White Mountains in Springtime

The White Mountain National Forest in northern New Hampshire is well known among landscape photographers as one of the best venues for fall foliage in the northeast. But, what about springtime? To answer this question I made two trips this May to scout the area for a future workshop in Spring 2010. Although the focus at this time is far from the warm color palette of autumn, May offers many of its own wonderful advantages for landscape work including numerous waterfalls, glacially carved mountains, covered bridges, and rapidly changing weather.

The virtues of spring in this area are many and high on the list is solitude. Tourist season begins after Memorial Day and to hotel owners it really kicks in around the second week in June after school is out and families begin summer vacation. This solitude allowed me to shoot sunrise, sunset, and several key areas without competing for position. The only exception to being alone for my sunrise shoots was one morning were I had a coyote for company. With only few people visiting at this time hotel rates run almost half the amount of fall, and about 40% less than summer. By mid-May most of the trees have their brightly colored new leaves but wild flowers like Lupins do not kick in until near the beginning of June. Also, if you enjoy shooting waterfalls this time of year is clearly the best as streams are full from melting snow – which is still present on Mt Washington, and morning frost can be found with temperatures as low as 20F around first light.

The only downside to this time of year is of course the very long days. This far north sunrise is around 5am with sunset after 8pm. This means leaving the hotel at or around 4am for a sunrise shoot. But, this also means that in many places the light, even on sunny days in valleys, is not hot on your subject until around 7 or 8am, well before the average tourist is up and out. This allows complete freedom to shoot key areas while others are climbing out of bed. Communing with nature is, at least to me, a personal thing so the feeling of having a place to myself when the light is right is about as good as it gets. However, although I was often the only car on the road at these early hours, I had a total of three early morning/late evening moose sightings on the road, plus black bear, fox and coyote.

The number of waterfall opportunities in the White Mountains is too many to count. One of my goals was to explore and shoot many of them as the light and weather would permit but that still left many more to shoot, or return to due to harsh light – the weather (and light) can change rapidly in the mountains, one hour it sunny, the next raining, then next cloudy…. Many waterfalls captures need to be earned in that they require more than a few minutes of hiking from a parked car. I primarily focused on the shorter hikes this spring but there are many more I plan to scout on future trips. If you like waterfalls, foliage, mountains…you will love the White Mountain National Forest. If you want to get the most out of your trip I hope you will consider attending one of my Fall or Spring workshops. To see some favorites from this trip click here.