I think I’ve found my groove again (though it’s likely gone now that the rain has caught up with me). Maine has been good to me, or my portfolio anyway. Not so much my wallet, as I finally had to replace my rear brakes, and I dropped my most important lens filter the other night and put a nice big crack in it, and had to replace that as well. And I can’t say that my toes, nose or fingers are particularly fond of the state, at least not this time of year. It’s been a tad chilly (mid 30′s at night, I admit I am a bit of a wuss – I don’t like cold weather. Though I hate hot weather even more.) I thought I might need to worry about frostbite yesterday morning while I was sitting at Midas, waiting for my car. I swear there was no heat in the waiting area. And there might not have been, another customer (obviously local) remarked “It’s only October, we don’t need heat yet!” I beg to differ. I’d have grabbed my winter coat, wool socks and ear warmers out of my car had I known. My toes were thoroughly numb by the end, and I think my nose has been running non-stop since I crossed the New Hampshire/Maine border.

I started the Maine portion of my trip off in Acadia National Park, which was quite lovely. I would say that I’m a sucker for any national park that’s on the ocean, but Florida’s got a couple of national parks, and I’m just not a big Florida fan. Too hot and humid, and way too many mosquitoes. I digress. Maine. Acadia. I started Friday morning off at the Bass Harbor Lighthouse and then aimlessly drove around the park before deciding to drive out to the West Quoddy Lighthouse in Lubec, which happens to be the easternmost point in the United States. I’m still trying to figure out why the lighthouse is “West” Quoddy though. I had wanted to go there when I was planning my trip, then decided I really couldn’t justify the extra 140 or so miles and scrapped it. But once I was in Maine I decided I might as well go if I wanted to that badly, when am I likely to be in the area again? I was quite pleased with the decision, the sun was shining, it wasn’t too horribly cold, and there were some lovely clouds. And now I can say I’ve been to all fifty states And the easternmost point. It’s all about the bragging rights.

The following morning I got up bright and early (ie it was still dark), and drove over to the Schoodic Peninsula in the eastern section of the park. I followed the park loop but it was a small row boat on the way back to the highway that caught my eye. I wasn’t as pleased with the Bass Harbor shots as I’d have liked so I stopped by there again once I’d headed back to Mount Desert Island. You’d think after shooting as many lighthouses on this trip as I have that I would be able to get at least one shot that’s not the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but apparently not. (Minor leaning can be fixed in Photoshop, major tippage, not so much.) Thankfully, my second shoot there went much better. After more aimless driving I eventually wound up back at the campground for a little nap before heading into Bar Harbor to do a little shopping. I hate to shop, unless there is food involved, so I quickly found myself finished there and on my way to the top of Cadillac Mountain. The view from the top was amazing. You’d never know it was past peak color, the hills were covered in reds and yellows. It was also quite windy up top, and bleeping cold. I literally dripped snot down the back of my three thousand dollar camera, how disgusting is that???

Sunday morning I started working my way down the coast and at the Owls Head Lighthouse in Rockland I chatted with a fellow photographer who told me that I absolutely had to go to Pemaquid Point. He was actually the second photographer to tell me it was a “Must Shoot” location, the first being Ian, the calendar photographer I met in North Carolina. It wasn’t too far out of my way and I had time to squeeze it into the day so after walking the 7/8 mile Rockland Breakwater, off I went. I was not lead astray, Pemaquid Point Lighthouse was a fabulous place to shoot. With a lot of lighthouses you’re very limited in the number of different compositions you can come up with, but you can walk all the way around the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point, and the rock layers along the bluff were fascinating from a photographic perspective. I spent much longer there than I had anticipated but did still make it to the Marshall Point Lighthouse before the sun went down. And this is where my circular polarizer met its Very Untimely death when it slipped throuh my cold fingers and landed on the lighthouse bridge. I was not a happy camper, but I was able to get some good shots even without it.

Yesterday I started may day off at the aforementioned Midas before heading down to Portland where I found a camera store and then caught a boat tour of Casco Bay. It was narrated and I’m sure it was highly interesting, but I was in photo mode and kinda tuned the poor guy out and really can’t remember too much of what he said. I did pay attention for a bit while he was talking about the Ram Island Lighthouse, which he kept referring to as ugly. I Loved it. Before it was automated the lighthouse keepers would serve two weeks at a time at the lighthouse, which sits on a small strip of rock in the middle of nowhere. Sucked to be them! After the tour I drove out to the Portland Head Lighthouse, which was positively crawling with tourists so I took a couple pictures and decided I’d come back this morning before the crowds arrived. On my way back into town I stopped by the Portland Breakwater Lighthouse, affectionately known by the locals as “Bug Light,” and wound up shooting there until it was too dark to focus and too cold to feel my fingers, even with gloves on.

I was smart(er) this morning and layered my running tights under my jeans for want of long underwear, although I was having such a good shoot at Portland Head this morning that I probably wouldn’t have noticed the cold anyway. There wasn’t a single tourist in sight, just a couple other photographers. It was great! I stopped by the “Bug Light” again and its neighbor lighthouse at Spring Point before heading down to the southern tip of Maine to shoot some really old cemeteries. Some of the people there have been dead for almost 250 years now, and I was highly intrigued by the skull and crossbones carvings that adorn many of the older markers. And now I find myself in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in a rainy parking lot in front of Panera Bread, where I spent six or seven hours until I left (before I got kicked out) as they were finishing up the cleaning. I must admit, I’ll be glad when I don’t have a website to update every few days. Less than two weeks to go, my adventure is almost over. I’ve decided that I’m going to bypass Buffalo and Niagara Falls due to last week’s freak snowstorm (One of the Midas mechanics was telling me about how he’d just spoken with a friend of his who lives an hour outside of Buffalo…they didn’t get a single flake of snow even though Buffalo got two feet worth.) I’m going to spend my extra time playing in my own backyard and hit Moab and Zion on my way home. I think I’m actually in red rock withdrawal! In the meantime, I’m heading towards Boston and tomorrow night I will be meeting up with my friend Ayan and his wife. They have so kindly offered me their spare bedroom as a home base for a couple days while I shoot Cape Cod, Rhode Island, etc. He’s worrying about getting it cleaned up for me, but if it has heat, or even if it’s just warmer than the back of my truck, then it’ll be great! Yeah, I’m definitely not picky at this point in the game!

Greetings from Belfast, Maine…or somewhere in the vicinity.

I thought I was doing a really good job at remembering the highlights of the past week or so, even with my head in the clouds. My super geek made my day today, and I’ve been wandering around grinning like the lovestruck fool that I am. (No, I don’t know when he’ll be home, but this was almost as good.) I completely forgot to mention touring the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, VT yesterday. They were expecting 24 busloads of people to tour yesterday, roughly 2,100 people. I stopped in there on a whim, but who knew it was that big of a deal? It wasn’t quite Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but it was still pretty cool to see the machines where they mix up the base product, where the flavoring gets added before it gets cooled to 22 degrees (the magic temperature where chunks stay put and don’t float or sink), and later go into the Spiral Hardener where huge fans drop the temperature to a hundred below. They even have a Flavor Graveyard on the grounds. I’ve toured many a cemetery lately, but this was a first. Each of the “dead” flavors is marked with a grave and an often humorous rhyming epitaph.

Miz Jelena’s Sweet Potato Pie

One Potato, two potato,
Sweet Potato Pie,
No one could appreciate it,
So we had to let it die.

1992-1993

Greetings from Augusta, Maine!

I left DC rather late and wound up having to skip the Lancaster County, PA mills that I had intended to shoot on my way to New Jersey. I figure this is probably just as well, seeing as that’s where the Amish schoolhouse shooting was and they were still holding funerals last Friday - the last thing they needed was yet another out of towner. After spending an inordinate amount of time sitting in traffic I eventually made it to Ocean City, where I spent the night, and half of the following day, with the O’Neill’s, our neighbors back when we lived in Hawaii. Besides the fact that Kristin has grown up quite a bit (she was eight or nine the last time I saw her), you’d never know it’s been a nine years (I think?) since I saw them last. I think Jim and Lisa can make anyone feel at home. (Thanks again, I’m so glad I got a chance to stop by and catch up!) After watching a couple episodes of Grey’s Anatomy with them on DVD, I forced myself out into the rain and headed down to Cape May to shoot the lighthouse there. You may notice the pictures of it (I think I took maybe three shots) didn’t make it onto the website – the light was Terrible. Thankfully, the weather was improving as I headed up the coast and actually a bit sunny by the time I stopped at Barnegat. I was supposed to have spent the day in New York City, hanging out at the Staten Island Boat Graveyard and the old Renwick Smallpox Hospital, but eventually decided to scrap those plans and save them for another trip. Too much of what I wanted to shoot was in sketchy parts of town and I just didn’t feel okay about wandering around there alone. Better safe than sorry. I bypassed the city altogether and headed for Newburgh, where I would be catching a boat out to Pollipel Island the following day.

Touring Bannerman’s Arsenal was one of the things I was most looking forward to when I was planning my trip. Besides my day trip out to the Dry Tortugas, Bannerman’s has been my only other real “splurge.” For the most part, if I couldn’t get into a place for under fifteen bucks, it didn’t make the list of places I would be going. A little bit of background…around 1900 Frank Bannerman was busy buying up all the surplus war munitions he could get his hands on, and storing them all in Manhattan. The city started getting a little nervous about what might happen if any of this exploded, and Frank decided to move the munitions into storage on Pollipel Island, in the middle of the Hudson River fifty or sixty miles north of Manhattan. Being a tad eccentric though, rather than build a warehouse to store them in like any normal person, Frank decided to build a castle, as well as a residence on the island. Manhattan had had good reason to worry, as several years later the gunpowder did explode, blowing out windows up and down the Hudson River, and another fire in 1969 left the remaining brick shells of the buildings that can be seen today. The tour was very interesting from a historical perspective – our tour guide Margaret was very knowledgeable - but photography-wise, I found it rather frustrating. Being part of a tour I was very much limited to how much I could wander around and found it difficult to get the shots I wanted. It was also early afternoon and not really the best lighting. Oh, did I mention that it was a hard hat tour? My lovely yellow hat kept interfering with my ability to see through my camera and I wound up wearing mine backwards for most of the tour, regardless of how much of a dork I must have looked like. Even though I’m not all that excited about the pictures, I’m still glad I got a chance to go out and visit the island.

From Newburgh I headed north towards Albany, where I was highly disappointed to discover that one of the cemeteries I’d been looking forward to shooting has been closed by the town and huge “No Trespassing” signs posted. The Forest Park Cemetery in Brunswick is rumored to be one of the most haunted cemeteries in the country, and while it was abandoned for several years, vandals supposedly knocked the heads off of all the statues. From what little I could see from the padlocked main gate, which wasn’t much, it looked like things had been cleaned up quite a bit. Ahh well. The disappointment continued when I reached Vermont. I knew when I was planning my trip that I was running the risk of missing the peak fall leaf colors, and this turned out to be very much the case. Even though the weather was still nice the first day I was in the state, I just couldn’t seem to get into the photo zone and camped early so that I could finish reading the Katharine Kerr books I’ve been working my way through throughout the trip. Even after I’d finished the latest book in the series the following morning, I couldn’t seem to get all that into photography. I’m not sure if it was just the gloom, or if after nearly three months on the road I was finally starting to get a little burned out from pretty much non-stop picture taking. Thankfully my foul temper and general apathy had disappeared by the time I reached New Hampshire last night and I had a great shoot at Sabbaday Falls (above). I’m very glad that I stopped there last night, as the original plan had called for me to shoot there this morning. It Downpoured last night. All night (I was woken up frequently by the sound of rain beating on the roof of my truck.) When I hiked out the Arethusa Falls this morning, the dainty little waterfall that I had been expecting to find had turned into a muddy, monster waterfall with water flowing over part of the trail, and the drenching spray made it impossible to shoot. My luck was the same at Crystal Cascade, though at least it was a much shorter hike to disappointment.

And that about sums things up. Gotta get going, my FTP program and my website server have not been playing nicely together and it took a ridiculous amount of time to get the new pictures posted. I’m on my way to Acadia National Park and from there I’ll be heading down the coast towards Boston. Hopefully I’ll have some great photography weather, I’ve got two and a half weeks left and it would be nice if I could finish things off with some portfolio worthy material. Fingers crossed….

Where to even start???? It’s so much easier to update things when it’s only been a couple days, not more than a week, and a busy week at that. The Florida portion of my trip didn’t quite go like I had thought it would, though I knew it was going to be a very quick part of the trip…I just didn’t quite realize how tight on time it would be. I thought I would get to see a little more of the state in the daylight, but I wound up driving through the Florida Keys in the dark on the way down to Key West, and then on the way up the coast as well. Luckily, I was not the least bit disappointed by my catamaran trip out to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, a small cluster of islands about 70 miles off Key West. When we arrived at the island the weather was beautiful, if a tad hot for my liking, and I immediately set off to walk along the moat wall that runs around the fort. I had been loaned a set of snorkeling gear, but by the time I had finished wandering around the fort and checking out all the portions of it that were open to the public (pretty much everything except the staff’s living quarters and the park headquarters) the clouds had rolled in and the wind was picking up. I never did wind up getting in the water, and the thunder was very much rumbling when the tour got back on the boat to head back to Key West. The water was a bit choppier than it had been on the way out, and I wound up laying down on my bench and taking a little nap after I started feeling queasy, but thankfully I never did puke, and once things calmed down again I spent the rest of the trip chatting with the crew. They were a very likeable bunch and cracked me up, and it turned out Anna had recently spent a couple years working on a fishing boat in Kodiak, where we lived when I was in elementary school.

Unfortunately, the day took a turn for the worse when I got back to the parking lot where I had left my car only to find that my front tire was looking like a squashed donut, thanks to a rather large nail (see previous blog). I was rather glad that I was quite capable of changing my tire myself, seeing as not a single person offered to help, though I do have AAA service. By the time I got my tire changed and called around to find a place that I could get my tire repaired further up the coast, it was almost six o’clock and I soon found myself driving through the Keys in the dark, again. I had campground reservations near Jupiter, a good 200 miles north of Key West, which turned out to be a pain in the butt because I couldn’t find the damn state park and wound up having to stop at a gas station and ask for directions at 2am. I slept for a few hours, then got up the next morning to shoot a couple lighthouses, and get my oil changed, have my flat repaired, rotate my tires and do all that fun maintenance stuff that keeps me from winding up stranded on the road. Rather than sit in traffic in Jacksonville though, I opted to hang out at the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Unlike most lighthouses that I’ve visited, St. Augustine has a large deck up top, below the smaller deck that rings the beacon itself. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and there was even a little breeze on the deck, though it was completely still down below. I met Neah (sp?) and her friend John and chatted with Neah for quite a while. I very much enjoyed her company, and by the time we got kicked out at closing time, I was in no danger of sitting in any traffic.

I spent Saturday morning wandering around Savannah before heading out to Tybee Island to catch a dolphin tour. Mostly I was just looking to get some pictures of the Cockspur Island Lighthouse, this cute little lighthouse out in the middle of the bay…the dolphins were just added bonus. A group of people happened to be out feeding the dolphins and our tour boat pulled up alongside them so I was able to get some pretty good shots. Savannah had been on my list of places to visit for years and I was glad to finally get a chance to go there, though as much as I enjoyed the architecture, I’m just not very good at photographing it. I was a tad disappointed with the Colonial Park Cemetery, but I’m also a bit spoiled and have had the chance to check out some amazing historic cemeteries. That said, I was fascinated by the gravestones that had been pinned up along the brick wall along the rear of the cemetery. The gentleman at the Savannah visitor’s center had explained that when the city was turned over to the North during the Civil War, the Yankees did a lot of damage to the cemetery and it didn’t sound as though a lot of the stones were able to be matched up with their graves afterwards.

From Savannah I headed north towards Charleston, where I met up with Jenny, who used to live next door to my family when we lived in Hawaii. I hadn’t seen her for ten years and had only recently gotten back into contact with her, so we spent a good three or four hours at the Mexican restaurant catching up. I had a great time. And oddly enough, tomorrow I’ll be spending the night with the family who lived on the other side of us in Hawaii, who now live in New Jersey. After lunch I headed to the Magnolia Cemetery, which I have decided has to be one of the prettiest and most photographic cemeteries I have been to. A lot of cemeteries have stones and statues that I find interesting, but there are very few that interest me when it comes to wide shots…most are too neatly laid out, and rather boring. The Magnolia Cemetery was anything but. There were trees all over the place with moss hanging down, and the older sections that I was wandering through were in a very photographic state of disrepair. I was highly annoyed when a woman came by and said they were locking up, the light was perfect and I wasn’t the least bit ready to leave. It was probably just as well, I had quite a bit of driving to get done if I was going to catch a boat out to Cape Lookout (North Carolina) the following morning. It was a slow morning and I wound up being the only person on the little boat, so Captain Ed just sat on the boat near the dock while he waited for me to take my pictures and then took me back to the Mainland in time for him to do the next run out to the island. That worked out really well since it bought me a little bit of extra time to ensure that I made it up to Cedar Island to catch the ferry out to Ocracoke in the Outer Banks. The ferry ride was perfect. My truck and I were covering miles, but for once I wasn’t having to drive, and for two and a half hours I got to veg and read. It was great!

I spent the rest of the day shooting lighthouses and chatting with a calendar photographer I met at Cape Hatteras. Ian is very much a photography purist and we wound up debating the merits of shooting film/medium & large format media versus digital. While I have to agree that using a medium/large format camera will force you to become a better photographer (you have to know everything there is to know about exposure, it’s all manual focus/operation, and there isn’t really a normal viewfinder per se, the image you’re looking at when you set up the shot is upside down and backwards) but digital is definitely the more cost effective way to go. There’s no way that I could afford to be taking this trip if I was going to have to pay for developing hundreds of rolls of film. And for me, switching to digital has made me a much better photographer not only because I’m not limited by how much I can afford to shoot, but also because the instant feedback allows me to play around with different settings and see the results immediately, instead of a week after I’ve taken the picture when I can no longer remember how I took the shot. Speaking of cameras…for awhile there I think I was telling Chris every other day how much I love my new camera, if not daily, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here. For those that might not know, I spent four months working a night job to be able to afford to buy my Canon 5D before I left on my trip. At the time I wondered if the sleep deprivation and loss of my social life were going to be worthwhile, but I absolutely love my new camera!!!

Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked…From the Outer Banks I headed up to Washington, DC, where I’ve spent the last two days hanging out with my dad (Thanks, Dad!!! I’m glad I finally got to see your apartment here….love the shower curtain! ). I finally did laundry yesterday, for the first time since I left home at Labor Day. My mother laughed at me when I packed pretty much every pair of socks and underwear I own, but I’ve been quite thankful that I did. I took the Metro downtown today and wandered around some of the memorials, but the weather was rather gray and uninspiring, so I spent most of the day sitting in a cafeteria reading book number eight in Katharine Kerr’s novels of Deverry and the Westlands. I did walk back down to Hains Point to take a get a few more shots of “The Awakening” before catching the Metro back to my dad’s apartment. The statue of a giant rising up out of the ground was the only “must photograph” place on my list in DC so my dad and I had driven down there yesterday morning, but the light hadn’t been right for the shot I wanted. A lot of people aren’t aware that the statue exists, it’s in a rather out of the way place, and I’ve been quite thankful that my friend Braden visited DC years ago and sent me a picture of it.

Technically it’s almost 4am on Day Seventy-Seven and I really need to be getting some shut-eye. I’ll be in Vermont come Monday and then I’ll be spending the next two weeks hanging out in New England. I’m very much looking forward to not having to drive long distances, which also means I should have more time to be updating my website. It’s hard to believe we’re almost a week into October now and that my trip will be over with in just over three weeks. The last couple months have flown by, but I’ve been so glad I’ve been making this “little” journey!