Landscape Photography- Acadia National Park

Each autumn now, for the past three years, I've been traveling up to Maine to spend a week photographing Acadia National Park. This was my fourth trip, and I learned a lot about my equipment, how I approach photography, and myself.

Acadia is a small park, with only about 40 miles of paved roads, and all contained on the relatively small Mount Desert Island. Each morning I woke up at 5am (4am my time), and left my motel at 6:00 to be in place for dawn half an hour later. After the sun rose at 6:50, I'd spend the rest of the day searching for new things to shoot. Here's what I learned:

* landscape photography is better when you don't shoot everything at f16. F2.8 is far more creative and interesting, and f1.8 is even better.

* once the sun peaks out, the best light is done for most of the rest of the day.

* always carry a compass and know where the sun will set and where it will rise. Use it throughout the day to determine where the sun will be when the light is perfect, and what it will light up.

* I need to get a larger rectangular filter holder to cover the 16mm setting on my wide angle lens. Now I have a full frame digital camera (Canon 5DMk2), my widest angle is 16mm instead of 21mm with my 1.3X crop cameras.

* when shooting at the coast, get tide charts to know when the waves will be peaking.

* after a day of rain, streams turn into hundreds of small waterfalls.

* the pre-dawn light is a beautiful blue, twenty minutes before sunrise.

* when I'm thinking of what to shoot next, I don't really want to eat anything, and have small snacks throughout the day instead of any meals. I often don't think of food for several hours. I love to sleep in, but when faced with the prospect of shooting the dawn, I can wake up at any time of the night. Sunrise is almost always better than sunset.

* shooting in a location where tens of thousands of pictures are taken each day, it's a challenge to do something different. Having shot four times there now, it was much harder to see worthy subjects. But I think my images are better for the extra thought that went into them.

I love flying into Bangor Airport; there are only two or three gates and it's much quieter than any other public airport I've flown into. Upon arriving, it was fun to go into the small store there and see one of my pictures on the cover of Bangor Metro magazine. I had a three page spread of my Acadia work inside the magazine. I was going to pick up a few extra copies when I left, but alas, October was gone, replaced by November.

Changing Business in a Bad Economy

It's been a strange year professionally for me. A year ago I watched as others struggled with the effects of a souring economy; I read stories about several photographers packing it in after years of being in business. It wasn't until about April when things started to slow down for me. My biggest client saw their revenues way down and slashed their marketing budgets dramatically. Consequently, I lost a client I'd had since 2001, as the first client dropped their services completely. Six months later, everyone has been more careful about where they spend their money, and business has been down for me about 50% as a result.

But while work has been down, some smaller jobs have kept me busy, as well as several personal projects and other clients, both old and new. While some photographers I know are getting out of the business, I'm excited about some new directions I'm heading in. In the past year, I've been doing more stock photography, and traveled to five different national parks (Shenandoah, Rocky Mountain, Arches, Canyonlands and Acadia) to work on photos. Next October I plan on leading my first photo tour to Maine to shoot in Acadia, with ideas for more trips and teaching photography in the works. I've done more fashion shoots, working with professional models, which makes a nice change from many of the people I normally shoot for marketing campaigns ("I hate having my picture taken..."). And while I've always relied on getting my own work and promoting myself, I'm seriously looking at the idea of getting a rep to help promote my business, negotiate contracts (my most hated part of my job), and land new and bigger jobs.

Stay tuned; the future is looking bright.