This week's trip through New England takes us to Maine and arguably it's most famous attraction, Acadia National Park. Acadia is the only national park located in the northeastern US and is a very popular tourist destination. The Maine coastline is extremely rugged and Acadia contains some of the most breathtaking scenes on the Atlantic Ocean. As I was setting up the shot on Otter Beach, I could hear the crashing waves on the rocky beach and knew I was in a race before the clouds moving east would extinguish the beautiful warm glow of the rising sun. I was able to take this long exposure image as the light from the rising sun was still hitting the adjacent cliffs. It was a very short time after this shot that the clouds covered the golden light for good.
Acadia Guardian
The cliffside Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse in Acadia National Park marks the entrance to Bass Harbor on the southwestern side of Mount Desert Island. This composition is the only decent view of the lighthouse as all other perspectives are really unappealing. The challenge, particularly ay sunset, is getting to this vantage point. There is a slippery climb down from the parking lot and trying to find any spot among 40+ other photographers that can fit there. I was fortunate to get one of the last physical spots on the rocks and, even then, it was hard to get a shot without someone's head, arm or other appendage in it. The light is a wonderful place to shoot and my advice is to get there very early before the parking lot and the rocks are overflowing.
Otter Beach Glow
Acadia National Park in Maine is the only national park located in the northeastern US. It is a beautiful park where mountains, islands and ocean all come together to form a unique experience. Located on Mount Desert Island, Acadia's origins were actually started by a group of summer residents that formed a public land trust to protect the island from development. The trust slowly acquired parts of the island and John D Rockefeller donated over 10,000 acres of land to the trust. Rockefeller also built 45 miles of stone carriage roads that traverse the park. Acadia now covers 47,000 acres of property. This image was taken on one of Acadia's famous beaches namely, Otter Beach. The beach can be somewhat treacherous as I found out by stepping on a rock and taking a fall. Lesson learned - even though there are other people on a rock, make sure that you step on a dry part of the rock like they did.
There were about 50 photographers lined up to catch the sunrise. The sunrise turned out to be a very short one as the clouds were quickly moving east. I was able to catch the little light there was giving a warm glow to the cliffs as a wave began to crest toward the beach.