Places Volume 3
On assignment with conservation photographer Jerry Monkman.
On assignment with conservation photographer Jerry Monkman.
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PLACES<br />
In the field with Jerry Monkman<br />
KATAHDIN WOODS<br />
AND WATERS<br />
Exploring Maine’s<br />
newest national park.<br />
AMC’S OUTDOOR<br />
ADVENTURES: ACADIA<br />
NATIONAL PARK<br />
New book set to be<br />
released on June 9th.<br />
WHITE MOUNTAINS<br />
WINTER ADVENTURE<br />
A day of adventure in New<br />
Hampshire’s winter playground.<br />
LAND CONSERVATION<br />
PROJECTS<br />
My latest conservation photo<br />
projects in New England.
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From Jerry<br />
Spring is doing its best to get started up here in northern New England, and I’m excited<br />
to get moving on some new projects for 2017, which include photographing several land<br />
protection projects, revising my fall foliage guide book, and starting work on a new<br />
feature-length documentary film set in New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts.<br />
But like the snow still clinging to the high country, much of this issue of <strong>Places</strong> has<br />
a wintry feel while featuring what I shot this past winter and during the last several<br />
months of 2016.<br />
I may be a little slow to join in on fads, but I recently added a drone to my collection of<br />
gear. I’m still getting used to shooting remotely – it’s a different feeling than shooting<br />
while sitting in an airplane or helicopter – but it should be an ideal tool for many of<br />
my conservation photo projects. You can see some old-school aerials that I shot from<br />
a Cessna late last summer for The Conservation Fund in the story starting on page 18.<br />
Perhaps the biggest conservation story in New England from the last six months was<br />
President Obama’s designation of the new Katahdin Woods and Waters National<br />
Monument in northern Maine. I was excited to explore a portion of the park on skis in<br />
February as some friends and I took advantage of one of the park’s (free!) backcountry<br />
cabins. Photos from this visit and others I’ve made to the park are on pages 4 – 9.<br />
The rest of <strong>Places</strong> takes you on winter adventures, to Acadia National Park, and to some<br />
colorful fall landscapes – enjoy!<br />
-Jerry<br />
Table of Contents<br />
KATAHDIN WOODS AND WATERS.........................................................................4-9<br />
Exploring Maine’s newest national park.<br />
WHITE MOUNTAINS WINTER ADVENTURE....................................................... 10-15<br />
A day of adventure in New Hampshire’s winter playground.<br />
AMC’S OUTDOOR ADVENTURES: ACADIA NATIONAL PARK............................ 16-17<br />
New book set to be released on June 9th.<br />
LAND CONSERVATION PROJECTS...................................................................... 18-23<br />
My latest conservation photo projects in New England.<br />
On the Cover: The Percy Peaks in New Hampshire’s Nash Stream State Forest.<br />
Inside cover: My White Mountains winter adventure photo shoot featured winter camping and more - page 10<br />
(alternate) On the cover: The Percy Peaks in New Hampshire’s Nash Stream State Forest.<br />
P.O. Box 424, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03802<br />
p. 603-498-1140<br />
e. jerry@ecophotography.com<br />
www.ecophotography.com<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 3
Katahdin Woods<br />
and Waters<br />
Recreation<br />
MAINE<br />
Exploring Maine’s Newest National Park<br />
Last August, President Obama signed an<br />
executive order creating Katahdin Woods<br />
and Waters National Monument in<br />
northern Maine. Nearly 90,000 acres in<br />
size, the land making up the new park was<br />
donated to the feds by Roxanne Quimby,<br />
who has been acquiring land in the area<br />
for much of the last twenty years. The<br />
woods are thick here, providing habitat<br />
for most of Maine’s well-known wildlife<br />
– moose, bobcat, Canada Lynx, black bear,<br />
brook trout and more.<br />
I first explored the area that would<br />
become the national monument more<br />
than 4 years ago, while shooting a story<br />
about the International Appalachian<br />
Trail for Down East Magazine. During<br />
my three days of hiking and driving on<br />
old woods roads, I never encountered<br />
another human, but I could see the<br />
recreation potential in the property’s<br />
woods, bald mountaintops, and its<br />
several miles of frontage on the wild East<br />
Branch of the Penobscot River. As soon as<br />
the park was created, I began looking for<br />
some time where I could sneak back up<br />
there and shoot.<br />
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Above left: Morning light and fog on Mount<br />
Katahdin as seen from the Park Loop Road.<br />
Above right: Jerry on the International<br />
Appalachian Trail in 2012 in what is now part<br />
of the new national monument.<br />
Bottom right: The wild and remote East<br />
Branch of the Penobscot River.<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 5
Haskell Hut is one of two backcountry cabins in Katahdin<br />
Woods and Waters National Monument.<br />
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SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 7
Another project brought me near the<br />
park in October and I was able to steal<br />
a morning on the new park loop road,<br />
and that was just the tease I needed to<br />
plan a ten-mile, two night cross-country<br />
ski trip to the park in February. Being<br />
a brand new park, there is very little<br />
infrastructure, save for the old logging<br />
roads, some of which were graded into<br />
the 16-mile park loop road. As far as I<br />
can tell, the superintendent is currently<br />
the only park employee and there is no<br />
visitor center yet. Thankfully, a group of<br />
volunteers groom about 20 miles of ski<br />
trails and maintain two old cabins in the<br />
park that can be reserved on a first-come,<br />
first-serve basis. There’s no charge to stay<br />
in the cabins, yet they were super clean,<br />
comfortable, and fully stocked with<br />
firewood, a woodstove, and a propane<br />
cooking stove. We saw the sun for a total<br />
of about five minutes in our three days<br />
in the park and we had to drive six hours<br />
home in a blizzard, but it was a great trip!<br />
Above left: Pulling a sled through fresh powder<br />
between Haskell Hut and Bowlin Camps.<br />
Below left: Skiers outside Haskell Hut.<br />
Right: After sunset on the East Branch of the<br />
Penobscot River.<br />
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SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 9
Recreation<br />
NEW HAMPSHIRE<br />
White Mountains<br />
Winter Adventure<br />
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A day of<br />
adventure in<br />
New Hampshire’s<br />
winter<br />
playground<br />
Living in northern New England can<br />
mean surviving 4 – 5 months of snow and<br />
cold. Thankfully, we have lots of ways to<br />
enjoy the outdoors in winter, especially<br />
in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.<br />
Left: Fat tire biking in the snow at Great Glen<br />
Trails in Gorham, NH.<br />
Above right: Winter camping in the White<br />
Mountains.<br />
Below right: Snow covered roads are a<br />
common sight in New Hampshire’s north<br />
country.<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 11
Fat tire biking in the snow at Great Glen Trails in Gorham, NH.<br />
12 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY SPRING 2017
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 13
Top: A woman prepares her mountaineering<br />
rope in the White Mountains.<br />
Bottom Left: A couple enjoys a break from fat<br />
tire biking.<br />
Right: A woman running on a snowy day in<br />
New Hampshire’s White Mountains.<br />
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SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 15
AMC’s Outdoor<br />
Adventures: Acadia<br />
National Park<br />
Guide Book<br />
MAINE<br />
New book set to be released on June 9th.<br />
It has been seven years since my wife Marcy and I last revised our adventure guide to<br />
Acadia National Park, so it is exciting that the fourth edition of the book is finally slated<br />
to be released this coming June 9th. Besides having newly updated trail descriptions<br />
and a slew of new photos, the book also has a new name: AMC’s Outdoor Adventures:<br />
Acadia National Park.<br />
I made several trips to the park during the last year, most recently in October and<br />
February. In October I was filmed for a segment about the park on a new PBS series,<br />
Weekends with Yankee, which should begin airing this spring (look for me in episode<br />
#9 “The Islands”.) It was a trip to be on the other side of the camera with Emmy award<br />
winning host, Richard Wiese, as the PBS crew handled all the shooting.<br />
The day after the PBS shoot, I photographed a sunrise hike with some hikers I met at a<br />
local smoothie shop (Thrive on Rodick St. in Bar Harbor – you must check it out!) I’ve had<br />
the idea for a photo of hikers at sunrise on “The Beehive” for a few years and it was great<br />
to finally get it done!<br />
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Above left: Winter morning at Boulder Beach.<br />
Above right: Hikers watch the sunrise over the<br />
Atlantic from ledges on The Beehive.<br />
Bottom right: Hikers ascend iron ladders on<br />
the cliffs of The Beehive.<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 17
Land<br />
Conservation<br />
in New<br />
England<br />
Conservation<br />
NEW ENGLAND<br />
Photos from some of my most recent conservation<br />
photo projects in New England.<br />
Several of my conservation clients had<br />
me shoot land protection projects last<br />
year. The largest was a 32,000-acre<br />
tract of working forest in northern<br />
Maine that was recently acquired by The<br />
Conservation Fund. This property must<br />
be the flattest one of its size in the whole<br />
state of Maine, so to get a big landscape<br />
perspective, we decided I should shoot<br />
some aerials. I opted for a 5:30 a.m. start<br />
time to take advantage of early morning<br />
light, and when I arrived at the lake near<br />
18 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY SPRING 2017<br />
Millinocket, where the seaplane I hired<br />
was docked, it was obvious I should let the<br />
pilot drink his second cup of coffee before<br />
take-off. (His grogginess included an<br />
uncertainty about where we were flying<br />
to, so I had to get my map out to suggest<br />
a route for our flight.) He soon perked up,<br />
mounted an iPad with a navigation app<br />
on the plane’s controls, and we were off.<br />
Thirty minutes later, we were over the<br />
property just after sunrise, and we shot<br />
most of the project over the course of<br />
another half hour. It would have taken all<br />
day with a drone to get the same amount<br />
and quality of photos, so hiring a plane<br />
was the right call in this case.<br />
The other projects you see here were shot<br />
for The Open Space Institute, the National<br />
Fish and Wildlife Fund, and the Essex<br />
County Greenbelt Association.
Above left: Pulling a canoe through low water<br />
on the East Branch of the Penobscot River on a<br />
property recently protected by the Open Space<br />
Institute.<br />
Above right: Wytipitlock Stream from the air<br />
above the working forest in Reed, Maine.<br />
Bottom right: Dawn on the Mattawamkeag<br />
River as it flows through the Reed Plantation in<br />
Wytipitlock, Maine.<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 19
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Exploring a tributary of the East Branch of the Penobscot River.<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 21
Above right: Women paddlers on the Essex<br />
River in Essex, Massachusetts.<br />
Bottom right: Another aerial of Wytipitlock<br />
Stream as it flows through bogs and forests<br />
just after sunrise.<br />
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facebook.com/ecophotography<br />
twitter.com/jerrymonkman<br />
linkedin.com/in/jerrymonkman<br />
instagram.com/jerrymonkman<br />
SPRING 2017 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY 23
P.O. Box 424<br />
Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03802<br />
603-498-1140<br />
jerry@ecophotography.com<br />
www.ecophotography.com
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