Exploring Acadia and Leaving the Camera Behind

Last week, I was in Acadia National Park on vacation. Acadia is one of my favorite places – it is literally nature’s playground. You can hike, bike, kayak, rock climb, swim (if you don’t mind cold water), explore tide pools, and sight see, and the photo opportunities are plentiful. I was lucky enough to have this be my fifth (maybe sixth) visit to the park, and even luckier to get to share it with someone special.

I ended up shooting with my DSLR only a few times throughout the whole trip and don’t regret it at all. I find it really difficult to be present in the moment while trying to photograph it, and to me a vacation isn’t really a break if I’m planning my travels around the sun and routinely skipping breakfast to wake up at an ungodly hour to catch sunrise. When I’m worried about light and composition, dialing in my exposure just right and snapping the shutter at precisely the right time, I’m not really noticing much else. It’s probably why when I snapped this photograph I didn’t really care that I was getting eaten by mosquitos and prancing across slippery rocks in a dress and flip-flops.

clouds, tide pool, sunset, Seal Cove, Acadia National Park, Acadia, Mount Desert Island, Maine, coast
Seal Cove Sunset : Prints Available

Pink clouds reflect in tide pools at sunset in Seal Cove near Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine.

The best way for me to enjoy the things I like to photograph is sometimes not to photograph them. Sometimes it’s best to just stop and feel the sun on your face, snuggle in the warm embrace of someone you love, and fully experience a moment in time without distractions. I enjoy sharing my travels and experiences with others through photography, but not taking photographs is beautiful in a way too. When you think about it, not having photographs can make that moment itself more private and personal as it becomes something only shared between you and those you are with at the time. In a day when people document their lunches on social media, that’s kind of special.

I don’t regret not taking more photos on my recent trip to Acadia. Instead of focusing my time fiddling with tripods and filters, forcing my boyfriend to wait around while I struggled with a composition, planning all of our excursions around good light and the best scenery, and missing meals so I could be out shooting during golden hour, we experienced our entire trip together and tried things I wouldn’t have bothered to enjoy if I had only been focused on creating images. It was a wonderful vacation, and I’ll take happy memories shared with the people I love before good photographs any day.

Prose from the Mountain

It was dark,
and the darkness was long and cold.
Stars peppered the night sky with distant points of light,
their warm life far too far away to ease our suffering.
Wind,
steady and strong,
poured over the frozen earth,
enveloping us in the cold and empty night,
pulling from us the last warmth of our wilting bodies.
We were alone,
save for ourselves,
tied to one another as fish hooked on a long line,
dying at sea…

My Highlight of Today

Forster's Tern, hover, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia

Angel Wings

“Do you like your job?”

The question came from a sixth grader. We sat together at the kitchen table in her family’s house, myself with a glass of water in hand, she bent over a few sheets of paper covered in questions she had come up with. My interview was part of a school project; the girl wanted to be a nature photographer one day. We were on her third page of questions and my second glass of water when she asked me if I liked what I did.

“I love it,” I told her. “I think it is really important to find something you are passionate about. If what you are doing doesn’t make you happy, then you have to ask yourself why you are doing it.” She nodded with eager eyes, lost in what I was saying. I had to repeat myself so she could write it down.