bar harbor

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And then there was that time I went to Maine for the first time. Man, talk about a cute place to visit and I’m sure to live. I felt so happy while being there. Everything was so nautical and clean. Everyone was so pleasant. We spent most of our time in Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor but I’d totally go again to spend more time in Portland and other areas of Maine. And those lobster rolls!!! *Praise hands emoji* I definietly need to spend more time with those lobster rolls in the future 🙂

This image was taken at Bass Harbor Head Light in the southwest portion of Acadia National Park on the last morning we were in Maine. Now that I think of it, I wish it was one of the first spots we went to. This area of the park had the amazing fall foliage that we were hoping for our whole trip to Acadia and it was noticeably less crowded.

Getting down to this point of view was a little difficult. The rocks were pretty steep and slippery from the crashing waves but was so worth it. As soon as the sun rose in the sky, it casted this amazingly beautiful warm red color over the head light. (P.S. Why do they call it a head light and not a lighthouse?) My favorite is the red light being casted on the rocks on the left hand side of this image. Theres something about those dark black rocks contrasted with the warm sunlight that I really enjoy.

If you’re interest in seeing more from our trip, check out this youtube video I created. Just watching it brings back so many great memories.

The settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/60th of a second and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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One of my favorite things to do after taking sunrise pictures is to just sit and enjoy the early morning light. Sometimes you can forget to enjoy the moment. Maybe you woke up late and you’re in a hurry to get to your location or you’re trying to find the perfect composition at the time the light is hitting you subject just right. There can be a number of things that cause you to stress so early in the morning which kinda sounds odd because photography is suppose to be a fun activity. But once all of that madness is done and you’re just left with the early morning light, it can be so peaceful to just sit and enjoy. Even for 10 minutes. It is the most relaxing and beautiful way to spend the morning. I love it. I just feel so happy and calm. Its a great way to just slow down. Rarely will I even have my cell phone out.

This was taken at Otter Cliff in Acadia National Park, Maine. Just looking at this image brings back those feelings of relaxation and peace. I remember sitting on those rocks after I captured this image and watching the sun for a good 20 minutes before doing anything else. That buoy in the distance was ringing a bell every time a wave rocked it over.  Sue and I were the only ones there and barely even said a word to each other. Is it weird to say that thinking about this image and what it took to capture it makes me look forward to waking up for my next sunrise? Yes. The answer is yes.

PS Where the otters at?

The camera settings for this image is F10 at 1/13th of a second with ISO 100 on my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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You know what’s really cool about waking up for sunrise? The windy air. LOL!

Sorry, bad joke. But for real, waking up for sunrise and then driving to the top of a mountain can get real chilly and Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park was no exception. I was wearing 2 pairs of pants, about 5 layers including a jacket on the top half of my body and gloves while waiting for the sun in the beginning of October. It’s totally worth it though. I love being first place and when you’re on top of Cadillac Mountain, you see the sunrise first before anyone else in the United States. YESSSSS.

But usually I’m hoping for a cloudy sunrise. The colors of the sun fill the clouds and that is my favorite time to take pictures. If it’s cloudy enough, it can make the whole sky turn a variety of colors. But it didn’t happen this day. The day that we designated to shoot sunrise from Cadillac Mountain was super clear. Not a single cloud in the sky. In this instance, I think it works though. All the rocks and textures on the bottom half of the image bring the interest in this photograph and the simplicity in the sky above just work well together. I love how there is a slight gradient but otherwise, I’m staring at that guy walking across the frame. Him being there really reminds me of what it was like being on top of the mountain. Pretty chilly but totally worth waking up early and capturing a great landscape image.

And as I was putting my camera back into my backpack, my tripod blew over and almost hit someone. Again. *face palm*

The settings for this image is 1/250th of a second at F/5.6 ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm zoom.

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So you know that one of Sue’s highlights from the trip was the Ocean Path. If I had to pick mine, it would have been the airplane tour we did on our last night in Maine with Acadia Air Tours. We booked the “airvan” for 35 minutes at sunset. It was perfect because the plane was actually built for sightseeing.

But if you have never been on a scenic airplane tour, I have 2 photo tips for you:

1. Constantly check your images. The beginning of the flight was perfect. I had the correct settings to make sure I wasn’t getting any motion blur in my images. But as the sun was setting towards the end of our flight, I did not realize how much the light had changed.  I should have bumped up my ISO or something because all the images towards the end of the flight were so blurry. I wasn’t upset or anything, I still had a rockin’ time on the flight. Just check your images as you go!

2. Zoom lens all the way. I brought my 70-200mm just in case, but didn’t feel like I needed it at all. We were only up 2000ft max in the air and I was still able to get pretty good zoom-age with my 28-70mm. I say zoom instead of a wide angle because there were times when there would be a lot of sun glare on the windows. Especially when we were faced a certain way, it was very difficult to avoid it. At least with the zoom lens, I was able to avoid those spots as opposed to a wide angle or something that would have captured it all. Sue was taking pics with her phone and said that the sun glare was really difficult to avoid the entire trip. All of her photos had at least a spot.

So if you’re in Acadia National Park and want to see it from a different point of view or even have a totally different experience, I’d highly recommend Acadia Air Tours. Bernard was our pilot and he was so nice. It was very easy to talk to him and I didn’t feel like I was bothering him with the million and one questions I was asking 🙂  And if you do book a trip with them, tell them I sent ya!

This was taken at the beginning of our flight and my camera settings for this image is 1/25th of a second at F5.6 ISO 640.

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If you asked my friend, Sue what her favorite part of our whole Acadia trip was, she’d say it was Ocean Path. It’s a super easy hike from Otter Point to Sandy Beach with a stop at Thunder Hole along the way. It’s two miles long and would typically take people 2-3 hours to complete, it took us almost 4. LOL. That’s only because we stopped a lot to take pictures… and snack breaks. This was our early morning hike so we didn’t have any breakfast prior.

If I had to guess, she liked this hike the most because every view point and every stop was so typical “Acadia”. Like when you google imaged pictures of Acadia, these are the views you’d see in the search results. We were also hiking on a super cloudy day and the air was crisp and cool. It made it so much more comfortable for us to really take our time and enjoy the scenery.

So if you have plans on visiting Acadia National Park, this hike would be one of my top suggestions. It faces east so basically anywhere you stand, you’re going to get a great view of the sunrise. And I’m not sure if we were just lucky or what it was, but we barely saw anyone on the hike. It wasn’t until we got closer to Sandy Beach (our end destination) where we really started seeing people. I think most people go to Cadillac Mountain to view the sunrise if they’re going to wake up that early, but there are other beautiful places in the park to see it too and Ocean Path is one of them!

The best part was being able to take a bus back to our original starting point, Otter Point where we parked our car 🙂 Luckily we got on the bus just in time before it started pouring rain. Man I can’t express how happy I was to be able to take that bus back instead of walking back 2 miles in the rain.

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Our days in Acadia National Park went as follows:

4:30a wake up for sunrise
5:30a make our way to the sunrise location
7:00a go for an early morning hike
Finish around 11-12p and eat breakfest/lunch
Go back to the hotel for a much needed nap
Wake up go on another hike
5:30p make our way to the sunset location and shoot the full moon
8p Dinner
9:30p HOT TUB TIME

It may sound intense but we got a lot done with just 2 full days in the park. We did everything we wanted to do, including the Bubble Rock hike. This was our first day’s afternoon hike. To be honest, I think we just wanted to do the hike because it’s called Bubble Rock. It’s a funny name and the entire way up we were making up songs and dances about it. It was hilarious. Plus it took our minds off how intensely steep the hike was. It was a short hike but very vertical. I was huffin’ and puffin’ the entire way up.

This image was taken about 3/4ths of the way up. At first I thought it was THE bubble rock but it wasn’t. Must have been wishful thinking and hoping that the hike was over. It actually was just a miniature version of the real thing but still thought it looked cool. I brought my camera up to my eye when that girl just jumped onto the rock and started to eat an apple. I was so happy when she did. I love how the tree trunks frame the rock and her just sitting there was the extra element it needed. I kinda felt like a creeper, but oh well. It happens.

The settings for this image was F/10 at 1/40th of a second ISO 250. I made it with my Sony A7II and my 28-70mm zoom lens.