Photographs by Frank

Joan and I left on our more-or-less annual fall trip on the 9th of September and arrived back home last Friday evening (the 25th). As usual, we towed our teardrop camper and stayed mainly in parks; filling in with nights in commercial campgrounds when necessary.

This year we headed east and north… to Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We visited Acadia National Park, the Bay of Fundy National Park, Cape Brenton Highlands National Park and many points in between. As is our habit, we stayed off the highways and traveled mainly on the local roads, hugging the coast on this trip.

Thinking that this trip would be mostly about the landscape (and not about wildlife), I brought along my camera obscura in addition to my regular camera gear. This thought turned out to be true. Although we did spend time watching birds in a number of places and whales from shore at the Head Harbor Light on Campobello Island, NB the opportunities to make good wildlife photographs were few.

If one is going to photograph the landscape in this part of the world, one will eventually point your lens towards a lighthouse… or two… or three… or more! I certainly did!

My favorite lighthouse — not for its architecture, but for the people — was the Cape d’Or light in Advocate Harbor, NS. Cape d’Or is located at the head of the Bay of Fundy right where the bay splits into two “forks”. We arrived at this lighthouse one foggy morning shortly after breaking camp and parked at the end of the road.

Getting out of the car, the first thing we noticed was the noise of moving water. My thought was “this is going to be a good place to photograph crashing waves”. Heading steeply down the drive to the lighthouse proper, the noise of the water got louder but there was no surf to be found! The noise was caused by the Dory Rips, roiling currents caused by the tidal movement of water around the point. We had timed our visit perfectly to observe this phenomenon. By the time we left, a couple of hours later, the waters were quiet.

In addition to the lighthouse, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the keepers house was now a guesthouse and restaurant. When we arrived at the light, I began photographing mainly with the camera obscura. We seemed to be the only souls around although there was music gently wafting from the restaurant. After a few minutes, a fellow poked his head out of the door and shouted out to me asking if I was so-and-so. I said that I was not and continued to photograph.

When I was done, I headed into the restaurant to introduce myself. The fellow who shouted out was Darcy, the chef/proprietor. He said that there is a guy who looks like me (scary!) and sometimes photographs at Cape d’Or with a large format camera. Darcy was in the process of cleaning up after breakfast — the overnight guests had left shortly before we had arrived — and he offered us coffee and the last of the four-berry crisp leftover from the previous evening. We gladly accepted and spent some time chatting with Darcy and his girlfriend (whose name I don’t know but who is a medical student at the Univ. of Rochester).

As we went to leave, Darcy would accept no payment for the “leftovers” as he put it. (I’ll be sending him a few photographs!). On our way back up the hill to the parking lot, we met another couple on the way down. They would get no berry crisp… timing is everything!!!

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I made this exposure back on the 12th of November at the church in East Washington, NH. The building was locked up tight. Thus I was outside with the camera help above my head and the lens pressed flat against the window pane. I framed the photo using the tilting LCD on the back of the camera. Ain’t modern technology wonderful!?

One might ask how I knew that this scene existed if I had to hold the camera above my head. Well, I initially peeked in the window by standing on tiptoes on a small ledge and steadying myself by holding on to the sill. The scene, lit by the late afternoon window light, was wonderful but I was not going to be able to photograph it while standing on that ledge.

When I got back to my digital darkroom (i.e. the computer) I cropped the frame (as I most often do) to a 4:5 ratio, converted it to black and white and “developed” the image to my liking (in this case with a very slight warm tone). Next, I went to make a print.

One of the features of Lightroom’s print module is that it remembers which print template you had used during your last session. In this case, it just so happened, that the template which popped up containing my 4:5 cropped image was set to make a square print.

I was immediately struck by the square-cropped version, a possibility that I had not considered. The image had much more impact cropped to 1:1 than at the 4:5 ratio I had originally selected. Being stubborn, I printed both versions and have spent some time living with them.

The square crop is, to my mind, definitely stronger. What say you?

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Here are two more photos made using my camera obscura on the same afternoon. Since the ground glass of the camera obscura is square, these images are always in the 1:1 ratio. The two photos were made from essentially the same spot, at roughly ninety degrees from each other.

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