Maine sky

Down East Maine's dark sky affords some magnificent stargazing. At home in Princeton, I could lie on a dock for hours, just watching the heavens, catching the shimmer of an occasional meteor and the flicker of a low-flying lightning bug. Above, the planet Venus sets, showing up as the brightest streak on the horizon in this whopping 22-minute exposure.

This 8-minute, 10-second exposure was so drastically underexposed that I had to use Photoshop to bring up the lighting and make something out of this shot of Venus. This was taken on a separate night from the top image in this post and earlier, too. The glow from the long-gone sun was still on the horizon.

On several of my four nights in Maine, I tried to watch the International Space Station pass overhead. Unlike in Florida, station flyovers happen twice just after sunset and within about an hour of each other. There's usually just a single nightly pass in Florida within an hour after sunset. But for various reasons - bad weather, forgetfulness - this above shot was the only one I could manage the entire week. It's about 3 minutes, 8 seconds long and gives a different look from the shots I usually get in Florida, where what few stars that are visible get lost in the lingering sunshine and city lights.

Focusing on a single part of the north-northwest sky, I caught the faint trail of another satellite passing overhead. Such sights are unachievable without the advantage of Maine's dark sky. This exposure is 3 minutes, 6 seconds long and was taken with my 105mm macro lens.

This is actually another stormy shot, but it's one I neglected to share in the earlier post. On my last evening in Maine, a rapidly moving rainstorm is backdropped by the sunset. The wind soon picked up, and the rain came. It was short-lived, though: It was gone in about five minutes, and the sky cleared again.

Maine spring

I didn't get much free time during my week in Maine, but a few hours did come available on a partly cloudy afternoon. I wanted to get out and document a portion of spring in Maine, at least within a 1-mile radius of my parent's house. Above, an ant climbs on a dandelion.

Another ant, in the center of a dandelion.

You can make out the specks of pollen on this ant.

A bee hangs out on a dandelion.

A bee fly, or bombyliidae, collects pollen.

Chokecherry tree blossoms.

Ah, true love is found on cherry blossoms. Not yet sure of the insect species here.

A bee on a wild apple blossom.

Another bee on more apple blossoms.

Wild strawberry blossoms.

It's ironic that the last time I visited Maine, the leaves were falling off. This time, they were growing back, like these apple tree leaves.

The flower of a striped maple tree, also called moosewood.

Burdock.

Alas, mosquitoes buzz at the top of a pine tree. The black flies also were out in full force when I was home.

Maine storm

At home in Maine on family business all week, I was greeted Monday with a nice storm over Grand Falls Flowage in Princeton, my hometown. My parents, brother and I were out for a W-A-L-K when this gust front rolled swiftly over the lake, bringing a short downpour and a period of strong straight-line wind. These storms seem to follow me; it's not quite the storm season yet in Florida.

It's easy to see the defined leading edge of this storm as it makes its way over the lake that I fished on nearly every day during my childhood summers.

A heavy rain core is clearly visible across the "back bay," as my family called it during my early days. My childhood home, where my parents still live, is located on the end of a half-mile peninsula on the lake. This is a backyard of sorts, behind the house.

Out in front again, in the main portion of the lake, rain falls over the "downtown" area of Princeton, if there is such a thing. It's a town of about 800 people, making it one of the more populous municipalities in eastern Washington County, the "Sunrise County" -- so named because it is the first place in the lower 48 to receive sunlight each morning.

More dark clouds as the rain continues to fall.

Later on Monday, the day I flew in to Maine, the sky cleared. As the sun set, the bottoms of the these lingering dark clouds were "oranged-up," as I like to say.

A close-up of the clouds. The "family business" I referred to, by the way, was the death of my courageous grandmother, who miraculously survived a horrific car accident 47 years ago, in which all of her family of six were involved. She got the worst of it: Her husband was told she would never eat by herself, walk or talk again. Yet, she did. She learned to walk and talk again. She learned to write with her left hand. And she lived a full life, raising four children, including a son who suddenly died two months ago. It has been a rough spring for the family, but we're a resilient bunch, as evidenced by my grandmother.

From the iPhone | Revisiting Stump Pond with a camera phone

This is another shot from my Maine vacation in early October, except it's not from my Nikon D90 but my Apple iPhone. Despite the lack of sharpness, the 3-megapixel onboard camera did well at capturing a foliage scene at Stump Pond in Lincoln. Uncharacteristically for October in Maine, the day included rotating thunderstorms and hail. I've already shared this with my Facebook friends but not with my loyal blog readers. Go here more shots from the first day of the trip.

Maine's autumn, Day 7 | That rainbow again, in panoramic form

A partial rainbow formed behind my parents' house during my vacation, and I had planned to stitch nine photos together for a vertical panorama, showing the blue sky above it. The process wasn't seamless, unfortunately, and that's why there are faint diagonal lines marring the final product. I'm still learning some of the methods to avoid this, though, so bear with me.

Maine's autumn, Day 8 | Clear sky, just in time for my flight home

Day 8 of my Maine vacation consisted of a trip to the airport, sadly. Along the way in Topsfield, about 15 minutes north of Princeton on U.S. 1, I stopped to shoot this old yellow Chevy, with the yellow trees and the golden morning sun in the background.

Of course, the day I left for Florida, the sky had cleared, offering better leaf-peeping conditions than any of the previous days I had spent in Maine. On the way to the airport, this time in Lincoln, I just wanted to show people that blue sky really does exist in the state.

Now in the air and headed back to the Sunshine State, I spotted a stream of ships steaming toward the New England coast.

From the Boston area, passengers on my Allegiant flight to Sanford, Fla., saw a bank of clouds covering only the curving land mass of Cape Cod. The morning seabreeze brings cool air off the ocean, and when that collides with the warming land, the air rises, and the moisture condenses into clouds.

The pilot warned us that as we flew south of New England, the weather would get a little more active. Here, the plane approaches thick cloud cover. Again, Cape Cod is in the distance. We experienced only slight turbulence.

Because of the clouds, I didn't pull out my camera again until the plane began its descent over Florida. That's when I spotted Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach.

Seconds from landing, the plane cast a shadow onto the pine and palm trees below. Not much for fall foliage here in Florida, is there?

Maine's autumn, Day 7 | A deer, a rainbow and a ruby in a pot of gold

On the last full day of my Maine vacation, a Sunday, my family and I stayed close to home, but that didn't prevent us from seeing some sights. In a neighbor's backyard in Princeton, we spotted this doe lazily browsing through the grass. As a child, I'd see deer once in a while along the half-mile dirt road that leads to my parents' house, but they'd seem to always disappear for hunting season in November. This time, though, I finally got a chance to shoot one.

A rain shower moves over Lewy Lake, a small body of water near "downtown" Princeton and adjacent to Grand Falls Flowage, along which I lived as a child. Because the sun was shining brightly, I thought the chances of a rainbow were decent.

Sure enough, a rainbow with a faint secondary arc formed behind my parents' house along the flowage. Previously, in the Day 6 post, you saw the view in front of the house. But because I lived on the end of a peninsula, the location afforded us views on three sides.

The rainbow got shorter as the dark clouds behind it moved farther to the south. But what little was left became even more brilliant.

After days of overcast skies, the storm moves away, and the atmosphere finally clears. Ironically, though, it was late in the day, and, of course, it was also my last day in Maine.

As mentioned in the headline, that ruby in a pot of gold after the rainbow was just a scene I noticed when I looked upward at the blue sky. In a stand of maple trees, all the leaves were a bright yellow, except for this red one. This happens to be one of my favorite shots from the entire vacation. It's amazing how sunlight makes such scenes so much prettier.

As the sky continued to clear, the sun faded.


This layered image combines two 30-minute exposures of star trails and the Milky Way.

Maine's autumn, Day 6 | Windmills, turkeys and the Milky Way

The excursion started at home, of course, where I took a photo of the view I woke up to every day for 18 years. It was before the wind picked up, so the surface of Grand Falls Flowage, part of a chain of lakes along Maine's eastern border with Canada, was like glass. The sky, however, was still overcast.

Day 6, the Saturday during my Maine vacation, included a family trip across Route 6 in Washington County, a major east-west route. And when I say "major," I mean it's a hilly, pothole-pocked roadway through the middle of nowhere.

We then took a smaller road north to the Danforth area of northern Washington County.

Along Route 6, near the border of Washington and Penobscot counties, is one of the first instances of a new trend in Maine: wind power. These windmills were constructed along a high ridge, called Stetson Mountain. Maine has harnessed wind power for years with the use of sailboats. But this new mode of energy generation has been met with some resistance, especially from hikers and environmentalists along the Appalachian Trail, who thought the windmills would mar the area's natural beauty. Personally, I think the windmills themselves are kind of attractive.

The wind had picked up considerably after we embarked on our journey, so these pinwheels were moving swiftly.

This is the closest we got to the windmills. This shot is a composite of two separate images, showing the three blades in different positions. The photos were layered in Photoshop.

On a backwoods road off Route 6, a house on a distant hill caught my eye.

Even with real estate as defunct as it is in Florida, you still can't get a deal like this - or a view like this one.

A field was covered in leafy bushes that were turning yellow.

Along a road off Route 6, we ran into a storage field for windmill parts. The area was marked with "no trespassing" signs. I told my parents that I often trespass on private property to get photos. But they were having none of that, so I settled for a shot from the side of the road.

This was taken along the Million Dollar View Scenic Byway, an eight-mile stretch of U.S. 1 that looks eastward to New Brunswick, Canada. The lake is West Grand in northern Washington County, nicknamed the Sunshine County because it's the first in the United States to be graced by the sun's rays each day.

Wild turkeys are making a resurgence in eastern Maine. While he was driving, my father spotted these dozens grazing in someone's backyard (this photo doesn't show the whole group).

My photography eventually made the turkeys rather anxious, and they scurried off.

Back at home, after sunset, the sky cleared, and I took some exposures of the Milky Way Galaxy, something astronomers can't easily make out in most parts of Florida.

For this shot, the camera was pointed at a 90-degree angle upward, showing the stars and the treetops.

Here, the camera's shutter was open for its longest possible exposure: 30 minutes. It shows the circular trails of the stars as Earth spins on its axis.