Foliage Report For Acadia NP, October 15, 2012

We just got back from our annual (usually annual) fall foliage trip to Maine.  There were a couple shots I really wanted to get and today's image was one.  I think we've shot The Bubbles from the north parking lot beach at Jordon Pond just about every year, but the main parking has always been so full that we just abandoned any hope of getting in there.  Last week we were determined to wait it out and find a legit parking space.  I say "legit parking space" to differentiate us from the clod from New York (who da guess) parking on the brick sidewalk, blocking everyone else's path to the Pond House.  I digress.  (Sorry about the rant.)  We only had two days in Acadia National Park this year, so we could only hit the highlights (Jordon Pond, Sieur de Mont Spring, one circuit of Park Loop Road, Eagle Lake, the little harbor of Bernard, dinner in downtown Bar Harbor and not a whole lot more).  We wanted to search for foliage on the interior of western Maine for another couple days.  Today's image involved a little more finishing work than might be thought.  To find out about our opinion of the foliage conditions this year and where Adobe Photoshop CS6 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 came into play, hit the "Read More".

First, the foliage.  Last week, Sunday (October 7, 2012) through Tuesday the foliage was pre-peak.  There was plenty of green still around.  More than enough to be called "peak season".  At Eagle Lake it was hard to find trees that had turned.  Last year, about the same week, there was color, but it was pretty drab.  This year, mostly green.  I'd say, if you're headed to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park this week or next you'll probably hit the foliage colors at their peak.  There will be a couple of exceptions.  The library in Somesville (the picture of the little white building with the arched walking bridge) was pretty dead.  From some reason the leaves were pretty much down already.  Along Park Loop Road everything would be green and then devoid of leaves for a quarter mile.  Sand beach and the Beehive were still totally green.  Offhand I'd say the foliage will be around until the first of November (barring a strong wind storm).  The weather forecasters did say the foliage would be late this year.  I'd have to agreed.

The first thing to talk about would be how the shot was taken.  There's a path at the back of the Jordon Pond House that leads down to the south end of Jordon Pond.  Right at the bottom of the path is a little (tiny) sand beach area.  At first I sat down in the sand and took a couple shots.  That didn't give the right look to the water. The pond took up too much of the frame.  I then laid down in the sand, giving the pond a flat look.  It also gave more weight (bad pun) to the foreground rocks and giving a look that suggests I was neck deep in the water.  To get the entire scene in focus, an F-stop of 22 was used.  I tend to go with full F-stops.  When I looked at the first set of shots I noticed my left foot (toe of my boot) was in the lower left of the images.  A little adjustment of the position of my foot took care of that.  Now, on to CS6 and LR4.

Today's image is not a multi-shot panorama.  It is a single shot cropped to a pano format.  The shadows on the foreground rocks were lightened using the Adjustment Brush in LR4 (also found in Adobe Camera Raw).  All color corrections and enhancements were done with LR4 (ACR).  A trip over to CS6 was necessary to reduce the curvature across the lake using CS6's Adaptive Wide Angle Filter (Filter/Adaptive Wide Angle) .  I didn't want to remove the arc totally because it did need to show the length of the lake.  Without some arc it might as will be a swimming pool.  While in CS6 a couple small twigs sticking into the frame from the left side were removed using the Healing Brush (J).  Back over to LR4 for sharpening and to add a vignette and the processing was complete.