Hastings Falls
Taking I 95 North a couple of hours from Bangor into Aroostook County you will come to the town of Patten and the interesting Patten Lumber Museum just outside the town. The Museum is home to many outbuilding depicting the life of the men who lived in the Maine woods cutting trees/lumber to be shipped all over the world. I always marvel at how difficult a lumberman’s life was.
Traveling farther north to the Hastings Falls Rd in Merrill, ME is the very unique Hastings Falls. The Hastings Falls Rd is an ok road but I’m not sure I’d bring anything with a low clearance. The road sort-of-ends and becomes a 4 wheeler trail. The hike is approximately a 1/2 mile, easy to follow and not too steep until you get to the falls. Where I shot the pool at the bottom of the falls was steep but there were sturdy trees to brace on. Hastings Falls isn’t big, but it is very much worth photographing. What I loved about the falls, was the large river eddy flowing in a circular upstream direction.
Photography Tip.
I think all waterfalls are best on an overcast day. That being said we were here in the afternoon on a cloudy day, I would wait until the sun was behind the cloud to shoot. I used a neutral density filter to give myself control over exposure and the creative control over shutter speed. The slow shutter speed was able to slow up the eddy enough to show a full swirl. I changed my ISO and F stop to try different shutter speeds. My favorite was 5 seconds.
18mm lens was on a tripod using a polarizer and a 10 stop ND filter.
5 seconds at F/11. 50 ISO