Rainbow & Squall - Acadia National Park

I had the honor and privilege to serve as an Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park this past October.   The National Park Service has residencies within the parks that have the facilities to house artists inside their parks.   Acadia uses former naval facilities on Schoodic Point as an environmental education center as well as for housing for the Artist in Residence program.  Schoodic Point is a beautiful rocky peninsula and is about a  1:15 drive from the main part of the park.  It many ways this served me well, because I had little desire to photograph the all the cliche scenes that every photographer who visits the park tries to shoot.  I always strive to capture scenes in a unique way, which to me means waiting for special light and/or weather conditions.  Having a thorough knowledge of a specific area and its weather patterns improves the odds of being at the right place at the right time.  I did see any point in capturing photos that have already been done over and over, so that left me free to exp0lore in the hopes of capturing photos that would be more unique.  Much of my time in Acadia saw cloudy, rainy days with flat, boring light.  That quality of light works well with intimate foliage shots, which I will be sharing in the future within this blog.

The photo I am sharing today was taken on one of the few sunny days that I experienced during my stay.  This day was especially calm and clear, with not a cloud in the sky most of the day.  But about an hour before sunset, a rogue and isolated storm appeared on the western horizon.  The storm system consisted of a single line of clouds that was perhaps 2 or 3 miles long.  It passed overhead in a terrible fury as I drove to the coastline where I hoped to catch a photo before the storm disappeared over the Atlantic ocean.   Rainbows only appear when looking directly away form the sun, so I was fortunate that the sun was setting behind me.  The low angle of the sun allowed the raonbow to really sizzle with color.  This rainbow is limited to band of squall area beneath the rain cloud on the left, as there was nothing but blue sky above the strip of clouds.

Come back to this blog often in the near future, as I will be posting more photos from Acadia.

• January 12 – February 2, Intermediate Photoshop, Center for Photography at Woodstock
• February 13 & 14, Stitching Panoramas with Photoshop, Center for Photography at Woodstock
• March 9 – March 30, Intermediate Photoshop, Center for Photography at Woodstock
• TBD 2010 – multiple workshops offered through the Adirondack Photography Institute

New book: Panorama of the Hudson River

After more than 3 years in development, my latest book, Panorama of the Hudson River, is now available.  Signed copies are available for $18 through my web site www.GregMillerPhotography.com.  This book, commissioned by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art and the Open Space Institute, is a photographic documentary of both sides of the river, from New York Harbor to Albany, updating and reprinting the classic 1910 Panorama of the Hudson.  Reed Sparking contacted me about doing this project over 3 years ago.  Thanks to the many many people who contributed to making this book and project possible.

The exhibit at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, which opened in July 2009 and end December 13, 2009, will re-open Feb. 1, 2010.   This exhibit consists of two 80 foot long prints (east shore and west shore), which allows the 150 miles stretch of the Hudson River from the Statue of Liberty top Albany to be viewed with no interruptions.

A 3 part story about the making of the panorama can be read on the Open Space Institute’s web site: www.osiny.org/site/PageServer?pagename=event_GregMiller

This photo was taken the same morning as the previous photo, but looking the opposite direction and taken at 5:40 AM.    While the patterns are critical to this photo too, the photo is more about the dramatic light.  This is why serious photographers are out shooting at a time of day when everyone else is still in an REM phase or enjoying their first cup over the morning newspaper.   You just don’t get light like this at noon (or even 9:00 AM)!

The tallest mountain in the far back right is Slide Mountain – tallest peak in the Catskills.

I recently had the pleasure of leading a photography backpack into the Catskill Mountains for the Appalachian Mountain Club.  These are always interesting trips, because in addition to hauling food, shelter, and clothing up the mountain trails, we also strap tripods and cameras to our packs, making for very heavy loads.  The reward for this work is being in position at remote places for the yummy light that sometime happens around sunrise and sunset. I had timed the trip for a time of year that, weather permitting, the direction of the sun at both sunrise ans sunset would be optimal for adding dimensionality to the surrounding mountain ranges (given their geographic orientation).

This photo is one of my favorites from the trip.  When reviewing the set of “keepers” from the trip, this photo is not the one that leaps out at you – it does not have flashy colors or spectacular light.  But it can sometimes be more satisfying making a compelling photograph from otherwise rather pedestrian elements.  The light is nice but not amazing and the colors are also nice but certainly not jaw dropping.  What I think really makes this photograph is the repeating shapes and patterns.  The image includes several groups of round top peaks, and as well as several triangles and diagonal lines in the mountain ridges and cloud formations.  The trick was to frame it all to make the patterns complement each other.  My philosophy of photography being an art of subtraction (compared to most other 2D arts like painting and drawing that are arts of addition) leads me to always eliminate elements in the scene until the composition is distilled down to only those elements that are necessary to convey what I see to the end viewer of the photograph.

This photo was taken with a short telephoto lens, which helps compress the scene and brings the elements together.  I selected an aperture of f8 – because all of the scene was relatively far away, depth of field was not an issue; I chose f8 because that is the sharpest aperture for my lens and provided more than enough depth of field for the photo.   I used a 2 stop graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure differences between the sky and land.  Time of capture was 6:30 AM – about an hour after sunrise.  The direction and intensity of the sun were just right to reveal the undulations of the mountains with swaths of soft sunlight and shadows, as well as imparting an alternating series of dark and light from front to back .

The mountains in the scene, from left to right, are:  Indian Head, Thomas Cole, Black Dome, Blackhead, and Round Top.

]]> http://x.gregmillerphotography.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=76 0 http://x.gregmillerphotography.com/blog/?p=72 http://x.gregmillerphotography.com/blog/?p=72#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:06:22 +0000 admin http://x.gregmillerphotography.com/blog/?p=72 I will be showing some of my favorite photographs the the Hudson River July 1 – 29, 2009 at the Ellenville (NY) Public Library & Museum.  There will be an opening reception July 1 at 7:00 where I will be presenting a 10 minute slide show and offering a short talk about my book, The Hudson River: A Great American Treasure (Rizzoli, 2008).   I will be signing books at the reception and will have books available for sale.  Please drop in and say “Hi”!