| Between the rain drops. |
 Sunrise above the fog - Acadia National Park. If you live in New England, you've experienced a lot of cloudy and rainy days so far this spring and summer. We must be averaging around one sunny day per week since June started. It is definitely pushing back my photo shooting schedule, as I am fairly dependent on having decent light for a lot of my work. Don't get me wrong, I love shooting subjects like flowers, waterfalls, and forests on foggy and misty days, but for the big landscapes, I need the sun! I spent most of the last two weeks in Maine's Acadia National Park and locales further east working on two guidebooks - the third edition of our adventure guide to Acadia, Discover Acadia, and A Photographer's Guide to Acadia, both due to be released next spring. For the adventure guide, I was still able to get a lot of work done, hiking in the rain. For the photo guide, I fell a few sunrises short of meeting my goals, so I'll have to make another trip up there next month (I know, poor Jerry...)  Hiker and Bold Coast sunrise in Cutler, Maine. The three photos in this post represent the few moments where the sun made an appearance during the last two weeks.  Blue flag iris on the coast of Great Wass Island near Jonesport, Maine. It had been five years since I last visited the coast of Maine east of Acadia, Washington County. Not much has changed in this little populated county (34,000) the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Most tourists visit the area to see the eastern most point in the U.S. or to take a boat ride out to Machias Seal Island to see the colony of Atlantic Puffins (to see my puffin shots from earlier trips just go to www.ecophotography.com and search on puffins,) but there is actually some great coastal hiking in the area and some fun kayaking in Cobscook Bay. For both the Cutler and Great Wass Island shots above, I needed to hike a couple of pre-sunrise miles to get to the coast in the good light. Well worth the effort. Until next time... -Jerry |
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| Conserving Land other than wilderness. |
 Soccer field in Ipswich, Massachusetts. My first two conservation photo assignments this spring have been on farms in Essex County, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. While not as sexy as wilderness conservation in the big north woods, Alaska, or the tropical rain forest for that matter, these types of projects play an important role in preserving the character of the New England landscape. Even though these farms are not true wilderness, they have scenic value, protect soils important to agriculture, and they provide habitat to wildlife. Farms, such as the one in Ipswich pictured above (the town currently leases a small amount of the land for youth soccer fields), often keep much of their land as hay fields which provide nesting habitat for grassland birds such as bobolinks and several species of sparrows. They are also the preferred habitat for the eastern bluebird. Populations of bluebirds and the grassland species have declined in New England over the last century as farm land was developed or abandoned and returned to forest, so it is important to protect farmland when possible. Some of the farm projects I work on are bought outright and maintained by a land trust or government entity, while others are protected through the purchase of conservation and/or agricultural easements which ensure the land will not be developed.  My friend David's daughter picks a bouquet of hay field flowers.  Daisies in an Ipswich, Massachusetts hay field. Until next time... -Jerry |
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| Spring in Acadia National Park |
 Early morning, Little Hunter's Beach, Acadia National Park I spent a couple days last week in Acadia National Park working on the revision to our recreation guide to the park, Discover Acadia. Working on a guidebook is much different than shooting stock photography or working on a photo assignment. I usually end up spending much of the day hiking or biking, generally exploring, and taking notes, but I'm always looking for photos as well. The hard part for me is remembering to get enough sleep since I'm usually compelled to get up at 4:30 to shoot sunrise and to stay out late for sunset as well. When there's no guidebook work to go with the photography, I usually steal a nap in the middle of the day.  Spring in Acadia National Park. In early spring, with the right light in a hardwood forest, the colors can be almost as vibrant as in the fall. The above shot in Acadia includes shadbush (in bloom), red maples, paper birch and northern red oak.  Paper birch in spring. Acadia has a few nice stands of paper birch trees. The above shot was made near Sand Beach, about 2 hours before sunset, just before the sun goes behind Champlain Mountain to the west. Over the next month or so, I'll have more to show from Acadia and Down East, as well as .... northern Massachusetts. Until next time... -Jerry |
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| More About Windrush Farm. |
 A class at Windrush Farm in North Andover, Massachusetts. In my previous post, I showed a couple of bog photos from a conservation project I'm doing at Windrush Farm in Massachusetts. The bog is an important habitat type on this 200 acre property, but more importantly, Windrush Farm is the home of Windrush Farm Therapeutic Equitation, a non-profit, working horse farm that has been successfully helping children and adults with physical, emotional, and learning disabilities since 1964. Their mission is to use the horse to expand the personal, emotional, and physical boundaries of all who ride and work with us. Unfortunately, Windrush only leases the property, which is now up for sale, but with help from the Trust for Public Land, there is a good chance this important therapy center will remain open.  Trotting. This $3.5 million conservation project will not only allow Windrush to continue their work, but will also allow public access to much of the forest on the property which is contiguous with another 1400+ acres of publically accessible open space. For more information about the conservation effort and fundraising campaign, click here. More to come... -Jerry |
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| Back in the Saddle. |
 Horses wear headnets too! I got out in the woods today, scouting a photo shoot I'll be doing on Wednesday for the Trust for Public Land at the Windrush Farm in North Andover, Massachsuetts. Thanks to some minor surgery a month ago and a family trip to Chicago last week, I hadn't been out shooting since the before the snow melted and it felt great. Though the trees are budding, the woods are still mostly gray and brown, but it was fun to see the usual early signs of spring like fiddlehead ferns and skunk cabbage. Oh yeah, and there were black flies and mosquitos too. I'll post more details about this project later in the week, but I did want to show a couple of photos tonight. One of the unusal habitat types on this property is an Atlantic White Cedar Bog, so I decided to search it out. After fighting thorny brambles for ten minutes, I got into the bog to find a wet, drab, swamp.  Atlantic White Cedar Bog. I'm always preaching to my workshop students that they need to work hard to simplify their compositions of nature in order to better communicate their stories, and this swampy area really challenged my ability to do this. After 30 minutes of fighting thorns, carefully traversing pools of calf-deep muck, and swatting at black flies, this shot was the best I could come up with. It was too messy and too drab for my liking, so I kept looking until I spotted a bright green skunk cabbage about 30 yards away.  Skunk cabbage and fallen cedar log. The skunk cabbage leaning against a fallen cedar log really simplified the scene and added enough color to punch it up as well. It's not as dramatic as the Grand Canyon, and my adventure is nothing compared to a National Geographic assignment, but this image should help TPL tell the story of how this property contains a rare and important habitat. And that's what my life as an "EcoPhotographer" in New England is all about. Until next time... -Jerry |
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| Cleaning Up for Earth Day and the Blue Ocean Society. |
 Kids picking up trash in salt marsh grass during a beach clean-up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Marcy and I took the kids to a beach clean-up on Pierce Island in Portsmouth yesterday. It was sponsored by the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, which "is a non-profit organization that promotes awareness and conservation of the marine environment through education and research in New England." In addition to their public outreach programs like the beach clean-up, Blue Ocean conducts important research on marine mammal populations on Jeffrey's Ledge, a unique marine habitat approximately 20 miles off New Hampshire's coast in the Gulf of Maine.  My son Quinn showing his enthusiasm for garbage. These beach clean-ups seem to be making a difference. Three years ago, the annual Pierce Island clean-up resulted in over 600 pounds of trash being collected. Now that figure is under 200 pounds. Our crew of six (there were about 20 crews total) managed to collect about ten pounds of both land-based trash (potato chip bags, candy bar wrappers, etc.) and marine based trash (lobster claw bands, bait bags, etc.) We found plenty of styrofoam and the clear-cut, consistent winner when it comes to waste - cigarette butts - we found 256 in an hour. What I find most satisfying about these beach clean-ups is not the trash that's picked up, but the enthusiasm for protecting the environment that is infused into the participants, inspiring them to find other ways to contribute to restoring our environment. Our kids were practically manic during the clean-up, excited at every little piece of trash they discovered and then purged from mother nature. That enthusiasm carried over to today as they were giddy helping me construct a compost bin in the backyard and tossing in the first apple core. With Earth Day this week, there will be thousands of these events happening around the country, and I'm hopeful they will inspire more people to start recognizing our need to take responsibility for the planet. To find an event near you check out http://www.earthday.net/.  Pierce Island in March, 2009. By the way, Pierce Island is in Portsmouth Harbor, a short walk from downtown Portsmouth. The above shot was from about a month ago after our last snowfall of the winter. Until next time,,,, -Jerry |
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| Discover the White Mountains Party, "EcoPrints", and Photoshop Seminars. |
 Discover the White Mountains, 2nd edition I've been quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks, but I have a good excuse. I had surgery to straighten out a deviated septum that's been causing me problems for years. Not a big deal, but enough to keep me out of commission for a few weeks. I'm starting to feel close to normal, and I'm confident that in another couple of weeks I'll be better than before the surgery, making the last few weeks worth it! O.K., since I haven't been shooting during this "downtime" I thought I'd make a few announcements: 1) On Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26, I'm teaching a pair of Photoshop Seminars: Basic Photoshop for the Outdoor Photographer and Intermediate Photoshop for the Outdoor Photographer. Both classes are shaping up to have less than 10 students, so this a great opportunity for someone looking to get some intense one-day instruction with the opportunity to ask a lot of questions. Both seminars run from 8 to 5 and are being held at the Sheraton Harborside Hotel in downtown Portsmouth, N H. More info and the registration page is at: http://www.jerryandmarcymonkman.com/photoshop_seminars.htm. 2) Party in the White Mountains! AMC Books has recently released the 2nd edition of our multi-sport guidebook, Discover the White Mountains. We spent a few months last year updating this book (which we originally wrote in 2000) with new new trips and photos, and it looks great if I do say so myself. We're having the first signing event for this book on May 9th in Gorham, New Hampshire (in the shadow of the Northern Presidentials) at the White Mountain Cafe. We'll be there from 6:00 p.m. to close (around 9), hanging with our North Country friends, sharing adventure stories, and signing copies of our books. The cafe also is the only retail outlet in the Whites that sells our fine art prints, and we'll be offering a one-night only 20% discount on all our framed and unframed prints in the cafe. See you there!  Mount Washington in fall. Now available as an "Ecofriendly" fine art print. 3) Finally, environmentally friendly photos! Fine art photography has traditionally involved using less than environmentally friendly materials, from virgin wood used to make the paper to the chemicals and heavy metals used to apply the image to the paper. I am so excited to announce that we have partnered with a new lab (http://ecovisualcom.com) to produce environmentally friendly fine art giclee prints. I've made some sample prints using this technology and they look great and they are just as archival as the chemical-intensive prints. Rick Colson, founder of the lab, has done his homework and found locally produced paper that is made of 100% recycled cotton and no chemical brighteners. He has also contracted with an ink manufacturer to produce 100% carbon pigment inks that are free of heavy metals and volatile organic compounds. And his print studio was designed to be as energy efficient as possible. Now our "EcoPhotography" can be displayed in an eco-friendly manner. For prices and to see our latest print collection visit our 2008 Print Gallery. That's it for now. Until next time... -Jerry |
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| Sap is running. |
 My kids enjoying maple sundaes at Folsom's Sugar House in Chester, New Hampshire. The maple sap has been running for a few weeks now in northern New England. Unfortunately, other work has kept me from shooting the whole experience much this year, but I did get out on Saturday with Quinn and Acadia. We went out to Chester, New Hampshire to check out Folsom's Sugar House and sample a little fresh syrup. It was the New Hampshire Maple Producer's open house weekend, so the place was hopping and the Folsom's were busy giving tours of the sugar house, selling maple products and dishing out sundaes.  Taking pictures. I was worried the kids might get bored after the sundaes were gone, but they really got in the photo spirit, shooting the sugaring operation inside and out and later downloading the pics to their Google Picasa collections and e-mailing photo collages to their grandparents. They made their photographer daddy proud! This is probably my only sugaring photoshoot this spring, but you can check out images I made on trips last year and in 2007 in my previous posts: http://blog.jerryandmarcymonkman.com/2008/04/04/maple-syrup-is-running.aspx http://blog.jerryandmarcymonkman.com/2007/04/02/sweet-spring-in-new-england.aspx -Jerry |
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| Mount Washington |
 A hiker's crampons on the Westside Trail on the western slopes of Mount Washington. This past weekend, Marcy and I led a photography "EduTrip" to the summit of New Hampshire's White Mountains on behalf of the Mount Washington Observatory. The observatory is a private, non-profit scientific and educational institution, with the mission "to advance understanding of the natural systems that create the Earth's weather and climate, by maintaining its mountaintop weather station, conducting research and educational programs and interpreting the heritage of the Mount Washington region." Our trip was one of those educational programs, as we led nine participants in experiencing the challenges of photography on the summit of the mountain that is home to the "World's Worst Weather."  Edutrip participants explore the ice-covered summit cone of Mount Washington. As you can see from the above two photos, we definitely did not experience the world's worst weather, though we did get to walk around in some 50 mph winds, -20 windchill, and whiteout conditions as snow fell during the second day of the trip.  Communication tower and the TipTop House covered in rime ice. EduTrips are winter workshops to the summit of Mount Washington. They involve a ride in a comfy snowcat and a one-night stay in the observatory staff's living quarters on the summit. In addition to the chance to experience the winds and cold on the summit in a relatively safe situation, Edutrip participants also have the chance to learn about the observatory and it's instruments from the meterologists on duty. These trips are a once-in-a-lifetime experience and they almost always sell out early.  A hiker on the Crawford Path, south of the summit.  Rime ice and the southern Presidential Range. Winds on our trip topped out around 70 mph, well below the world record of 231 mph, recorded here in 1932. Still, with the wind blowing that hard and snow blowing sideways, it is almost impossible to move around and photograph outdoors, though many brave members of the trip took their cameras out anyway - hey you only live once! The trip down in the snowcat was a little dicey as the visibility hit zero at times. In fact, for part of the trip, the driver had me walk in front of the vehicle so that he could find the road. Even on foot, there were moments where I could not see where to step next. Thanks to the skills of our experienced driver, Gus, we made it down safely in just under 2 hours. For more info about the Mount Washington Observatory, click here. To read about my trip to the summit in March, 2007, check out my post from that trip here. To read about my trip up in January, 2008, check out that post here. Until next time... -Jerry |
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| Camp to Camp Skiing in the Maine Woods. |
 Early morning skiing on South Lyford Pond. This past weekend I spent 4 days photographing and skiing in Maine's North Woods. I was part of a great group of ten experienced outdoors people from the Portland and Boston areas, including some folks from the Appalachian Mountain Club. The AMC owns two of the camps that we used on our trip and the organization is in the midst of what they call their "Maine Woods Initiative." According to the AMC website, the Maine Woods Initiative is "AMC's strategy for land conservation in the 100-Mile Wilderness region - addressing regional ecological and economic needs through outdoor recreation, resource protection, sustainable forestry and community partnerships." This region east of Moosehead Lake is part of the mountainous spine of Maine that is home to the Appalachian Trail, most of Maine's woodland flora and fauna, including the endangered Lynx, and a healthy dose of prime fishing ponds and streams.  The bunkhouse at Little Lyford Pond Camps. Like most of northern Maine, this region has traditionally been owned by timber management companies. For more than a century and a half, wood has been harvested here, sometimes sustainbly, sometimes not, but access to recreationists (some hiking, but primarily sportsmen and women) has always been allowed. The wood products industry has been experiencing its share of ups and downs, mergers and consolidations, and uncertainty over the last two decades, which has had negative economic and ecological impact on the area and put its future in jeopardy. As of now, AMC has purchased 37,000 acres of forestland in the region as well as three wilderness camps: Little Lyford Lodge, Medawisla Wilderness Lodge, and Chairback Gorman Camps. According to AMC, "The Initiative seeks to address the ecological and economic needs of the Maine Woods region by supporting local forest products jobs and traditional recreation, creating new multi-day recreational experiences for visitors, and attracting new nature-based tourism to the region."  Lunch with a view of Baker Mountain. For our trip, we started with a night at AMC's Medawisla Wilderness Lodge. On day two, we skied past views of Mount Katahdin and lynx tracks to West Branch Pond Camps, run by 4th-generation proprietor Eric Stirling. Eric provided us with great service, food, and ample stories of the area. The view of White Cap Mountain across West Branch Pond is spectacular. Day three was a ski past White Cap and Baker Mountains to Little Lyford Pond Camps, one of the most charming wilderness camps in all of Maine. Day four provided us with a really fun ski on a woodland ski trail designed by AMC trail experts specifically for cross country skiing. Its ups and downs and twists and turns were probably the most fun skiing of the trip.  A cabin at West Branch Ponds Camp, with White Cap Mountain in the distance. The skiing averaged around 8 miles per day of reasonable ups and downs under beautiful blue skies (we never experienced an overcast sky, let alone any precipitation.) The skiing was made even easier by the fact that our gear was shuttled between camps by snowmobile, and the staffs at each location provided plentiful and delicious meals.  Animal tracks on South Lyford Pond.  The "front yard" at Medawisla Wilderness Lodge. To learn more about the camp-to-camp ski experience and other recreation opportunities in the area, visit the AMC's website at: http://www.outdoors.org/conservation/wherewework/maine/me-recreation-guide.cfm. To learn about AMC's conservation efforts in the 100-Mile Wilderness Area, visit: http://www.outdoors.org/donations/mwi/index.cfm. Until next time... -Jerry |
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