Making Photographs at Schoodic Point

For the past several years, I’ve spent a week in September on Schoodic Point in the Acadia National Park, Maine. With the season passing through the equinox, there is a state of equilibrium. The sun’s lower angle gives the landscape definition. There is ample energy to warm the pink granite invitingly enough for a nap with the most pleasant restorative properties. With eyes closed, the senses bask in the music of breaking waves while the aromatic blend of spruce forest and rich marine organics waft on the breeze. Removed from vagaries of every day life, with nothing but the promise of the day, a crabmeat sandwich at lunchtime and the companionship of my watercolor-painting wife, this is a wonderful way to make photographs. 

The day defines location for photography. The early sunlight across the bay from the east moves higher overhead as the morning passes, shining directly onto the southerly protruding peninsula.  As the sun moves westerly in afternoon, the light turns golden then reddens as it drops toward the horizon, finally setting behind Cadillac Mountain just across Frenchman Bay. The warm glow of sunset and the afterglow of the “red blast” illuminate the quartz crystals within the granite as if lit by an internal flame. The phenomenon is fleeting but its revelations long lived. Meanwhile, back around to the eastern horizon a moon rises across Schoodic Bay reflecting a warm light on the bay, turning bluer as it climbs in the cooling evening air.