Pool's Open

Found this photo among 700 seal shots I took one evening with my friend George Soules. We decided to tackle the problem of too many blurry seal photographs and only a handful of sharp shots. After many different permutations of settings and going past the seals so many times they stopped looking at us, we did come away with a few suggestions. In a nutshell here are the suggestions: using faster shutter speeds was paramount, the larger the zoom the better, shooting at shallower depth of field didn't matter as much, and cranking up the ISO when needed was okay. Now here's the strange part, my best seal shots disregard the suggestions. This seal getting ready to dive into the ocean was shot at 1/800 sec at f/7.1 with 400 ISO using a 300mm lens. Following these guidelines should result in more consistently sharper images when shooting seal from a moving boat. To learn how to create images like this, consider taking my sunset cruise photography workshop off Mount Desert Island. 

EXIF data: Nikon D800, 300mm, f/7.1, 1/800 sec, ISO 400, 6/15/14, 5:39 PM

Pool's Open on Bunker Ledge, Mount Desert Island, Maine

Brisk Wind Dinghy

I couldn't pass up the quaintness of dinghies at the dock glowing with low golden sunlight during one of our sunset cruise safaris. The water's stillness presented reflections with equally beautiful golden light. I always enjoy getting out on the water with my camera in hand. I'll be sharing a few of my images from those trips on this blog over the next week. This one was taken at Islesford Town Dock on Little Cranberry Island in Maine just off the coast of Mount Desert Island. To learn how to create images like this, consider taking one of my nature photography workshops in Acadia National Park.

EXIF data: Nikon D800, 24-70mm @ 40mm, f/8 (&B there), 1/125 secs, ISO 200, 5/28/14, 7:25 PM  

Dinghies At Islesford Dock, Little Cranberry Island, Maine

Spring Stream Fern

Who says rain isn't good for photography? After the rain there are many wonderful streams and waterfalls to photograph in Acadia National Park. I spotted this scene while leading a photo safari along Jordan Stream and pointed it out to those on the safari. I was drawn in by the complementary colors of red rocks and the green fern. The next day I went out for about an hour trying to find this particular angle. To learn how to create images like this, consider taking one of my nature photography workshops in Acadia National Park.

EXIF data: Nikon D800, 24-70mm @ 29mm, f/10, 1/8 secs, ISO 100, 6/15/14, 4:00 PM

Spring Fern, Jordan Stream, Acadia National Park, Maine

Nursing Pup

Bunker Ledge just off Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island hosts a summer population of harbor seals and gray seals. When the tide and sun align, there is beautiful light for taking pictures of the seals (I hesitate to say 'shooting the seals'). Living in Seal Harbor affords us the convenience of taking our 28 foot Ellis lobster yacht out to the ledge every week of the summer. This was a lucky shot! I never noticed the seal pup, let alone the that it was nursing, until I reviewed my pictures for sharpness and interesting compositions. My attention was drawn to larger and brighter seals in a different area of the frame. As I zoomed in on the image to check detail sharpness, I scanned to the left and noticed the nursing pup. Yup, a very fortunate moment to capture! To learn how to create images like this, consider taking my sunset cruise photography workshop off Mount Desert Island.  

EXIF data: Nikon D800, 300mm, f/8 (&B there ;-), 1/640 sec, ISO 200, 5/28/14, 6:27 PM

Nursing Seal Pup, Mount Desert Island, Maine

Here's the original shot, where my attention was drawn to the larger and brighter seals in the center of the frame. I was trying to include the red buoy and waiting for waves to wash up on the right side of the ledge. All the time shooting that evening, I was never aware of that cute pup nursing.


Macro Rhododendron

It's spring in Maine and I decided to visit the Asticou Azalea Garden in Northeast Harbor as it comes into bloom. Frankly, photographing flowers usually bores me, so I tried mixing it up this year with some different angles using a macro lens. This lens was made back in the mid-70's and still produces some wonderful results. Though it's a 55mm lens, when paired with the D800, there is plenty of detail to crop down the shot. Here's my favorite shot of the day with all the details of my post-processing in Lightroom. To learn how to create images like this, consider taking one of my nature photography workshops in Acadia National Park.

EXIF data: Nikon D800, 55mm (macro), f/5.6, 1/100 secs, ISO 200, 6/7/14, 4:20 PM

Blooming Rhododendron, Asticou Azalea Garden, Northeast Harbor, Maine

Below are my post-processing steps in Lightroom, starting with the raw file.

First I tried a square crop. All the editing happened with the square crop.

Add some sharpening (+39) and adjusted the Tone Curve for a bit of contrast (an s-curve shape) making the darks darker and lights lighter.

Now for some very subtle tweaks on the Basic panel mostly to brighten the flower and darken the background: Highlights (+5), Whites (+5), Vibrance (+6) and Post-Crop Vignette (-8).

Okay, it's a good looking flower with pretty colors, but missing energy. I tried a few different crops before settling on this one.

As a bonus, here's my second favorite shot from that day - some white flower thingy. Enjoy!

White Flower, Asticou Azalea Garden, Northeast Harbor, Maine