End of the Summer Drive to Maine

Let's go for a lobster run!  We'll make a weekend of it!
Driving from the northeastern most corner of Massachusetts close to Interstate 95 and the city of Newburyport up to Maine is a short 20 minutes.
But the beautiful forests and coastline of Maine  beckons us to explore further.  There is the cheapest lobster for sale just around the corner and the most gorgeous views with storybook lighthouses and fishing villages to photograph!  It's what summer is all about in New England.

So we loaded the car with stuff our son forgot to take with him to Maine Maritime Academy and drove off to find the tiny town of Castine.
They say in Maine, "You can't get there from here!"  Exactly right!  Why, you ask?  Take a look at the coastline map and you will see a wilderness of fingers of land jutting out into the Atlantic with the rare bridge to connect them.  When one drives the coastline it is from west to east and back again only slowly inching north.
Needless to say, we took the faster inland route until the last few miles of spectacular ocean scenery.  We love the fresh salty air and seafood.  One variety store for miles might take some getting used to but I'll take it over not a single Dunkin's or McDonald's!  We got the lobster too!

  The one Castine Variety Store.

Organic lobster?  I hope so!

Picture perfect clouds!

  The State of Maine is a very large training ship shown in this photo and the one below.  You can make out the wannabe sailors in blue shirts.  Sailing and scuba diving classes are also offered as well as such majors as marine biology and international business.

  

  I'll leave you with this...

Destination Workshops - Why do it?

Acadia Nat'l Park - shooting beavers

This past winter I saw a brochure at one of Scott Kelby's Photoshop for Photographers live seminars in Boston for a workshop in Acadia National Park in May.  I had never been to Acadia despite 20 years of living in Massachusetts.  I was dying to go!  I was dying to photograph it all!  And I have learned that it is generally hit or miss when you visit an area like that for the first time - it takes years to know where the good shots are!
The brochure advertised 4 days of expert guidance and instruction in Acadia with a small group.  It looked good and wasn't too expensive - several hundred dollars- transportation, hotel and food not included.  I can drive the distance in 4 hours and I talked my husband into coming along for the fishing.

I am not kidding - this was the best decision I ever made!  After 2 days of shooting every sunset and sunrise I found my groove.  I became used to my tripod, which I used all the time.  I was becoming more adept at choosing which lens for which shot.  My composition improved and I was having a great time with nice people!  Our guide, John Slonina, was knowledgable and we felt like we were on the grand tour of Acadia.  I told John I had definitely gotten over a hump!

I learned about light, composition and setting up your shot correctly instead of depending on PhotoShop to rescue you later.
John encouraged us to keep shooting as long as the light is good.  He said that when you think you are done shooting, keep on looking for a new perspective.  There is always more to shoot.  He is right.

These shots are two perspectives of the same place shot minutes apart:

Schoodic Point - Acadia Nat'l Park May 2013

I learned to crop as you shoot by moving your body and your camera first and zooming second.






By following John around I learned a lot about composition.  I am happy to say that most of my shots are completely my own.  Many are compositions he pointed out to me as is this one of the birches:

Wild Garden - Acadia Nat'l Park 2013

I love this shot at sunrise on our 4th day near Oyster Bay.  I turned around and there it was!  I entered it into a show this summer at the Newburyport Art Association and it won an Honorable Mention.

Acadia Sunrise - 2013 by Kathleen Milstein

I have signed up for another workshop in October.  This one is fall in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  Who knows?  Next year it might be Tuscany or Provence!  Try it!

Cadillac Mountain Sunrise Club

4:31AM June1, 2013

There are times when it is worth it to get up at 3:45 to join other sunrise enthusiasts on the top of a mountain.  This was one!
Between early October and early March Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park is the place to go to be the first to see the sun rise in the United States! True and undisputed!  But you'll have to do it before the snow falls and the road closes.
Then you can buy yourself a bumper sticker that reads, "Cadillac Mountain Sunrise Club!

You won't be alone.  Contemplators and camera buffs alike will line the ridge overlooking the ocean and islands.
Alone I might never have done this but I signed up for a four day workshop at Acadia led by John Slonina of Slonina Nature Photography.  Six of us dragged our tripods and cameras out of the van at 4:15am and hoped for brilliance.  We were not disappointed.
I am a workshop fan now!  What a great way to learn, meet people and have fun!

Shenandoah National Park - Fog is Fun!

I was lucky!  Yes, very lucky to begin my drive through the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with a day of fog, clouds and misty forests.  True, I could not see for miles down into the Shenandoah Valley and we had to stick to the 35 mph posted speed limit.  But the fun I had taking pictures in the forest with logs and trees looming up out of the mist was worth it!

You've heard this before from other photographers I'm sure.  When Mother Nature does not cooperate and you don't get the weather you had expected it's an opportunity to stretch your creativity.  Go with it!  Embrace it!  Have fun!  Stop and think for a minute about your camera settings.  What is the ISO?  Should I change it?  What about white balance?  Do I want to shoot on automatic or possibly go with aperture preferred or shutter speed preferred.  A photographer makes a photograph.  A photographer does not take a photograph.

It was gloomy but also beautiful in the woods.  When I got home and was editing my images in Photoshop CS6 I decided to stay with gloomy.  However, I was not absolutely sure how the images would look on my blog because I have a laptop and the exposure changes as I tilt my laptop's top!  My next big investment will be a separate monitor so I don't have to guess.  More later!

This is a small but beautiful national park and frequently is foggy and hidden by clouds.  I highly recommend driving, hiking and fishing the length of it especially in spring or fall.  Pray for "bad" weather!

Drawing with Light - Photo Class Fun!

I teach a beginning photography class at the Boys and Girls Club of the Lower Merrimack Valley . This month I have six very creative and eager 3rd and 4th graders.
Light drawing is a fun way to teach them about shutter speed, motion and light at the same time!
We have a small digital arts lab that we can completely darken and set up our cameras on a tripod for light drawing with flashlights, LED handheld lights and light sticks (Star Wars style).  You can buy these light sources at Rhode Island Novelty.

Each student had a job to do during the shoot: director, lights, and performers.  I rotated them all through each job so that everyone had a chance to be the director and create a light drawing.  Here are their amazing results:

Create a Book!

I just published a book of my mother's poetry with some of my photography as illustrations.  It was a wonderful thing to do with my mom.  We both had a lot of fun and found a new appreciation of her poetry and my images!  Take a look!

Landscapes by Caroline Farley Matthews with photography by Kathleen Milstein | Make Your Own Book

Berlin in Sepia Tone

 I was so excited to be visiting Berlin for the first time since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989!  Ok, so it was February and cold and overcast... I would make the best of it.  
But an overcast sky gives photographs a flat, gray look with a depressing feel and that is what I had all week!  What to do?
There is one option: don't include the sky in any composition.  But that didn't solve the problem of grayed out color.  I decided to experiment with sepia and I liked the results.
Here is a comparison of the same dome in both color and sepia:

Notice that not only does the color photo look gray but the color also competes with the tree branches and they look too busy.  Two fixes were called for: not as many tree branches and the use of sepia tone.  The sepia tone calls our attention to the age of the building.  It gives the photograph a "period" feel.

These two images were taken on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin.  The buildings are large and beautifully designed.  The sepia tone give a feeling of grandeur.  The gardens are asleep this time of year but people are not.  I love how my daughter captured the movement of the people walking to the museum.  
This accordion player was entertaining tourists as they bought tickets for the museums.

My daughter was a willing addition to my photographs to give them a feeling of perspective and motion.  The buildings and the sculptures were very large.  You can see that in relationship to her.  Doesn't it look cold?  I wanted to give the images a wintery feel.  But spring is right around the corner.  The bicycles and people strolling give a feel of everydayness to the image on the right.  

The Tiergarten is a huge park in the middle of Berlin filled with turn of the century architecture and lighting.  Paths, ponds and gardens are beautiful in spring.  In the middle of the park is the Victory Column with the Goddess of Victory in gold at the top.  It was moved to the park by the Nazis along with other monuments in the 1930s.

The modern glass buildings of Berlin are striking in color but my favorites are the sepia toned images.