China Lake Stream, Sebasticook River, Winslow, Maine. Good Photos from 2009.

My camera (an Olympus C-750) is great for close-ups but not so great for long, landscape shots which contain vast differences in lighting, like from full sun to deep shade.

But when the place and light just screams at you, you have to at least try. This happened in August, walking up China Lake Stream in Winslow with Queequeg T. Dog, Ph.D. on a brilliant late summer afternoon. A yellow lab, Queequeg was really good at staying put at this little point of rocks while I experimented with different angles and light schemes. He loves walking along streams and poking around and makes doing this fun.

This photo captures the nice stair-step character of the bedrock ledges (Waterville Slate Formation) that China Lake Stream crosses at this bend (which also forces the stream to bend). The stair steps are created because the Waterville Slate Formation is massively folded mudrock and dirty limestone from the Ordovician/Silurian and some of the folds/beds contain more quartz sand than others. The beds with more quartz are more resistant to erosion and create ridges, ie. the top of the steps. The more muddy beds are the low spots. These beds were laid down 350-450 million years ago. Cool stuff on a hot day. The photo is a bit brittle (too much sharpness added) and not silky and wet enough for my taste. Must go back and fix.

Click to embiggen.