Bar Harbor is getting busy. While the construction and winter repair projects continue, signs of summer are all around. Here’s a photograph of the Margaret Todd who’s back in town and starting to give Frenchman Bay cruises.
Margaret Todd at the visitor's float
This photograph illustrates nicely what Bar Harbor is like during the early season. Frequent visitors to Bar Harbor will notice immediately that Margaret Todd is not at her normal pier. When this photograph was taken, she was operating from the visitor’s float off of the town pier because repairs were being performed on her own pier. Another change from normal in this photograph is the height of the masts. They are significantly shorter than normal because the extended masts were removed for renovation last fall. They’re not visible in this photograph, but they are ready to be installed. One more task to be finished while the season gets underway.
You can click the image above to go to more photographs taken the week of 5/20-5/27/2011.
Gallery News, Photography - General
Now that I’m back in Maine for the season, I’m going to start posting current photographs weekly. I’ve created a new category on my Smugmug site called Photos of the Week. Each week on Friday, I’ll create a new online gallery for that week and upload a selection of photgraphs taken in the preivous week. The first set of photographs for May 20, 2011 are online now. A preview image and link to the current week’s gallery will also be on the home page of the gallery’s website.
Spring Flowers
Gallery News, Photography - General
I’ve recently uploaded three sets of photographs I call Abstract Trees. The inspiration for all of these photographs is the graphic feel of white birch trunks against the surrounding natural colors. While it’s easy to find great photographs of birch tree trunks, my goal was to use abstraction to highlight the white of the trunks and colors of the background.
I define abstraction in photography as a deviation from an exact visual representation of reality. Photography, by its very nature, always involves abstraction simply by the fact you are producing a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional world. In this case, I wanted to increase abstraction in ways that removed much of the details while leaving and actually emphasizing the colors and basic shapes of the trees.
Otter Cove Trees #4, 2010
I used reflections in the Otter Cove and Bubble Pond sets. The Otter Cove photos were taken fall of 2010. I was shooting across Otter Cove at quite a distance from the reflections and the trees. This reduced the tree trunks to rather fine lines. The abstract tree shapes are there but the dominate element is the autumn colors. The Bubble Pond photos were taken this spring, 2011. I was much closer to the trees in this set and as a result the trunks become more dominate. This works well as the soft early spring colors do not have the impact of the oranges and yellows of fall.
Sieur de Monts Trees #3, 2011
The Sieur de Monts set uses intentional camera blur to reduce details and increase abstraction. The axis of camera movement matches the direction of the largest trunks. This keeps the trunk widths the correct size. It takes some experimentation to get the proper shutter speed and movement of the camera. If the shutter speed is too slow or the camera movement too fast, the image becomes too abstract and the sense of tree trunks is lost. But is the shutter speed is too fast and the movement is too slow, the image just looks like a bad photograph.
Photography - General
Acadian Morning - April 2011
The desktop background image for April 2011 is now available for download online. Click the image above to go to the gallery web site.
Gallery News
Baker Island Lighthouse, Rear View, 2010
Planning is continuing for the new season. I have more details on the Baker Island show at The Gallery Upstairs mentioned in a previous post. The dates for the show are June 18 through July 5, 2011. In preparation for the show, I’ve been working on a series of photographs taken last summer and fall. One of the photographs is shown here. Clicking on the photograph above will take you to an online gallery. A selection of these photographs will be available as framed prints and note cards at the Baker Island: Timeless show and afterwards at the Mason Gallery.
Gallery News
Marion and I are in Bar Harbor for spring break – yes, her students went south and we’re going north. It’s nice to have an opportunity to photograph the town, park and island in the off season and generally covered in snow. This has been a particularly snowy cold winter. I have started on new online gallery for photos from this week and will be adding to it during the week. You can see them here.
Row of seagulls facing away from the water
Gallery News
Baker Island is a small island 4 miles southeast of Mount Desert Island and one of the islands that make up the Cranberry Isles. It’s also the location of the earliest lighthouse built in the area. Currently, it is part of Acadia National Park with regularly scheduled cruises from Bar Harbor during the summer.
Baker Island is also the focus of an art exhibit at The Gallery Upstairs in Bar Harbor, Maine, during the Legacy of the Arts week in late June. Kathy Hall, Ivan Rasmussen, and I will be showing work during this exhibit. I’ll post more details on the show as it get closer, but this post is a sneak peek at what I’m working on for this show.
The Old Schoolhouse
Gallery News
I’m a day late, but the February wallpaper image is now available for download. As I say on the website, I don’t have the opportunity to be in Maine during the winter very often, so this month’s wallpaper is from the archives. This particular photo was taken at The Hickley Company boatyard in Manset, Maine.
These boats are the Friendship V and Bay King III which are used by the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company to give whale watching and lighthouse tours. Each year after the end of the season the boats are removed from the water and stored on land.
By the way, if you would like to download the full-sized image, just click the above image. This is the 1680×1050 version which works well for wide format screens. A 1280×1024 version is available on the wallpaper download page of the gallery website.
Gallery News
The technology changes I talked about a couple of posts ago are continuing. I hope to have some exciting news to post here in several weeks. In the meantime I just finally downloaded a WordPress app for the iPad that seems to be working. I tried this app previously and worked for days to get it to log into my blog with no success.
This post is being written on the iPad and will be posted from the iPad. Hopefully the post will look good and the iPad will be a good option for posting to the blog when using the computer is not convenient.
Blog News
One of my favorite off-season activities is an in depth review of photographs made during the previous season and deciding which photographs will become limited editions for the upcoming season. With the changes in hardware and software discussed in a previous post, I haven’t had a chance to begin this project in-depth. Still, I can’t help looking at photographs tagged as good candidates and even ‘playing with’ some of them.
Here’s a photograph that catches my eye. I call it Bernard Sunset. It was taken close to 8 PM on the evening of October 5, 2010. I was standing on the Little Island Marine pier in Bass Harbor, ME, looking across the harbor at Bernard. I spent over an hour photographing the changing light. For those interested in the details, the camera used was a Nikon D3 with a 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G normal zoom lens. The exposure was set at 1/800s – f/5.6.
Sun setting over Bernard, ME, and its reflection in Bass Harbor
Anyone familiar with my work knows I love reflections and often incorporate them in my photographs. With this photograph, the sky and its reflection both get equal emphasis. The tree line divides photograph in half resulting in a very balanced composition. The composition is not overly balanced though because of the differences in tonal values between the sky and the water. The dramatic warm colors and the details of the houses and boats hiding in the shadows (which may be difficult to see at this size) make this photograph.
I haven’t fine-tuned this image yet, so it’s likely some post-processing will be needed. It’s one thing to see an image on the screen, but it’s much different to hold the photograph as a physical object and experience it in the traditional sense. I will print some proofs at different sizes and consider things like overall tonal value, is it too dark or light, and shadow detail, are there enough details of boats and houses or too much. My goal is always to get it right in the camera, but there is always at least some post-processing necessary to get everything possible out of the image.
I think it’s safe to assume that is photograph or a very similar one taken on the same evening will be available as a new limited edition for the 2011 season.
Photography - Digital
