A Real Winter

Notes from the Cold and Snow

Maine, and the rest of New England, have been experiencing one of the most sustained cold winters in memory. My buddy Kurt told me he’s getting a bit tired of all of the sub-zero temperatures at his home in Vermont. How are you feeling where you are?

I hope that you’ve made the best of the heart of winter, wherever you are and whatever your proclivities and views towards the season! If that means curling up and reading books by the fire, so be it. You know me, I love it, and I’ve been out in it almost every minute I can! What follows are a whole bunch of images I’ve been sitting on over the last month, including many from the Winter in Acadia workshops I just wrapped with John Putnam.

A journey to Camden on New Year’s Day brought this image of the f/v Becca and Megan with the Camden waterfront in the background, obscured by heavy snow.

As much as I liked the red painted boat in all of the white snow, this more plain boat allowed for a slightly stronger composition with a vertical frame without the dock in front of it. I built both images around the interplay between the boats and church steeple, and the closer relationship in this image is why I think it’s a bit stronger.

Onwards to a totally different kind of Maine working boat. Clammers use these canoes in the warmer months, but here they are drawn up on the snowy shoreline of Maquoit Bay in Brunswick. I got out and x-c skied across the frozen ocean to a small island from Simpson’s Point, nearby, on another day this winter. It was wild!

A winter hike with some friends brought me up Mount Moriah in New Hampshire. The views through rime-coated trees and mist of Carter Dome were really nice. These environments are some of my favorite in winter, especially when it’s boring down below. This winter, I haven’t been hiking as much because we have plenty of ice and snow in lower elevations!

Arctic Sea Smoke rose from the water around these small islands at the head of New Harbor on December 26th. Although it has been very cold, and was this morning, we haven’t had the extreme cold necessary for a truly epic display of sea smoke, usually seen at -15F and colder.

One of the most awe-inspiring sights this winter were the northern lights on January 20th. I witnessed them just after photographing this sunset with a tiny sliver of the new moon at one of my favorite locations, Pemaquid Point. I will never tire of seeing the aurora borealis.

They were surprisingly bright enough to be seen even in twilight. But once it got dark, the show really commenced!

Another favorite place brought a beautiful sunrise and some sea smoke a few days later. This is Five Islands in Georgetown. It was awesome to run into several other photographers here on this morning. The camaraderie in our community is very real, especially in challenging conditions like this!

The end of the month of January saw me returning to Acadia for a double-header of Winter in Acadia workshops with JK Putnam. It was awesome being here with wonderful groups of students, 10 each session, experiencing the cold and snow that we hoped to show them! It’s never a guarantee, but this year mother nature thankfully provided.

I turned my attention to more natural details for these trips, as I’ve been more inspired to explore these subjects with a camera.

I’ve always loved stuff like this, but haven’t made many such images since they don’t excite me the way weather and atmosphere and cultural stories normally do. That seems to be changing, though. I am really feeling the power of these scenes.

All three above images are details of ice, which there was a lot of thanks to all the cold.

Perhaps the most fascinating ice formations we saw were these faucet-like icicles on Jordan Stream.

These were my 8-year-old daughter’s favorite photos from the trip.

My personal favorite was this capture above of a few strands of beach grass sticking out of a snowdrift on the southern side of a dune at Sand Beach. Pastel colors in the sunset sky really made this image sing.

This distinctive tree on Ocean Drive caught my attention when walking past it to meet up with a different group of students at sunrise.

On another morning, I spied these small shrubs peeking out of a snowdrift after the ‘best light’ had passed. I loved the sparkles in the snow and shadows cast in the strong backlight.

This image required a lot of patience to time the perfect wave coming in. I used an ND filter to get a slow shutter and smooth out the water. The power of this composition is undeniable, even if it is a bit cliché.

A less cliché composition was found on a clear morning looking at Otter Cliffs from a vantage point other than Boulder Beach! This is a little bit further down the coast, where the rocks are a lot more jumbled and chaotic. Thankfully a heavy coat of ice provided a little relief from the fact that this foreground lacked the strong shapes that I usually look for.

A rocking, vivid sunset was witnessed on the first night of the first workshop. We took the students all the way over to the Schoodic Penisula and were treated to this incredible foreground in a part of the park that I had never photographed before.

There was some great snow on the last day of the last workshop, and I made this image looking across Eagle Lake at the layers of land where it starts rising into Pemetic Mountain.

Here’s another snowscape of the treetops around the lake. My daughter thought this looked like a painting. I agree!

I was kind of obsessed with these view of the forest zoomed in through the heavy snow. There’s definitely a painterly quality to them, and know that there was no heavy digital manipulation required to achieve these results, just taking advantage of the conditions!

Speaking of good conditions, the wind sculpted the snow into these amazing ridges and provided the perfect foreground for this well-known view of the Bubbles from Jordan Pond. We were all pretty cold, but very happy, after standing out in the wind for this shoot.

I’ll leave you with another view of the ice we found at one of the rocky beaches on Mount Desert Island. These patterns reminded me of the rice terraces of southeast Asia. I’d love to see those someday.

I’m very blessed to run these workshops with John and all of the wonderful students that join us. I’m so inspired by them!

If you’d like to join us next year, we’ve just announced dates for February 2027. You can learn more and sign up HERE. We sold out two workshops this year and had a waiting list, so don’t miss your chance to beat the winter blues and come out for some awesome photography and winter adventure with us.

You won’t regret it! I promise.