense enough to obscure the far shore of the pond. The soft light will open the deep shadows of the forest and the photography will be wonderful. The overhanging trees form a tunnel above the trail that recedes and disappears into the fog. Late in the afternoon on an autumn day, I was sitting on a large granite boulder on the shore of Jordan Pond. The light was getting interesting, but I was waiting for a break in the clouds to illuminate the beautiful autumn colors painting the hillsides of Pemetic Mountain above the far shoreline. Over my head, I heard a rush of air as an osprey swooped down from its perch and dove into the pond. I looked up to see where it came from and saw a small porcupine in the top of a birch tree. It was just a baby porcupine munching on the white birch bark that it was stripping from the tree. Porcupines are nocturnal, but they are often spotted late in the afternoon, if you look up into the trees. When you walk the trail around Jordan Pond late in the day, listen for the cry of a loon, one of the most beautiful of any wild calls, echoing off the cliffs above the pond. Loons nest on the undisturbed shorelines of Acadia s freshwater lakes and migrate south with their young before winter. Hot popovers and a cup of tea will be your reward after returning from a photography session on Jordan Pond. On the south shore, you will find the Jordan Pond Restaurant, one of the better places in Acadia to relax over a leisurely lunch. After lunch, continue your drive clockwise around the Acadia Park Loop Road. Watch for the parking area at the trail head to Bubble Rock. Sitting precariously on the side of Bubble Mountain rests a very large erratic, a round boulder deposited by the last glacier to pass this way. You can see the rock from the road below. It is more impressive up-close and fills the foreground nicely in a panoramic photograph of the island-filled Atlantic Ocean. The trail to the rock is fairly easy, if you follow the signs and the red-painted blazes. From the top of the trail, looking south, is a beautiful view of Jordan Pond. Looking north, you will see what looks like tiny islands on the eastern shore of Eagle Lake. A good starting point for a walk to Eagle Lake is at the parking area at the north end of Bubble Pond. Several trails and a carriage road pass through this spot. It is also the location of one of my favorite stream scenes in Acadia National Park. Almost completely hidden below the parking area is the stream that flows from Bubble Pond. A series of small cascades drops beneath a forest of maple and beech. Hopefully you will arrive at this location in early October, when the maples have turned red and all the leaves on the birch are a clear and brilliant yellow.

3 issue 13 - page 3 Cross the paved road and walk about a half-mile down the carriage trail to the shore of Eagle Lake. Here you will discover several small rocky, off-shore islands covered with evergreens. Autumn color will be seen in abundance along the shoreline trail at Eagle Lake. Reflections of the golden hillsides of Cadillac Mountain can easily be photographed from the western shore of Eagle Lake, at a spot where the hiking trail meets the carriage path. Old, weathered tree stumps reflect in the calm surface of the lake. Very early in the morning, both Cadillac and Pemetic Mountains cast perfect reflections in the lake. THE MOUNTAIN While it is really only a hill (my dictionary says that a mountain must be at least 2500 feet high), Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on Mt. Desert Island. At 1530 feet, it is the highest point on the entire eastern coast of the Western Hemisphere from Canada to Rio de Janeiro. A paved, one-way road spirals to the top of Cadillac Mountain. The summit is mostly bare and is crowned with pink granite that was carved by glaciers thousands of years ago. Colorful lichen patterns in blues, grays, yellows, and greens cover the granite. On the summit, you will find only a few small patches of soil that support a meager amount of plant life. Stunted and twisted red spruce, that are probably over a hundred years old, appear to be sculpted like Japanese bonsai. Only a few sturdy pitch pines grow taller and withstand the fierce winter storms that batter this island. Black huckleberry and sheep laurel cover most of the slopes of this mountain, growing in the protected, down-wind crevices beneath huge slabs of granite. The summit of Cadillac Mountain is one of my favorite places to watch the sun rise. Being up at this elevation, and being as far east as this, anyone standing on the summit of Cadillac Mountain will be the first in the United States to see the sun rise. I have made some of my favorite glowing-orange-sky photographs from this summit. Check the official time of sunrise at the Park s Visitor s Center and plan to start your drive to the top of the mountain at least an hour earlier. You should have your tripod set up and ready about twenty minutes before the sun appears on the horizon. Sometimes the best part of the show is well over by the time the sun makes its official appearance. Bring a thermos of hot coffee and wear warm clothing. Rain and a cold drizzle is common, so don t be too disappointed if you arrive at the summit to see nothing but dense fog. While you are waiting for a break in the weather, walk the short summit loop trail and look for lichen patterns or a spot of autumn color in the granite. Several metal signs on the summit have drawings with captions listing the names of the lakes, the distant peaks, and surrounding islands. Instead of writing all this down, just photograph the signs and record the names for your photo captions later. When it is time to pack up and leave the summit, you might be in the mood for a walk down the mountain. If you are traveling with someone who will drive down and meet you at the bottom, you can follow the South Ridge Trail from the summit of Cadillac Mountain for an all downhill, under-three-mile walk to the Blackwoods Campground. Keep heading south along the open ridge, the views are magnificent. On a clear morning, you will see off-shore islands in every direction. On a cold and misty morning, you may see clouds forming in the valleys below and rising up the mountain sides to meet you. If you stay on the trail, do not take any side trails, and watch for the signs marked Blackwoods Campground, you won t get lost. But carry a trail map anyway. If you have someone who will meet you at the bottom with your car, you will not have to do any uphill hiking. Have the driver meet you where the trail crosses Route 3, just west of the entrance to Blackwoods Campground. THE SEASHORE At the southern-most point on the one-way loop road around Acadia National Park is a beautiful small cove called Hunters Beach. It is covered with smoothly-polished, round cobblestones in all sizes. Most are of coarse-grained, pink granite. Others are a smooth, blue-gray granite. You ll find some highly-polished green cobbles too. If you arrive on Mount Desert Island in midwinter, drive out to Hunters Beach. You may discover the cobblestone beach buried under a lumpy blanket of snow. The beach will be much too slippery to walk, so use a telephoto from the bottom of the wooden stairs to create patterns of white, undulating snow drifts covering the stones.

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5 issue 13 - page 5 Somes Sound is the only true fjord on the coast of Maine. Sargent Drive follows the eastern shore of the sound and provides excellent views of Acadia Mountain, a good place to look for autumn color in October. THE HARBORS Southwest Harbor is on the western side of the sound and Northeast Harbor is on the eastern side of the sound. They are very different places. Working lobster boats unload their catch at the piers of Southwest Harbor. Photograph long lines of dories tied to the dock. The rotting hulls of old schooners can be seen buried in the mud at low tide. Gulls rest on an old rusting fish cannery. In Southwest Harbor, buy fried clams and a boiled lobster and sit on the edge of a pier watching an authentic Maine fishing village. Northeast Harbor, just across the sound, is very different. Magnificent homes are along Gilpatrick Drive around Northeast Harbor. Quaint shops and restaurants compete for the tourist dollar, and high-priced moorings for visiting yachts have driven out the lobstermen and their boats. Like most of the southern coast of Maine, many parts of Mount Desert Island have become the private property of wealthy land owners. The photogenic clutter of piles of lobster traps, floats and the old hulls of boats left to rot on the shore is found in fewer and fewer places along this coast. Waterfront property is becoming too valuable to be used for a fishing pier. Pollution and over-fishing have reduced the catch to where the economics of fishing for a living can t compete with better-paying jobs in the city or in the lumber and building industries. Fishing and lobstering are very hard work, especially considering the brutal weather blowing in from Canada on the west and the North Atlantic on the east. Lobster boats are expensive. As many as six hundred traps are necessary to make a living, competing with less expensive, imported seafood. From Southwest Harbor, continue south on Route 102 to Bass Harbor, probably the best place on Mount Desert Island to find an authentic, working fishing community. Lobster boats lie at anchor in the harbor and piers are piled with lobster traps and colorful floats. Drive around the harbor to the village of Bernard for great views back toward Bass Harbor. Arrive early in the morning, while the sun is still rising over the bay. THE LIGHTHOUSE At this point, you are very close to one of the best photographs in Acadia National Park. The Bass Harbor Head lighthouse is out at the end on the furthest southern tip of Mount Desert Island. Follow Route 102A through the fishing village of Bass Harbor and watch for the signs. From the parking lot, you have a choice of two trails to follow for a view of the lighthouse. Head to the left, down several flights of rickety stairs, and pick your way down through the rocks below the cliffs. Go out as close to the edge of the sea as possible, for the best view of the lighthouse. The view from the bottom of the stairs is a good location in early morning light. This angle will give you front-light on the tower. You won t have to climb down through the rocks in the dark. On a stormy day, watch out for waves breaking on the rocks. On a foggy day you will have to move closer to the lighthouse to even be able to see it. My favorite angle on this scene, late in the day, is several hundred feet to the west of the lighthouse, looking back from the rocks below. This is a good location for a sunset photograph when the low warm light of the sun on the horizon strikes the white tower and reflects off the windows and the flashing red beacon. THE PUFFINS There are several islands off the coast of Maine where puffins breed. Only one island is open to the public. Machias Seal Island is located about ten miles off the coast, near the town of Cutler, Maine. Claimed by both the U.S. and Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Service keeps a resident wildlife ranger on the island during the summer breeding season. From mid-may through mid-august, thousands of colorful Atlantic puffins can be photographed from blinds for photographers. The island is a breeding area for razorbills, terns, and murres. A telephoto lens in the range of mm will be useful in the confines of the blind. Tour boats leave from several harbors including Jonesport, Maine.

6 issue 13 - page 6 Photographing the coast of Maine is not an easy task. Except for the widely-scattered parcels of land that make up Acadia National Park, almost every bit of Maine s coast line is privately-owned. Unlike the western coast of the United States, where much of the coastline is public land and kept open and accessible as county, state, or National Parks, No Trespassing signs are almost everywhere you travel on the coast of Maine. I often have to resort to using telephoto lenses from positions I find along the road side. A knock on a door to ask permission to cross someone s property is always appreciated, and I have never been turned down. Most of my favorite views that I have photographed along the coastal by-ways were taken from someone s back yard, and the property-owner always seemed to enjoy showing off the view. If you want to photograph the best of the small, out-of-the-way fishing villages and are looking for the real lobster boats, start your travels on the eastern shore of Penobscot Bay. Maine s many deep bays and long peninsulas make explorations of this coast a slow process with lots of driving. After a half-dozen photo trips along this coast, I have narrowed down my favorite areas to four. THE DOWNEAST COAST Starting from Boston, it s a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Freeport, Maine, where I always stop at the L.L. Bean store. This is a good place to pick up forgotten supplies, a map, and the guide books you will need on your way downeast. While you are driving north east on Highway 1, watch for the right turn to Castine on Route 175, a few miles east of Bucksport at the town of Orland. Castine is a beautiful sea port village on the east shore of Penobscot Bay, with a lot of history to discover. The beautifully-restored big Georgian and Federal-style homes lining the village streets were built by wealthy shipbuilders in the mid-19th century. Maine s Maritime Academy is in Castine. The road from Castine loops around the Bagaduce River and then winds south to Stonington, my favorite unspoiled fishing village on the coast of Maine. Consult your map to find Route 15. Head south and over a high suspension bridge crossing Eggemoggin Reach to Little Deer Isle and from there over a low causeway to the north end of Northern Deer Isle. Follow Route 15 into Stonington. From Castine to Eastport, the coastline of Maine is called Downeast. The further you go along the coast of Maine, the better it gets. There is less traffic, fewer towns, and everything seems more peaceful. With over 3500 miles of coastline in the state of Maine, it is difficult to find convenient coastal roads. Many times it requires a twenty-mile drive to explore a village out on the tip of a peninsula. Penobscot is Maine s largest bay, at thirty miles long and thirty miles wide. Many large and small islands protect it from the open ocean and provide great conditions for sailing. Several harbors on the bay, including the beautiful harbor at Camden, Maine, shelter a large sailing fleet of wooden windjammers. Before the Revolutionary War, this bay was the boundary between the French and the English settlements along this coast. After the war, the Acadians were driven north to Nova Scotia and then settled in Louisiana. Their descendants are the Cajuns.

7 issue 13 - page 7 The village of Stonington has changed little over the years. A wonderful old Federal-style building in the middle of the town has been restored in the past few years and has become the community Post Office. Wander around photographing this harbor for hours and then stay for a few more days. This is a great location, right on the coast, for a two- or three-day stay if you want to concentrate on harbor scenes and fishing villages. While you are in Stonington, ask for directions to Ames Pond. In the summer, the pond is covered with pink water lilies. In the other direction, drive the coast road toward West Stonington and turn left on Sand Beach Road. You will cross a causeway over to Moose Island for views of more off-shore rocks and tiny spruce-covered islands. This is a great place to photograph old, tumbled-down fishing shacks on a rocky shore. Drive a short distance further toward West Stonington and turn left on a road that follows the shoreline of Burnt Cove out to Fifield Point. If you drive out to the point, watch for an old weathered building housing the New England Coastal Photography Gallery. Park your car and walk out on the south side to find the reflection of an old boat and a small pier in the cove. MOUNT DESERT The town of Ellsworth, about two-thirds up the coast of Maine, seems to be the hub of the Downeast Coast. Watch for the signs directing you south on Highway 3 to Bar Harbor, about a twenty-minute drive from Ellsworth. Acadia National Park s Visitor Center, and most of the park itself, is on Mount Desert, an island that almost touches the mainland. A short bridge spans the waters of Mount Desert Narrows. The island was named L Isle des Monts Déserts by French explorer Samuel de Champlain because its mountain tops appeared bare and desert-like from the sea. The Chamber of Commerce Information Center is the first thing you will see after crossing the bridge onto Mount Desert Island. Stop here to pick up maps and restaurant guides and to ask any questions. Their lodging directories list over 2400 rooms available in the area. Dozens of motels, hotels, inns, bed and breakfast establishments, as well as cabins and private and public campgrounds. There are some wonderful places to stay on the Island, close to the entrance of Acadia National Park. The Visitor Center is a few miles north of Bar Harbor. Watch the short film and pick up any guide books you may need to explore the park. There is a good selection of maps, guide books, video tapes, and other publications available at the Visitor Center. If you are being deterred by too many no trespassing signs on your travels, you will find that a small boat, a rental canoe, or kayak will take you to many places you could never find from any road. Rent a canoe in Bar Harbor to easily reach some great viewpoints from the water. Most of the coves, harbors, and small bays along this coast are well protected from the rough water of the open Atlantic. In good weather, a small boat will be quite safe. Carry your camera gear in a sealed, waterproof container.

8 issue 13 - page 8 The paintings of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River school of painting, made on Mount Desert Island became famous. Word of the area s beauty became well-known by His romantic images of the coast of Maine drew the first tourists to the island. By the turn of the century, train service brought thousands each summer to Bar Harbor, the most popular resort town on the island. Wealthy summer visitors built cottages that were actually mansions, as opulent as those they owned in Newport. The summer social life of America s wealthiest families became the focus of Bar Harbor. Luckily, it also became socially acceptable to preserve the natural beauty of the island. Around the turn of the century, an organized effort was made to preserve and protect the natural beauty of Mount Desert Island. Five thousand acres were acquired by concerned and wealthy summer residents. In 1919, these widely scattered parcels became the first national park east of the Mississippi. Expanses of shoreline and island forests became accessible to the public for the first time. The Park was originally named Lafayette National Park and is our only national park that was established solely on donated land that was given as private gifts. The Depression and WWII took its toll on the community of Bar Harbor. The Great Fire of 1947 destroyed almost all of the grand old hotels, about seventy of the mansions, and over eleven-thousand acres of wilderness. Bar Harbor will never be the same. Motels have risen from the foundations of grand old hotels, and the forests of Mount Desert Island have grown back. Over one-hundred and fifty miles of trails were built and John D. Rockefeller financed, built, and then gave over fifty miles of carriage paths to the Park. These paths were built in the 1920s and 1930s and were designed to ensure that the automobile would not disturb the natural beauty and tranquility of the Park. You can still ride a horse-drawn carriage over these paths. They are great walking and biking paths as well. There are many motels, hotels, inns, and bed and breakfast lodgings in Bar Harbor. There are many more places to stay on other parts of the island. You may prefer a quiet and isolated location, away from crowds of Park visitors, but there is something to be said for the convenience of staying in town. There are some excellent restaurants in Bar Harbor. At low tide, walk out to Bar Island, which is connected to the town of Bar Harbor by a gravel bar. The south shore of this island is covered with gravel and large cobblestones. The rest of the island is surrounded by high cliffs offering good views of Frenchman Bay.

9 issue 13 - page 9 The times of high and low tide are noted on the National Park Visitor Center bulletin board along with the times of sunrise and sunset. This far north the tides can be fairly extreme, rising and falling through a range of over fourteen feet. There is also a great difference in the number of hours of sunlight in mid-june and in mid-december. There are several other small islands in Frenchman Bay that are part of Acadia National Park. Sheer cliffs rising from the water make then tricky to land on by boat and are best photographed from off-shore using a small rental boat. Sign up for one of the many commercial tour boats that ply the waters off Bar Harbor. Or with your own small rental boat, explore and photograph the many islands much more thoroughly, while you search for osprey, eagles, seals, and porpoise. You will see plenty of harbor seals sunning themselves on the rocky shores along this coast. If you enjoy exploring islands, take the ferry from Northeast Harbor out to Great Cranberry Island and Little Cranberry Island. They are privately-owned and are not part of Acadia National Park. Ask at the Visitor Center about the ranger-led boat tours out to nearby Baker Island. All of Baker Island is within the Park boundaries. Twenty-five miles southwest of Mt. Desert Island is my favorite of Maine s off-shore islands, Isle au Haut, or high island. If you have the time for an all-day island adventure, catch the early-morning mail boat that also doubles as a ferry boat. It leaves from Stonington Harbor. It is a forty-five minute cruise through dozens of small islands before the boat arrives at the landing on the privately-owned northern end of the island. Most of the island, the southwestern end, is part of the Acadia National Park. For a day of photography in a remote place with a genuine feeling of wilderness, Isle au Haut is for you. If you like to hike, and can cover about ten miles in a day, get off the boat at the Town Landing, turn right, and you will find the trail to Duck Harbor. Climb the hill above Duck Harbor for a great view of most of the island. The trail continues south, through a damp and boggy spruce forest to Deep Cove on Western Head. Most of the south shore is rugged and the rocky shoreline is carved with small inlets and coves. Isle au Haut is so isolated and remote that a winter trip or even a visit on a foggy day would be a beautiful and mysterious experience. My day on Isle au Haut was enjoyed photographing orange-billed oyster catchers and trying to get close enough to photograph several bald eagles and a osprey fishing in Deep Cove. The mail boat returns to Duck Harbor in the evening, where you can board it for a ride back to Stonington. Allow at least two hours for the drive back to Bar Harbor, unless you plan ahead to stay overnight in Stonington. A few miles northeast of Ellsworth on Highway 1, is the small town of Sullivan. Just before you reach the intersection of Route 200, watch for a good photo opportunity right along the road. Looking out toward Frenchman Bay you will discover a small spruce-covered island sitting just off-shore. This is an easy spot to find and photograph. It works best in early morning light and at high tide. My favorite photograph made at this spot was shot in very dense fog.

10 issue 13 - page 10 The most beautiful landscape in the world will not make a good photograph if the light is not right. Years ago, I shot my still-favorite sunrise photograph over an industrial section of New Jersey. It was the light that made the picture, intensified and colored by all the pollution. Traveling many miles to a beautiful environment will not insure beautiful photographs. Certain seasons are better than others and you can count on the light of the rising and setting sun to improve almost anything you photograph. SCHOODIC PENINSULA Acadia National Park protects the southern tip of the Schoodic Peninsula on the eastern side of Frenchman Bay. This is the only part of Acadia National Park that is on the mainland. By driving the one-way loop road through the small town of Winter Harbor and then turning right at the US Naval Reservation, you can follow a narrow road along a classic Maine coastline, all the way out to a parking area on the tip of Schoodic Point. While on this peninsula, I parked my car near the Naval Reservation entrance and walked the rocky shoreline about a mile out to the tip of Schoodic Point. With a short zoom lens I was trying to freeze the white spray against the dark rocks with very short exposures. I had taken about a dozen images at a thousandth of a second, when I saw a ghost appear through the fog. An all-white, gaff-rigged schooner, with all her sails hanging out from both masts. She was just off-shore and heeled way over to round the point. I quickly reset my exposure and flipped to continuous. Back in Bar Harbor that evening I walked the waterfront until I found the all-white Bay Lady, an eighty-five foot schooner that was being used for tours along this coast. The next morning, I signed up for a two-hour sail out through the Porcupine Islands. The day was clear and dry, but I still had two layers of plastic bags duct-taped around my camera. I wrapped tape around the lens and sealed off the UV filter. I didn t even cut an opening for the viewfinder. It was well-sealed. I wanted to make some frame-filling photographs of the white sails against the blue sky with a 17mm lens. I carried a monopod to steady the camera and to hold the camera up, out, and away from the deck with the monopod fully-extended. The shot that really worked came as a complete surprise and was almost a complete disaster. I was in the bow of the windjammer, shooting up through the jibs. The monopod was extended, and I was holding the camera up at arm s length, about twelve feet above the deck. The long release wire was taped down the length of the pole. The camera was running on auto-everything. I was looking and shooting straight up when someone yelled look down! There was a porpoise on each side of the bow, leaping up and over the bow waves. As fast as I could swing it, I lowered the Nikon, on the end of the aluminum pole, almost to water level. We were probably doing at least fifteen knots, and the spray was flying. Every time a porpoise leaped, I punched the shutter button. I pulled it in, wiped the water off the plastic bags, peeled back the duct tape, and found a completely dry camera. As it turned out later, only one of the images was worth keeping. In that composition, the curve of the bow matched and perfectly framed the leaping curve of the porpoise. Everything was in sharp focus and the exposure black porpoise against the white hull was perfect. A few miles east of Schoodic Point is another good place to search for harbor scenes. The small seaport village of Corea, Maine, surrounds a narrow inlet and harbor at the entrance to Gouldsboro Bay. Here you will find many scenes of weathered fishing shacks and old piers. Take the left turn at the fork in the road as you enter the village to find some of the best views. Discover some wonderful scenes to photograph.

11 issue 13 - page 11 There is one more place along this coast that you should plan to photograph. The lobstering harbor at Beals Island will keep you occupied for many hours. Continue north on Highway 1 through forests of larch and open fields of wild blueberries. Driving this highway in early October is a wonderful autumn experience. Turn south on Route 187, about a mile east of Columbia Falls. In Jonesport, out at the end of Route 187, you will find plenty of activity down at the fishing harbor. Walk the few blocks through town to photograph several white-steepled churches and some beautifully-restored Victorian and Federal-style homes. Cross the bridge over the inlet through Jonesport and watch for a partially- submerged, sunken fishing boat in the harbor. Continue past the Jonesport Coast Guard Station, watching for the left turn to Beals Island. Drive across the low bridge and causeway over the Moosabec Reach to Beals Island and discover a fishing village that is second only to Stonington for photography. A left turn as you leave the bridge will take you along a shoreline where you will discover a graveyard of old fishing boats. High tide on a calm Sunday morning or afternoon is best there are more boats in the harbor on Sunday. Watch for the pier that is built over the decaying hull of an old grounded wooden schooner. PEGGY S COVE, NOVA SCOTIA Any photographer looking for fishing villages must eventually travel to Peggy s Cove in Nova Scotia. The colorful boats, the harbor scenes, and the dramatic light house on a rocky point make Peggy s Cove a destination worth visiting in any season. The autumn color generally reaches its peak on the coast of Nova Scotia a bit later than along the coast of Maine. Perhaps the tempering affect of the ocean delays the arrival of cooler weather and the first frosts. If you plan to travel any great distance to photograph along the coast of Maine, consider adding a few more days to your itinerary and including a side trip to Nova Scotia. Avoid the long drive north through New Brunswick, and catch the Bluenose Ferry right in Bar Harbor. Take your rental car along with you on the boat and stay at least three days in Nova Scotia. If you love to photograph harbor scenes and fishing villages, you must also visit Lunenburg, Blue Rocks, Indian Harbor, and especially Peggy s Cove. Have a great trip and send me a postcard! Pemaquid Light

12 Islands off the Coast of Maine In addition to ferries sailing to Monhegan Island and North Haven, Vinalhaven Island and Swan Island, the Maine State Ferry provides seven to nine round trips daily from Lincolnville to Isleboro. It s a short twenty-minute ride. The Maine State Ferry has limited service from Bass Harbor on Mount Desert Island to Frenchboro Island. In the village of Southwest Harbor, private ferry operators offer service to the Cranberry Islands and Baker Island. Ferry service is available to Isle au Haut from the harbor in Stonington. There is scheduled ferry service to the Isles of Shoals, Maine s southernmost islands, and to Great Chebeaque, Long Island and Peak Island, the three largest of the Casco Bay Island group near the city of Portland. There are many islands now attached to the mainland by bridges: Orrs Island, Beals Island, Deer Island and, of course, Mount Desert Island, the most popular and most visited of Maine s Islands. In addition to free maps available at the ferry terminals, you ll need a Delorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer to find the location of all these islands and the ferry routes that serve them. My life-long career in photography began at San Jose State University in After college, I enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, serving as a photographer and darkroom technician. In Germany, my skills and experience with equipment and lab work were developed and polished. I took the opportunity to photograph the beauty of nature in the Black Forest. Returning to California in 1965, I produced industrial and military training films for Raytheon Electronics and began showing my color nature prints. From 1969 through 1981, my photography was exhibited and sold in West Coast galleries. During the early 1980 s, I taught color darkroom workshops, then expanded to include field trips. Former customers, who had purchased my framed photographs, wanted to learn photography. My Pacific Image Photography Workshops offered adventures to the Pacific Coast, the Southwest deserts, national parks, Hawaii, New England, Canada, England, and the South Pacific. The workshops evolved into writing and sharing my adventures with others. Photograph America Newsletter provides information on where, when, and how to discover the best nature photography in North America. Photograph America Newsletter is published quarterly (four issues/year) by Robert Hitchman assisted by technical associate/wife, Katherine Post Office Box 86, Novato, CA All contents of this newsletter copyright Robert Hitchman Please don t make copies for your friends. This is a violation of Federal copyright laws. This newsletter survives on subscriptions.