On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
JanieM
We’re back in Maine as far as pictures go, but for conversation’s sake I want to grab a loose thread from the Mendocino series and weave some afterthoughts around it.
From Mendo #4:
Each place has taught me something about photography, and vice versa. Taking pictures has reminded me that the landscape is one of the main reasons I moved to Maine. Visiting Mendocino surprised me photographically, because the colors, light, and subject matter are so different from home that they required me to think more instead of just falling into the shot.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan) commented on that thread:
Since I live in Mendocino County and have never visited Maine, I wish you would talk a bit more about this – I find it fascinating.
I wrote a long but not exactly on point reply, then raised the question with Steve later in the day. Our exchange went something like this:
Janie: someone else asked this in one of the earlier posts, and I find it bafflingly hard to put it into words; it’s relatively easy to talk about the different mix of trees, the shape of the hills, etc, but quite hard to talk about the light….
Steve: thinking out loud for a moment . . . there seems to be more magenta in the landscape here . . . and maybe yellow . . . the colors in Maine seem to be more discrete; here they tend to run together more
Janie: that is wonderful . . . and it also clarifies something for me about the colors! because I think that’s exactly it, and part of why i was so flummoxed for a while. But it’s a hard thing for someone who isn’t as visually sophisticated as you to pick up, much less articulate it. I have felt it, but could never quite put my finger on it beyond feeling like “Mendocino isn’t as colorful,” or it’s more subtle, or something. And this fits with the fact that I find summer less fruitful for picture-taking in Maine than the other seasons . . . it’s all green! There’s far less color variation in the landscape than in the other seasons.
Steve: also something I think is important . . . parcel sizes seem to be larger here . . . pretty much all the rural land between Ukiah and the coast is 40 acres or more . . . with many bigger parcels held by large timber companies . . . that 40 acre minimum is by law . . . and the supervisors at one point over 20 years ago turned down an application to halve the forty acre parcels owned by the Shandels . . . the supervisors said that would change the entire sense of the county and they weren’t going to allow it.
Madeleine also commented in Mendo #4:
It seemed to me that your photos, JanieM, of Mendocino environs are different both in content and hmmm style. But the Keene farm photo returned to Maine. The two yellowish lines of the track caught my eye first, in its green field, and a bit later the scattered sheep. But then I noticed layers—very Maine, I think—the dense wall of evergreens, a backdrop to the individual greening trees capturing the house, and forward to the bright green field, scattered sheep, and parallel lines of track.
Madeleine’s comment gave me a lot to ponder. I think she’s right about the Keene farm photo, and it’s partly because that scene was more Maine-like than a lot of the countryside in Mendocino County. So when the opportunity presented itself, I reverted to form! More often I didn’t know what to shoot a lot of the time because I was facing an unfamiliar landscape, however beautiful.
As to unfamiliar landscapes, an article Steve sent me from PetaPixel magazine echoes something I said in my first barn post [my bold]:
[Australian photographer Christian] Spencer, who has been living in the Brazilian rainforest for the majority of the last decade, has captured macaws, emus, and green-headed tanagers. He tells PetaPixel that he has been a professional painter for the last 25 years, but only bought his first camera at age 37, eight years ago.“A large proportion of the photos have been taken in Brazil and the rest in my home country, Australia,” he says. “[There are] many challenges in all types of photography, including in the rainforest, but your best tool is observation. It’s only with years and years of observation that you can capture secret moments and rhythms of the rainforest.”
Lots to ponder on the road to becoming a better photographer.
Gardiner Common – Such good light isn’t always easy to come by in the middle of the day. I got lucky with a sky that was partially overcast, with the low sun of November coming through the gaps to light up both the clouds and the remnants of fall foliage.
The back forty.
The Jesse Lee Church at sunset. The church is at a high point, looking south across the hills.
Just below the Mill Stream dam.
At the foot of Torsey Pond.
Fall color floats on the water.
For a while.
Longfellow Square on a June day. I’ve been trying to get more comfortable taking pictures with a city vibe, and Portland is my best chance. It’s a lovely, walkable little city, with great food, a park that sits above the ocean, and people from practically everywhere. According to Portland’s Wikipedia page, “About one-third of the district’s students come from homes where languages other than English are spoken. More than 60 languages are spoken by the student body.”
One of my earliest depth of field experiments. (Anyone want to clean my windows?)
This one was a balancing act between the sunset glinting on the water (to the left of the frame it was almost too bright to look at) and the darkness of the shadows/reflections.
The Kennebec River in winter, looking north from the East Side Boat Landing.
Baud
High quality pictures. Lovely.
There go two miscreants
I loved these pix. Since I am a sometime-model-railroader (mostly spent daydreaming, unfortunately) the last one was notably resonant: the time period characterized by all those low brick buildings has been a favorite of many rail modelers.
Torrey
Lovely pictures! I think Madeleine makes an insightful point about the layering. It would be interesting to pair up some of the Maine pictures with some that you took in Mendocino in terms of composition, as far as that’s possible. I’m not quite sure how to put this into words, but with the Maine photos, I always have the sense of places behind or beyond what we can see. Yes, of course, there are always places behind whatever the picture shows, and there are always things beyond the edges of the picture. But the Maine photos suggest them more powerfully, I think.
I do think it’s something about the light. I’ll have to put more thought into it. But for now, thank you for these pictures. They provided a bit of a restful start to what promises to be a stressful day.
Albatrossity
Beautiful, thanks for sharing these!
And this really resonated with me
That’s exactly right. I was a birder for many years, and those years of observation really help in picking time, place, and moments for bird photos. Moreover, it works both ways. Photography has taught me a lot about the birds; molt, migration, plumage patterns and behaviors can be caught in a split second and then become a learning experience. That’s really what I love about it, the constant education and learning.
MelissaM
I wanna go to Maine! (Apparently I’ve been, but was too wee to remember.) Janie, I’ll clean your windows! And I think my favorite of these is the boulders in the water with the sun. I know it’s cold, but I wanna dip my toes.
Munira
Beautiful photos as always and I love the discussion about the differences in light between Maine and California.
Eunicecycle
@MelissaM: That’s my favorite, too.
Kabecoo
A wonderful post, photos and text. Thank you.
J R in WV
I have been to Maine twice, once with my folks and little bro. Dad had a friend with a camp cabin on Petit Manan Point, we stayed with them for nearly a week. He could row out to a float on the bay, pull up a cage full of lobsters, take however many he thought we needed for dinner, drop the cage back into the sea. Was amazing.
The former farm at the end of the point was unreachable during the winter months when the family still owned it, now it’s a conservation estate.
Last time I spent 2 weeks with Wife in Maine, one week prowling around mostly abandoned quarries where gemstones (tourmaline, aquamarine, less common crystale) were mined and one week driving up the coast to the Roosevelt summer estate, now a national park of both Canada and the US. Was a wonderful time.
UncleEbeneezer
And here I was feeling all sophisticated for recently learning that fall color leaves look better with light hitting them from the back or side! Seriously though, lovely pics and neat discussion. Photography is one of those things I could see myself getting really into some day. Love the pics of Maine. Aside from the coast, Maine is one of those states where the inland portion just doesn’t have an image for me in my mind despite growing up in MA and having definite images of VT, NH etc.
way2blue
Janie, my favorite Maine photos of yours are the early farm ones with the stark clean lines of the outbuildings, inside & out. Nothing like that in northern California. Ours tend to be a bit shabby…
Of this set—I’m drawn to the patterns & colors of the fall leaves floating in the pond and the nearshore boulders at sunset. Thanks for sharing. Always a treat.
Benw
SO PRETTY
Xavier
I’m from New Mexico where the light is definitely part of the landscape. I think a big part of the difference is minimal atmospheric backscatter, especially when the sun is low.
UncleEbeneezer
Love the Gardiner Common picture especially. It’s such a great example of the quintessential Common that I always associate with New England, more than any other region. Also love the Back Forty, the cemetery (can’t go wrong with a New England cemetery) and the pond pics. Thanks for sharing.
UncleEbeneezer
@Xavier: There was a great passage in George Johnson’s In The Palaces of Memory, (a great, though outdated book about how our memory works) where he talks about revisiting a hike in the Sangre De Cristo mountains about 20 years after his first visit, questioning the verity of his memory. He definitely talked about the magical sunlight of New Mexico and the role it plays in highlighting it’s unique and beautiful terrain. I think we get a bit of that here in SoCal with our canyons too. I’ve definitely noticed that vistas can look almost entirely different based on just a couple hours of difference of the sunlight. It makes long, multi-hour hikes particularly fun.
artem1s
Aerial perspective is a term that helps explain the quality of light of thing. The more humidity and particulates in the air can determine the intensity of the hues in color photographs. In other words, the more ‘stuff’ in the air between you and the object, the more ‘grey’ or ‘brown’, muted or dull the color of the object. The stuff affects the way light is reflected. Distant objects have more air (and stuff) between you and them and are so more muted and the intensity is less vibrant and the details are more subtle and less distinct. Close objects, less air , less muted, more vibrant, more distinct. So a more humid climate will naturally have more stuff and an arid one less stuff.
JanieM
Thanks, you all. I’m glad you like the pics, and I have some responses to specific comments, but I won’t get to them until a little later given my current baby-sitting duties.
II love hearing people’s thoughts on light, location, etc. Much cool and useful stuff to think over.
JanieM
@Torrey:
– that’s an amazingly useful framing, and something I would never have thought of. I will put it right next to the light and the color balances when I think about these questions.
I hope you are getting through your stressful day okay.
@Albatrossity: The “works both ways” thing is a surprising extra pleasure of taking up this hobby.
@MelissaM: “I’ll clean your windows” – lol. We’ll talk. ;-)
@UncleEbeneezer:
Highly recommended! I have learned so much from it over these past couple of years, including being enticed out of a lot of habits of mind (not to say ruts!). Among other things, I’m learning how to take pleasure in an art where there’s no right answer, or best score on the test, and to just enjoy the journey. I’m also pretty sure it’s helping me fend off the effects of aging. I have cool stuff to think about every day, lots of content to keep track of, conversations with Steve, challenges to try to meet.
@UncleEbeneezer:
Or in the case of New England weather, a couple of seconds…..
JanieM
@way2blue: Plenty of shabby barns around here. ;-)
I just happen to live next to one that has been lovingly restored by someone who has made that his major hobby.
There are more barn pics — they’ll sneak in somewhere, sooner or later. Also, there are some old barns around the countryside that I’d like to take pictures of, but planning and strategy are needed for those.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Thanks for the Maine pictures and the revisit of my question about N CA vs Maine landscapes. Really interesting discussion! I love the picture of the boulders near the shore. So different from what I am used to. Is it granite? We have granite in Ca (especially Yosemite), and along the Mendocino coast, but far more prominent to me is what I refer to as “cheap rock”, which crumbles relatively easily (sedimentary).
And the change in light – subtle, but being on different edges of the continent makes a difference, obviously :-)
JanieM
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I assume they’re granite boulders, but someone with more knowledge is welcome to chime in.
Yes, I keep thinking about that. It reminds me of an odd thing about directions. I grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, where the north edge of the town is the shore of Lake Erie. The shore doesn’t run directly east-west, but close enough so that it’s fair to say the lake is “north” of town. And my family is obsessed with maps, so we are all very aware of compass directions when we travel, give directions, etc.
I have now lived for 35 years in a place where the (much smaller) lake is *south* of the house. And it still scrambles my sense of direction sometimes.
(If it’s not obvious, this relates to the issue of sunrise/sunset directions being reversed on the two coasts, and everything in between being opposite too. :-) )
I also keep trying to pin down the differences between the “feel” of the two coasts, Maine and northern California (quixotic task!) — and coming back to the dreaminess of the coast around Mendocino. I compare that village in my mind with the Maine coastal towns I’ve spent a lot of time in — and they are so different I have a hard time even deciding on what parameters to use. It isn’t tourist season vs off-season, because I never go to the coast here during tourist season. I don’t like traffic, or crowds….
Life is interesting.
JanieM
For that matter, I have to think for a split second when Steve says something is “east” of Mendocino. “East” is toward the ocean……isn’t it?
StringOnAStick
The fall colors floating on the pond is a perfect Haiku and watercolor inspiration!
Tehanu
Lovely pictures of a beautiful place. Thanks.