Acadia National Park - A Hackberry Farm Nature Photography Workshop field report

Pulling alongside the road in the dark, I can hear the waves crashing on the isolated cove below.  This is one of those moments where imagination comes full circle.  As a kid, I’d learned about Acadia National Park, and it’s a place that I’ve dreamt of visiting.  

Here we are.

By now, it’s light enough to see without the aid of light, so we make our way down the cliff to the cove, where we hear the waves resonate. The tide is out, so layers of stone erratics lay strewn about the oceanside. Along the cove’s margins, big, cragged rocks rise from the water. In front of us, big boulders give way to smaller, rounded stones—evidence of the incessant power of water’s ability to shape and carve the landscape.  

This is the perfect landscape spot: there are dozens of compositions here. All a photographer has to do is look.

Acadia is a good example of a place that offers plenty of opportunities for photography: rugged coastlines, quiet coves, big waves, glacial-carved lakes, and quiet, wooded glens are all part of the tapestry here.

This trip was planned as an extension to the Wild Horses of Sable Island nature photography workshop.  When the Nova Scotia trip concluded, some of us transited to Acadia to explore the park in earnest.

The weather was somewhat of a challenge.  After a summer-long drought, the creeks are dry, and just about every day is a blue-sky day - none of the dramatic cloudscapes I’ve been used to seeing from this part of the United States.  However, we persevered, and by the trip’s end, the weather began to change, and we did get some clouds.

I think the best thing about landscape photography is that every time you visit a place, there’s something different about it. Each day and each minute of the day brings nuanced changes to a place that’s worth exploring through a lens. As such, we visit a place or two on a couple of occasions. Our dedication paid off with nice photography of a beautiful park in an iconic part of the country.