Acadia National Park thumbnails only

There are a lifetime of photo opportunities in Acadia National Park, but the Bass Harbor Lighthouse is one of the best and most-visited locations.
 
This image is a composite of three shots. A 20 second primary shot includes the water and sky while a second 30 second shot was used to pull detail out of the rocks on shore. A third shot was used to capture the light shining on the trees beside and behind the lighthouse.
 
These three shots were selected from a huge number I shot at various times during the sunset - with lots of bracketing taking place. The three layers were merged in photoshop.
 
To keep the long exposure sharp, mirror lockup and the two-second self-timer were used as was a Gitzo GT3530LS tripod with an Arca Swiss Z1 Ballhead mounted to it. A custom white balance and a small amount of saturation were the primary post-processing tweaks aside from compositing the 3 images.
 
When you are shooting the next sunset, don't leave when the sun sets below the horizon (most photographers I observed in Acadia do). There may be many opportunities yet to come with easier to handle dynamic ranges.

The round rock beach near Otter Point is a classic sunrise location for photographing Acadia National Park. The TS-E lens was tilted forward a slight amount to keep both the foreground and background sharp. A 2-Stop B+W Neutral Density Filter along with ISO 50 was used to lengthen the exposure time - allowing the Atlantic Ocean to blur.

In my Canon EOS R5 and EOS R6 Setup Guide, I indicated that "Focus bracketing" and "Number of bracketed shots" were included on the My Menu tab 2. The R5 is my first daily-use camera to have this feature (one of the first Canon EOS cameras to get it), and I've been anxious to put this feature to use in the field. Remembering that the feature is now a couple of button presses away is the first in-the-field challenge.

The Mount Desert Island Historical Society beautifully maintains the Somesville Bridge, Selectmen's Building, and the surrounding grounds. This includes planter boxes that always hold attractive flowering plant arrangements in the fall. These planters beg to be included in the frame, but including the plants, the bridge, and the building in the same frame requires extreme depth of field for all details to be sharp. Extreme depth of field generally requires a very narrow aperture, and a very narrow aperture generally results in a diffraction-softened image.

Focus bracketing solves this problem.

For this picture, the focal length that best composed the scene was first selected, and the Really Right Stuff TVC-24L Mk2 Tripod with an RRS BH-40 Ball Head was moved into a somewhat awkward position to lock the composition down. ISO 100 was selected for the least noise, f/11 was selected to gain a significant depth of field for each image (f/8 would have been a good alternative in hindsight), and the shutter speed, 1/10 sec., was selected for the final exposure brightness, just bright enough to cause minor overexposed highlights on the bridge (blinking during image review). The R5's "Focus bracketing" was enabled and the "Number of bracketed shots" was set to 15.

With the lens in AF mode, the focus spot was placed over the closest subject, the ornamental cabbage flower. When the shutter release was pressed using the 2-second self-timer mode, the camera took a series of images. While I selected 15 bracketed shots in the menu, the camera knew that only four were required for this scenario.

In Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP), the four RAW images were selected, and the Tools > Depth Compositing > Start depth compositing tool menu option was selected. The default settings were used to output a 16-bit TIFF file that only required minor adjustments unrelated to focus.

My wife thinks the cabbage is too big relative to the background elements, but moving into the street to capture a more distant view was not a good idea from a safety perspective, and that perspective would have resulted in sidewalk and other less attractive elements being included in the frame. Harder to argue against is that the flowers provide lots of color in the frame. Regardless, hopefully the ease of creating a focus bracketed image with the Canon EOS R5 and EOS R6 is illuminated.

One of my favorite subjects to photograph is the Milky Way. The required long exposures provide plenty of time to simply watch the spectacular sky show (unless I'm running two cameras), taking in the awesomeness, and the pictures captured are usually among my favorites. I was blessed with the opportunity to photograph the Milky Way from several top-notch locations this year, including during the Rocky Mountain National Park and Acadia National Park workshops. The image shared here was captured from the coast of Acadia NP.

Seldom can the reflection of the Milky Way be seen in an ocean as the water movement completely blurs everything during the required long exposure. However, tidal pools are often still and can make great reflectors (though not at high tide) for a variety of coastal photography needs including reflecting the night sky. Adding value to this particular tidal pool was the low surrounding rock with good character, adding jaggedness to the rock line and its reflection.

To photograph the night sky, I usually want a wide-angle lens with an f/2.8 or wider aperture available with sharp wide-open image quality. The Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens, with an EOS R behind it and a Really Right Stuff TVC-24L Mk2 Carbon Fiber Tripod and BH-40 Ball Head under it, met those needs superbly.

Photographing the Milky Way is easy and very addicting. This image was captured using the 2-second self-timer feature with settings of f/2.8, 15 seconds (longer exposures increase star trail length), and ISO 6400 (with a low amount of noise reduction applied). I opted to brighten the result a bit in post and brightened the foreground by an additional stop for a single-image HDR. Just after sunset, the sky still had some color in it and a slight saturation increase (+1 in DPP and +7 in PS) made those colors pop. Auto white balance was used. Increasing contrast via an S-curve adjustment always makes the Milky Way stand out.

As I was searching through the over-a-thousand images captured with the RF 24-70, selecting a few to share in the review, this one stood out as my favorite and thus I'm sharing it with you here. Add the RF 24-70mm lens to the list of good night sky lenses.

On the road, but not in danger of getting hit on this walkway painted like a road. You'll find this scene in Bar Harbor, Maine. This lens could easily be handheld at a lower shutter speed and therefore a lower ISO setting, but Mikayla was not standing still enough to prevent motion blur at these lower speeds.

The sun rises over Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island. This shooting location is a short hike from the top of Cadillac Mountain. A note: I rarely shoot at f/14 (especially with a tilt-shift lens) and did not need to go this narrow for this photograph. I was bracketing exposures and mistakenly went to f/14.

Granite rock formations mixed with evergreens and brilliant red ground foliage are found on Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park in October. The view isn't bad either. The opportunies for creativity with a camera here are endless.

As soon as the sun sets on the horizon, nearly everyone packs up and goes home. However, some of the best photo opportunites come with the afterglow. Shot handheld.

This vantage point is at the top of Cadillac Mountain. And this scene was as fun to watch as it was to photograph.
 
Champlain Mountain forms the base for this photo. Heavy but not solid clouds passing over the ocean allowed rays of sunlight to move across the ocean.

Hoar frost adds another color to this fall Cadillac Mountain scene.
 
Cadillac Mountain was closed early this morning. I returned later to find hoar frost melting in the early morning sun.
 
I typically shoot landscape photography with ISO 100 and an f/11 aperture with this lens/camera/tripod combination. Because of very high winds this day, I shot this picture at ISO 200 and f/8 to get a shutter speed fast enough to stop all of the motion. A slight forward tilt was used to keep both the foreground and background sharp.

A small but strong storm moves off the coast of Acadia National Park / Mt Dessert Island, Maine, USA producing a rainbow for all to see.

In the 2.5 Seconds, 70mm, No Tripod, Cadillac Mountain Moonrise post, I shared that I had locked a Canon EOS R5 and RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens on a Really Right Stuff TVC-24L Mk2 Carbon Fiber Tripod and BH-40 Ball Head into a sunrise-ready position. It seemed logical to share the image that setup captured next.

I love photographing when the sun is below me and visible. In this case, a location with significant unshaded area (sloping toward the sun) (and void of people) was selected. Granite rock provides a solid foundation, and the evergreens on the right aid in framing the scene.

When the sun is in the frame, an HDR capture is often the ideal strategy. This capture involved using auto exposure bracketing (AEB) set to 5-shots 1-stop apart with the exposure adjusted so the brightest and darkest images had detail in the shadows and highlights, respectively. With the 2-second self-timer enabled, the shutter release simply needed to be pressed for the bracketed sequence to be captured, followed by shooting a few more frames with the other camera. Repeat until the scene decreased in photogenic value.

I use a variety of HDR software but selected Lightroom for this one. The set of images that seemed optimal (the sun reflecting in the water influenced this choice) were selected and processed.

You likely already noticed that this image is not in the typical out-of-the-camera 3:2 aspect ratio. There are two ways to get the aspect ratio shared here. Ideal from a final resolution perspective is to stitch multiple images together. Capturing and processing an HDR pano adds complications, and with the ultra-high resolution of the R5, the other option, cropping, proved easier with a very sufficient final resolution. The primary reason for this final aspect ratio was that the cropped away sky was not adding value to the image.

Some minor cleanup in Photoshop resulted in the picture shared here.

Why f/16? At 15mm, f/11 would have provided adequate depth of field for this scene and exhibited less softening from diffraction, but f/16 is a compromise that provides a stronger sunstar, a strong element in this image.

Water in the shade with a reflected subject in the sun is a great photographic scenario. Add maple trees in their peak fall color to that background and the opportunity value increases significantly. That is the scenario that can be found in the fall at The Tarn in Acadia National Park.

The number of composition opportunities at this location is a bit overwhelming and changing continuously as the sun rises and the wind ebbs and flows. Selecting an image to share from the hundreds captured is the resulting challenge.

This is an example of telephoto lens being ideal for landscape photography. Most often a 100-400mm lens is in my landscape kit and on this day it was the excellent Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens. Many of my favorite landscape images have been captured within the range offered by this lens.

Here is another selected image from The Tarn.

The bay at Pretty Marsh, Acadia National Park, Maine, that is. A little girl explores for treasures along the beautiful Maine coast. This is an HDR image. An exposure for the sky was manually combined with a longer exposure for the shore using Photoshop.

On the Acadia National Park bucket list is to be the first person (or more accurately, among the first group of people) in the USA to see the sun on that day. Checking off that item requires an early morning drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Leading a small workshop on this day meant my priority was to make sure each participant was in their preferred location with their camera set up and ready for the action to start. With that goal accomplished, I moved into the next-best location and locked a Canon EOS R5 and RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens on a Really Right Stuff TVC-24L Mk2 Carbon Fiber Tripod and BH-40 Ball Head into a sunrise-ready position.

During this setup, the incredible scene unfolding on the horizon had my attention. A tiny crescent moon is a great supporting element. Combine that feature with a strong, colorful pre-sunrise or post-sunset gradient in the sky and throw in some water and mountains, and images I like are easy to create.

While this scene was in my locked-down composition, even 35mm does not render the moon a substantial size in the frame. Fortunately, the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens and another R5 were in my MindShift Gear BackLight 26L. What was not along was my second tripod, and I did not want to lose the locked-down composition held by the first. So, I sat down on the rocks, rested arms on knees, and began shooting with the settings that would have been used if tripod-mounted. Those settings were ISO 100 for the least noise, f/8 for considerable depth of field and reduced vignetting, and the shutter speed necessary to yield a right-aligned histogram.

That shutter speed was 2.5 seconds, a very long 70mm exposure without a tripod. Amazingly, all of the dozens of images captured at this and, later, faster shutter speeds were sharp. There was no need to use a higher ISO or a wider aperture setting — or a tripod. This is impressive performance from the R5 and RF 70-200 combination.

It is often easy to create nice landscape images with telephoto focal lengths, and the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens is a great landscape lens. This image is simple — minimalistic. The dark mountain provides a base to the image, and the waterline is positioned approximately 1/3 into the frame. The position of the 3.2% waning crescent moon and silhouetted evergreen trees work together to create an overall balance to the scene. While many rules can be used for composition, overall balance is what I usually look for first.

The warm early morning sunlight breaks through a small hole in the clouds at Monument Cove.

As is typical with landscape photography, being at the right place at the right time was the key to this image capture. While it is easy to control the when and the where, timing the clouds is a bigger challenge, one that often involves going home without the targeted image.

When photographing a large body of water, wave action is another image quality factor involving timing. Every wave is different, and the brightness caused by air in the water changes as the wave approaches, breaks, crashes, and recedes.

This image was captured at 28mm, well within the comfortable range of angles of view provided by the Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM Lens. When creating a composition, determine the elements that are helpful to an image and frame to include only those.

On this day, the sky was extremely bright and not especially photogenic. Therefore, I chose a downward camera angle combined with a focal length long enough to include only a small amount of sky, just enough to fit the ocean horizon.

As you likely guessed, I pressed the shutter release many times while this window of light availed itself. This image made the cut for the wave position and the shadow of a small cloud creating uneven lighting on the far edge of the boulder beach. The latter helps the monument to garner more attention.

Lively signs add color to the already colorful Bar Harbor town shops in Maine.

The view from high up on Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park is awesome even without a sun setting below. To get the star effect from a bright light, use a narrow aperture (such as f/11) and a wide angle lens. This is an HDR image. Photoshop was used to manually create this final image from two differently exposed images.

A strong backlight illuminates this evergreen forest scene. Bright green moss colors the forest floor.

Fog over Upper Hadlock Pond in Acadia National Park near Northeast Harbor (Mt Dessert Island, Maine) catches light from the bright sky not included in the frame. The large, calm pond provides reflections of the fall foliage colors.

A late-day Acadia National Park landscape that includes the Parkman Mountain peak as seen from Bald Peak. Warm light from the setting sun touches the mountaintops while dramatic clouds take care of the top portion of this frame.

The sunrise as seen from a Cadillac Mountain vantage point.

The yellow foliage gives away the season this Sand Beach, Acadia National Park, Maine picture was taken in. Columbus Day weekend is often the peak of the fall foliage progression in Acadia NP. A circular polarizer filter was used for this image.

Sometimes, an ultra-wide-angle lens becomes a requirement to get the shot. Sometimes, a wide aperture is also required. Both were requirements down in Monument Cove, Acadia National Park, on this night. The Sony FE 12-24mm f/2.8 GM Lens had the credentials to get the job done.

As I climbed down into the cove, the plan was to capture the monolith in front of the milky way. Upon arrival, I decided that the rock on the other side of the frame also had great character and wanted it included in the image. Even at the extreme 12mm full-frame angle of view, keeping everything seen here in the frame meant my back was against the rock wall.

The milky way is typically photographed against a black sky. However, if the sky is dark and the milky way is in view, it can be photographed at the end of the blue hour. This image was captured about 7 minutes after "nautical end." Despite a bit of light showing in the sky, it was very dark in the cove, and the f/2.8 aperture proved very helpful, keeping the ISO setting down to a still-high 8000.

The round rock beach just north of Otter Cliff in Acadia National Park is a great place to visit. Especially with a camera and tripod.

Well, more like crawling over each other. These starfish are in a shallow tidal pool on the Maine coast. Macro lenses are fun to explore with.

A light/misting rain created great conditions for fall foliage photography in Acadia National Park this day. This particular framing avoided the unattractive solid gray sky. A level camera position keeps the trees straight up and down in the frame. This location is near Echo Lake Beach.

Reflections from clouds appear as waves on the water. This image was captured at Pretty Marsh, Acadia National Park, Maine.

The sun breaks the horizon near Otter Cliff, Acadia National Park.

Everyone loves lighthouses and lighthouse images, right? After awaking to a 4-something AM alarm for three days in a row, I was finally treated to some morning sunlight at the Bass Harbor Lighthouse. While some cloud drama would have been welcomed, the white sky created by the solid cloud cover present on the previous two mornings was not as photogenic.

When the sky is clear at sunrise/sunset, there are some expected parameters for landscape photography. One is that the first/last light will be very warm in color and another is that pastel colors will show in earth shadow and the Belt of Venus above it low in the sky opposite the rising/setting sun. These two parameters combine very nicely.

I don't always require myself to use a completely level camera (tilt and roll) for landscape photography but did so in this case, primarily to keep the sides of the lighthouse from leaning. Adding to that compositional constraint was the desire to have the reflections availed by the foreground tidal pool included in the frame. The lighthouse reflection was the primary interest and it was very tightly framed between the surrounding rocks, further limiting the camera position to within that narrow line. With the rocks being indicative of the Maine coastline, having them close and emphasized seemed logical and led to this final camera position.

Should circular polarizer filters be used for all landscape photographs? While CPL filters are easily my most-used filters and I very frequently use them for landscape photography, this was a time when using the effect provided by this filter was a detriment to the final look. Cutting the reflections on the rocks and in the tidal pool created a dark, flat, lifeless look to the foreground rocks and water, detracting significantly from the result. It didn't take long to determine which look was preferable.

Wet dark-colored rocks absorb a lot of light even without a CPL filter and two exposures were combined to ensure that details were retained in those rocks in the final image.

Looking for a lens to carry while hiking? You likely want a compact and lightweight model but do not want to substitute image quality to get those properties. The Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8 Di III RXD Lens and its sibling 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD Lens are great choices and both are quite remarkable lenses overall.

This afternoon in Acadia National Park found the 17-28 RXD along with a Sony a7R IV in a MindShift Gear BackLight 18L on top of Bald Mountain anticipating a great light show at the end of the day. Unfortunately, that show mostly did not happen. The weather forecast did not hold true and as can be seen in this image, thick clouds ruled the sky.

Just when we thought there was no hope for seeing a sunset, a tiny hole appeared in the clouds and awesomeness shined through. I dropped the tripod into the nearest location that looked compositionally promising and shot a several frame bracket, ensuring that one image had bright foreground detail captured at f/11 and the darkest of two others had a tiny bit of color remaining in the sun. The latter two images were captured at f/22. While f/22 results in softer image quality than f/11, it delivers a larger, better quality starburst effect and the clouds nicely hide the softness in the portion of f/22 capture used in the final image. Note that changing the aperture changes the starburst including the orientation of the star points. When bracketing such images, be sure that most of the images containing the starburst are captured at the same aperture to avoid an awkward appearing composite.

By the end of the first bracket capture, the warm sunlight was no longer reaching the foreground and after a second bracket at a slightly adjusted camera position, the sun was completely cloud-blocked again. The foreground lighting was better in the first set of images and cropping those from the bottom gave me a result similar to those captured in the adjusted camera position.

I seldom use ISO settings above 100 when photographing daylight landscape but you will notice that a setting of 800 was used for this image. Along with the heavy clouds came very strong winds and I was estimating the exposure duration that could be tolerated between gusts. The Really Right Stuff TVC-24L Mk2 Carbon Fiber Tripod and BH-40 Ball Head held solid and I probably could have used longer exposures — though sun time may not have permitted that.

Rows of clouds let rays of light through, causing small areas of brightness in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Acadia National Park.

The setting sun lights the Bald Peak summit marker and a little hiker in the background.

As mentioned in this Tarn, Acadia National Park image, I captured hundreds of images of this great scenario and eventually managed to select two from that day's take-home. You are looking at the second of two, also captured with the Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens.

The location for this particular Acadia National Park silhouette is on the west side of Sand Beach. I exposed the image so that the brightest clouds were nearly blown (pure white, RGB = 255, 255, 255). This allowed plenty of detail in the shadows for the final adjustments in Canon's Digital Photo Pro.

Sand Beach is barely visible in the distance in this Acadia National Park picture. The rocky coast seen here is very typical for this area.

A Pretty Marsh, Acadia National Park, Maine old growth evergreen forest floor.

The crew of a lobster boat works their traps just off the shoreline between Otter Point and Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. A small amount of tilt was used to keep the foreground and background sharp.

She is worn out from hours of treasure hunting on the Bar Harbor, Maine coast.

Bright yellow and green lobster trap buoys stand out against the wet dock in Northest Harbor, Maine. There are an incredible number of these floating around Mt Dessert Island/Acadia National Park, Maine. Each lobsterman's buoys are uniquely color coded for identification.

A little girl braves the Bald Peak wind at sunset. The light at this hour of the day defines the highest points on the mountain.

There was no fog on the north end of Eagle Lake (Acadia National Park) this morning, but the fall colors reflected very nicely.

When you have to look down to see the sun rising, you know you are in a great location, and Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park is such a location. This particular morning greeted our group with extraordinary sky color – this image is practically right out of the camera.

Telephoto lenses are excellent choices for filling the frame with the color of a sunrise or sunset. The Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens was the choice for this morning. It's a superb lens. At least that is the lens I originally thought I captured this image with. I later realized that the EXIF indicated the Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens was the lens responsible for this image. The two lenses are interchangeable at this focal length.

The top of Champlain Mountain, Acadia National Park, has lots of great rock formations. And lots of Cairns. Cairns are stacks of stones to mark the trails. The Cairns are typically placed where they are especially visible including locations that will leave them silhouetted to hikers. I was trail running/photographing one evening and liked how the lines in the stones somewhat matched the lines in the clouds, so I made a few images.

The top of a mountain in Acadia National Park is a great location to take in a sunset. Better still is to extend that sunset photography opportunity into night sky photography.

It is hard to make a bad composition of the milky way, but adding an interesting foreground usually improves nightscapes. My eye is naturally drawn to mountain peak markers, and the Bald Peak marker was available.

The next step in composing this image was determining the ideal balance of the marker with the milky way, and the camera position illustrated here seemed optimal of the accessible shot locations.

The Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM Lens is one of the best nightscape lenses ever made. While the ultra-wide f/1.4 aperture is one of this lens's key nightscape advantages, the 24mm f/1.4 depth of field is shallow, too shallow to keep this sign and milky way sharp. Thus, this capture required an image focused on the peak marker and another focused on the stars.

Post-processing the two image stack was simple. The images were layered into a Photoshop file, and a layer mask was added to the top layer. Painting the mask black reveals that portion of the layer below, the peak marker and rocks in this case.

This particular mountaintop is Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. This is beautiful mountain is also easily accessible - you can drive to the top. This scene can be found from a short hike from the top-most parking area.

The top of Cadillac Mountain seems like the top of the world. The sunrises and sunsets are frequently dramatic from this vantage point. But, don't go home when the sun goes down. The best is often yet to come.

The sun shines through the fog early in the morning on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine, casting tree shadows. This is an HDR image.

It looks like you could give this monstrous Acadia National Park boulder a little push and send it over the edge. Fortunately, that is not the case. Bubble Rock remains there for you to see. Fall colors, as seen in the background, are spectacular in Maine.

Light from a setting sun shines under the clouds overhead and over the mountains behind. This vantage point is near the Bald Peak Summit, Acadia National Park, Maine.

Otter Cliff can be seen jutting out from the coast behind these large boulders in Acadia National Park.

The hardest part about capturing a great Atlantic Ocean Sunrise photo from the US coast is getting up early enough to do so. Make sure your camera is level any time the ocean meets the sky in the frame as it is unforgiving.

Worn smooth from years of waves crashing it into the neighboring rocks, this pink granite rock takes on an very round shape. A cloudy sky provides fill light for the shadows in this picture.

Tidal waters at Bass Harbor Marsh (Acadia National Park) wind side to side through the frame. Storm clouds hang low over Western Mountain in the background.

A circular polarizer filter was used to capture this mid-day Bass Harbor Lighthouse picture.

Champlain Mountain in Acadia National Park shows its rocks, evergreens and fall-colored deciduous trees below.

This particular dock is in Northeast Harbor, Maine. These boats are used to get to the lobster boats moored in the harbor.

Backdropped by dark evergreens and lit by a setting sun, the granite boulders of Champlain Mountain stand out.

The Bowl (pond), the Beehive and Gorham Mountain as seen from Champlain Mountain in Acadia National Park. Make sure your camera is level when placing the ocean horizon in the frame.

A slight amount of lens tilt was used for this shot - to keep the close foreground and distant background all in focus.

This old wooden dinghy in Acadia National Park was an inviting subject for the Canon RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM Lens.

Acadia National Park is a premier location to view the fall foliage. Often, it is challenging to compose the beautiful colors, and sometimes, their reflection is the optimal choice.