Another stunning sunrise moment at Cadillac Mountain in Maine to warm your day.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about my experience of seeing the very early sunrise from Cadillac Mountain in Maine (The Sun Shall Rise). I’ve never taken so many photos of a single sunrise, so there are lots more to share! We were lucky enough to get a gorgeous day for this event, which provided plenty of opportunities.
Here’s an image that I took a little later than the one in the other post…
Sunrise Silhouette
As the sun was getting higher into the sky, I noticed this couple admiring the amazing view over the water. This immediately gave me the idea for this shot, so I took my tripod and camera to find the right spot. Lucky for me, they were mesmerized and didn’t move!
If I could have posed them, I would prefer them to be a bit close to each other, but beggars…
What I enjoy most about getting shots like this is the sense of scale that we can provide as humans. We’re wanderers within a vast universe. I’m always filled with awe about how much there is to discover and learn about our cosmos, so let’s keep exploring and learning!
Winter might have us wrapped in darkness, but there will be a sunrise. A view from Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine.
During the long winter time, we might feel that there is just not enough sun to offset the darkness. For a bit of balance, today’s post is all about sunrise, and a very early one at that. During the summer of 2021, I joined John Slonina for a short tour of Acadia National Park in the great state of Maine. The park is situated on Mount Desert Island, which is the largest island off the coast of Maine. It is an amazing place to visit any time of year. Among the many sights, there is the sunrise view from Cadillac Mountain, which is the earliest sunrise in the country from October 7 to March 6.
Let’s take a look at a sunrise in June…
Cadillac Sunrise
You have to get up really early for the sunrise in June. Getting up at 2:30am, we found our spot on the mountain before 4:00am. I took close to 200 exposures of different phases of the sunrise, ranging from pre-dawn to well past sunrise.
This particular image was captured at 5:50am, as the cloud cover started getting more definition. I will definitely feature more images from this series.
Walking through a tranquil forest brings clarity to the mind, surrounded by the soothing sounds of nature.
I thoroughly enjoy walking through a quiet forest, as it truly helps still my mind. Of course, the forest is not entirely silent, as the wind plays through the trees, birds share their songs, etc. This mixture of sounds provides a soothing symphony to the sometime cacophony that might play in my head.
Today, let’s take a walk through a forest…
Forest Path
I captured this moment in Baxter State Park, which is a fair way up in the great state of Maine. During a photography, trip I had the pleasure of sauntering a distance from the rest of the group and found this lovely path. It just pulled my imagination in, as I could only wonder what might lie at its end…
Also, the mosses on either side of the path were extremely inviting. I tested their softness, as I listened to the silence around me.
Nubble Lighthouse in Maine is a highly photographed landmark. During the holidays it is illuminated beautifully.
Nubble Lighthouse on Cape Neddick in Maine is one of the most photographed lighthouse in the area. I have seen so many great photos of this gorgeous location that I felt not qualified to photograph it for years; the reason was simply that I didn’t see anything in the location and structure that I hadn’t see before and I felt that I couldn’t add anything to its portfolio of images that exists everywhere.
This all changed on a June day in 2013, when something clicked in my head and I came up with a vision that I hadn’t seen before (see my post on Editing Mood to see what was different). Since then I have photographed it a number of times, but still only when I see something that is not just another pretty image, such as this…
Nubble Light at Night
The keeper and crew do a wonderful job each holiday season to light up the entire complex on the island upon which Nubble Light sits; it is gorgeous and a sight to behold.
I set up well before sunset for this shoot to find a location that was closer to the water level and framed some of the foreground rocks and water to capture enough of the reflection. Using a longer exposure of 45 seconds smoothed the water and allowed enough of the buildings to show up in the image while keeping the sky just dark enough. It’s not fully dark yet, which makes for a bit of magic in the juxtaposition between sea, rocks and sky vs the lighthouse complex.
Sunrise and sunsets are always fun to photograph, and for the reason of not having to get up early, I prefer sunsets or winter sunrises. I’m sure that many of you agree that the end of a good night’s sleep includes waking up when you can see the Sun’s warming rays.
On the East coast of the United States, there is one place where capturing the sunrise is almost a ritual, as it boasts being the first point of the continental states to see the sun rise. Cadillac Mountain in Maine sits on Mount Desert Island in Acadia National Park. As it rises to 1,530 feet (466 meters), the sunrise view from the top is pretty early…
Watching the Sun rise
This shot was captured about 30 minutes past sunrise, as I caught these sun worshippers admiring the copper orb. The sun rose around 4:46 a.m. on that day, and provided some magic…
First Glimpse
We were the early birds on that June day, as we found a spot around 4 a.m., and it was worth experiencing this bit of magic!
Sometimes on a nice sunny day with an interesting cloud cover, you see a scene in front of you and photograph it. However, in your mind’s eye, you know there’s more to this landscape that you just captured than what you saw on that day.
If this ever happened to you, we have that in common, as it’s occurred numerous times to me. An example is this shot of Nubble Light on Cape Neddick, Maine, back in June of 2013.
Nubble Light
This lighthouse has been photographed by many, which had caused me to not ever shoot it until this day; the simple reason was that I hadn’t seen anything different from what I’d seen in all the wonderful photograph created by others of this lighthouse. That day, I felt that there was something a little different, so I got clambered down the rocks to get a lower vantage point and shot several exposure bracketed sequences. Overall, not a bad shot, but nothing especially outstanding.
It really was a nice day, as my mother and sister were visiting us from the Netherlands and we were showing them some of the sights in the area. When we got home that evening, I offloaded the images and took a quick look at them.
Over the next couple of weeks, there were a couple of times that I thought about editing the shots, but every time I started I got stuck, as I didn’t quite ‘feel’ it. Approximately 6 weeks after I took the shot, I finally sat down to create the following end result…
Nubble Brooding
What was different about this editing session? For one, I was in a somewhat darker mood, which allowed me to connect to a heavier cloud cover and the idea of a roiling sea; also, at that point my mind’s view of what the image could hold, had time to articulate itself. The resultant image is one that after almost 10 years, I still enjoy seeing, and I have resisted the temptation to re-edit it to make it ‘better’ (as our skills improve and we learn new software, this temptation is real).
The lesson I learned at that time was to allow myself to recognize when it’s not the right moment and/or mood to edit a certain image, as our creative selves may need some hidden inspiration.
The images were captured using a Canon EOS 5D Mk III and a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. Back in 2013 I used Photomatix Pro for my HDR processing.
On this Christmas Day, a simple post and a simple wish. May all of you feel blessed and safe during this Holiday Season and may we all find peace in the New Year!
Nubble Winter Lighting
This shot of Nubble Light from 2014 is a night-time long exposure of about 2.5 minutes, which also allowed the reflection in the water to become soft and filled with mood.
Yes, kids of all ages, it is that time of year!! Everyone will be watching the flightpath of a certain jolly old elf, as he departs from his workshop on the North Pole to make a trip around this globe of ours…
He’s on the way!
A little bit of fun with editing to create this image. The base image is a 131 second exposure at 100 ISO that I took back in 2014 with a Canon EOS 5D Mk III and a Canon EF 24-105mm L IS USM lens. The flying Santa background is thanks to Skylum, who provided this for their Luminar customers.
Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope that you’re enjoying the holiday season!
In this second post in the Thursday sunrise/sunset series, we experience quite the contrast over last week’s post. Whereas the weather in Bar Harbor in June was rather pleasant, this morning in March of 2019 was a little colder…
A Cold Sunrise at the Lighthouse
For this photoshoot, a number of us hardy souls met at Portland Head lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. On this early March morning the temperature was about 4F at the time of this capture (6:00 am).
I vividly remember wearing several bulky layers to stay warm and wearing my woolen flip-top mittens, so that I could expose my fingers for the shortest possible amount of time. I was happy that there was barely the lightest breeze, as any significant wind would have been brutal.
At this location, I took my first pre-dawn shots at 5:32 am and the last ones at 6:44 am; for each I took a series of 3 exposure-bracketed shots, so that I could process them for HDR. This series centered at ISO 320 F/10 and 1/60s using a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L USM lens.
Processing for HDR was done using Skylum’s Luminar Neo; I then made use of a template that I have created for Skylum’s Luminar AI software for color adjustments and structure; after that I used Adobe Photoshop to add a bit of soft light, contrast, final crop and text.
