At Bar Harbor

The photograph of The Margaret Todd, a four-masted schooner, was taken on a misty day in Bar Harbor, Maine. The Margaret Todd carries nine sails on her four masts and is quite a local attraction, offering sailing trips around Frenchman's Bay. This day the beautiful schooner was quietly moored at its Bar Harbor summer dock. The backdrop was pure fog slowly creeping into the harbor. When the fog reached the schooner, the sun broke through the clouds, providing beautiful back-light for the sail boat. Sun spots were reflected in the ocean water. I instantly decided not to let the moment pass and since I had left my tripod in the trunk of my car I scanned my surroundings for a sturdy tripod replacement structure. Luckily I did not need to look far and the pier pile worked fine. I zoomed out to approximately 28 or 35 mm and started composing the image, feeling that the pier added significantly to the appeal of the photograph. A chosen f-stop of 7.1 provided a fast shutter speed of 1/640 seconds that ultimately let me forget all my tripod worries. I took multiple images and applied exposure bracketing in 1/3 steps. I worked off the underexposed 1/3 step image and applied minor adjustments to contrast, color saturation and sharpened to the image during digital post processing.