A couple days in Maine

Just finished putting my public gallery up of picture from a quick work trip we did to Maine a couple weeks ago. We based out of Bar Harbor/Trenton/Ellsworth airport and managed a couple of afternoons of sightseeing.

I reserved a compact car and Hertz gave me an Eclipse Spyder. I wasn't overly impressed with the car, but I can't complain about the price. The top was only up at night and the last day when it rained...perfect convertible weather. Lots of Miatas, a couple of MGs, and one MGC-GT was parked on RT-3 thats been around town for years.

We had to divert around the west side of New York City due to rain and thunderstorms, but that gave us a good tour from Albany across VT, NH, and Maine to the coast.

Pictures are >>>here<<<

Scott,

Very Nice!

- Doug

Scott, you do REALLY nice work. Ever think about doing it professionally?





Yes, I do know.

Have an old friend who lives in Southwest Harbor and has for many years. You couldn't get him out of there with a ton of TNT. Having seen it through your 'eyes', I now understand why he loves it soooooo much. Thanks.

The clarity and color amazes me. I know little of photography but it seems as if your pictures are sharper and cleaner than most taken from the sky. Is this true, and if so why?

Great photos as always Scott, I do wish I had ability to do aerial photography, not many photographers do admittedly, one guy in our local club has the right connections and actually has some paid contracts for that kind of work (much like you do), but he's the only local person I know who does... I guess I'll just stay grounded...

Scott, who do you actually work for? I know you have your own company but who are the pics for?

Magnificent!

And thanks for including the captions, so we know what we're looking at. Love those stones from Acadia Park.

I'll assume you're not allowed to loiter over Walkers Point too long. :wink:

This is Scott's website:

https://pix.aerog.com/galleries

Amazing photography.

bgbassplyr said:

Have an old friend who lives in Southwest Harbor and has for many years. You couldn't get him out of there with a ton of TNT. Having seen it through your 'eyes', I now understand why he loves it soooooo much. Thanks.

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Thanks - I know of a couple of people that have made their way to that area. I could be a snowbird easily :_

elrey said:

The clarity and color amazes me. I know little of photography but it seems as if your pictures are sharper and cleaner than most taken from the sky. Is this true, and if so why?

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Thanks!

(1) I don't shoot through a window. Whenever I'm taking pictures I have the windows open in the back of the airplane. That's makes the biggest difference.
(2) I've found two lenses that are sharp and contrasty enough to satisfy me; one is a 37 year old Nikkor lens, the other is a year old Sigma lens. On this trip I also packed a 300mm Nikkor lens but it doesn't hold a candle to the others.
(3) I shoot everything as "raw" files and process them to my own standards. Shooting just straight .jpgs with automatic settings looks cruddy most of the time for aerials (at least mine). Getting the color and contrast curves right for the location helps a lot.

Sherlock said:

one guy in our local club has the right connections and actually has some paid contracts for that kind of work (much like you do), but he's the only local person I know who does... I guess I'll just stay grounded...

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JPSmit said:

Scott, who do you actually work for? I know you have your own company but who are the pics for?

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Thanks Sherlock/JP - to be fair, these are just sightseeing snapshots - I sell and market stock photography under my name, but I don't have my own company for the aerial work. Nothing in the gallery is work-related or paid-for. Although we made a couple of passes at the lighthouse, almost all of my aerials with the Nikon is just whatever happens to be going by when we're traveling.

aeronca65t said:

And thanks for including the captions, so we know what we're looking at. Love those stones from Acadia Park.

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Thanks Nial - the **censored** captions takes longer to do than anything. When we're flying I have the laptop keeping a raw data log of the GPS data, then I geotag and label everything afterward. When I got to the "fish ladder" shot I got sidetracked for an hour reading up on the place.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]I'll assume you're not allowed to loiter over Walkers Point too long. :wink: [/QUOTE]

Nope :wink: We weren't all that close anyway :laugh:

We were up there -with 70+ other LBC's- about the same time. The British Marque Car Club News had an event in Northport and a week ago Monday we drove the SP to Bar Harbor for the day. Wonderful topless wx after Irene left. US1 can be both a joy and/or a pain to drive, depending on how close to the speed limit the natives dare to drive. We has lobster in some form every one of the 5 days we were up there. Spent the night in Brattleboro on the way up; stayed far away on way back.

Scott,
Amazing photos. When my wife recently asked me why my photography did not have the sharpness and contrast of some photography we saw in a gallery, I told her that the lens was the most important part, and I was not investing in lenses to that level. But I forgot about changing my camera to RAW for some of the photos that I felt were spectacular on our recent trips. I need to remember to make that change for some photos that have potential.

Thanks again for sharing your work.

DART said:

We were up there -with 70+ other LBC's- about the same time.

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Perfect place for it. I was there the week before Irene, so I missed the gaggle of LBCs.

Brooklands said:

Scott,
Amazing photos. When my wife recently asked me why my photography did not have the sharpness and contrast of some photography we saw in a gallery, I told her that the lens was the most important part, and I was not investing in lenses to that level.

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Thanks Dave.

Good lenses don't have to be <span style="font-style: italic">that</span> expensive, you just have to really research them. There are some +$1000 lenses that are really lousy, then there are some $150 lenses that are terrific. Just depends on the design and what you want to do with it.

Many of the new Nikons can use lenses made back to the early 80s (and earlier if they're modified, like mine is). There's a <span style="font-style: italic">lot</span> of really nice glass out there for reasonable prices if a person doesn't mind focusing

I have a some fixed-length Vivitar <span style="font-style: italic">early</span> Series-1 glass (90mm & 300mm) I'd never part with. Bolt right up to Nikon DSLR bodies. They're ugly as sin by now but sharp as a tack.

My Contax 139 just languishes in my drawer. I've shot hundreds of rolls with that camera and I love it!
Is film dead and gone forever?

Kodachrome is.

I imagine the rest won't be far behind.

Yeah, Kodachrome is - but E6 film is alive and thriving. Well, sort of. There's a small resurgence in film by enthusiasts lately but the industry is probably never going to be what it was.

Kodak has slowly cut back on film for our industry. A few years ago there were several different B&W films and a couple of color films to choose from, plus infrared. Today there's one color film and one B&W film available (and the B&W film isn't the type most of us used to use). I used be able to order film from them on a Tuesday and have it show up on Wednesday - now it takes a week to get it if I'm lucky. Last year orders were delayed a month because they shut everything down over the holidays.

That's the way the business is going. Many of our competitors have gone digital and just don't buy as much film. We're hoping to go digital in the next year or two, but it's expensive.

We can't get E-6 unless we buy minimally a five gallon quantity now. That's far from what was "normal" a few years ago.

HC-110, D-76, even the "MAX" chemistry is MIA. We see the Microsoft business paradigm being applied to photography.

If I were a 17th century portrait painter, I'd jump out of th' highest building available.

I will find a Noritsu C-XX machine at fire-sale cost to keep going with at least neg film, methinks. :smirk:

I have a Bronica ETRS that I have not used since 2004. I have not priced the film lately and wonder if I ever will use the camera or the telephoto lens I used to use for yearbook photos in schools...