My photo
I been a professional photographer since I worked for the US Government documenting Test and Evaluation of Research and Development projects for the US Army and US Navy in the later half of the 1980s. I came home to Maine to finish my Marketing Degree at USM and began to work full time in Market Research and Marketing for many years while documenting weddings and occasional photojournalist and commercial jobs on the weekends. In 2001 I again returned to photography as a full time trade and have never been a happier man. I love working with creative individuals, couples, small businesses and select Non-Profits and can’t imagine working in any other trade. In 1987 I was lucky enough to wed my high school sweetheart and we now live in a cozy little solar powered, recycled bungalow a mile deep in our woods in the Western Hills of Maine with our two brilliant home-schooled teenage daughters and our three cats.

20071203

Yule Tree 2007

Every year shortly after Thanksgiving, we head over to the Denmark Christmas Tree Plantation to let our Yule Tree choose us to take it home. Here are some shots of this year's tree...

This is the tree that wants to come home with us this year (the tall one.)


After our thanking the tree and my making a very quick cut at the base, Beth made a photo of Nick, Tracey and me carrying the tree back up the hill. (That's Pleasant Mountain in the background...Shawnee Peak Ski Resort is on the other side.)


In our living room all leveled and in its stand ready for decorating...


All decorated except the angel on top. The new LED lights are much less wasteful of electricity and much safer, but they throw a lot colder light than we are used to.

Thanksgiving 2007

Not a whole lot of photojournalism at the moment, but here are some clay sculptures that the grrrls made in the spirit of Thanksgiving (and our toasty new woodstove in the background!)...

20071026

PAW: More Foliage

A gorgeous maple at the top of Fessenden Hill...

(this one made it into my Blog in 2005 as well...he is one of my recurring subjects.)

A beautiful orange maple as seen in the infrared specrtum...

20071022

Panoramic Foliage

All my life I've driven past these hills in Brownfield, Maine and have been very impressed with how they look in different light. I've never taken the time to stop and photograph them properly though. This morning, I woke up early and went to do just that. I used my Nikon D200 and made 13 vertical exposures of the morning light falling on the gorgeous orange canopy. This afternoon I created this panoramic photograph. the resulting image that I am going to print and mount is 12 inches high and 5 FEET long, but I've shrunk it down here to a mere 600X328 Pixels. If you are using Firefox you will be able to see it all in one shot OR pan across the entirety of it larger. Either way. I like it.

20071021

PWCAs First Hunt


As previously mentioned...The PWCA got her Jr. Hunting License this year. We are having REALLY warm weather for an October, but Maine had a Jr. Hunting Day for just the kids this last Saturday so I took her out back (she with her .410 and I with my Bow)...

She did very well in much thicker brush than this. We saw no deer, but had a very successful hunt together in the warm fall afternoon. I look forward to many years of such pursuits with PWCA, her sister and their grandfather.

20071018

Starbuck's Gift



So I had a 40th Birthday on the 7th of October and we had a lot of folks over to play music and enjoy the day. My mom made her world famous baked beans and teased me the week prior that I should take the PWCA out with her new Jr. Hunting license and get a partridge or two to put in the beans. As I hadn't quite finished with the wedding season yet I had no time to do so and was kind of bummed out about that because partridge melted into my mom's baked beans is one of my favourite dishes in the world (carbs be damned.) :)

So the morning of the party I go in to Bridgton to get some last minute supplies and when I return Starbuck (the large loudly purring black cat in the photo) had just killed a partridge and dropped it on the front step. He was VERY proud of the kill so I dressed it (giving him all the choice bits that cats like so much) and have the breast and legs in the freezer waiting for our Samhain feast. (It was too late to put it into mom's beans.) Just a cool coincidence...but given that this bird is almost as large as he is, he is a pretty fearless hunter...I think that I may take him deer hunting with the PWCA and I next month!
:)

20071009

More catching up...

Some more photos from the later part of summer 07 in random order. I hope to get them into more detailed posts after the season ends and before album building begins...























20071008

Catching up from Summer 07

OK. I'm almost done with what has been a VERY sucessful wedding season for me. I have been shooting stuff in my personal life, but haven't had a lot of time to post. Here are some (I've got more) of the images...I'll probably break them down into individual posts sometime soon...

In no particular order...










20070809

Old Photos

On the way home from the Deer Isle trip a few weeks ago, Tracey and I stopped at a roadside Flea Market to look around. I found a small snack bag filled with 1.5"X2.5" snapshots from what looks like the early 1920s. They were a mix of photos of some European places (seemingly Italy) and a few from the top of the Empire State Bldg. but this photo urged me to purchase the whole bunch...


(scanned, cleaned up and dropped on black for clarity)

How many such snapshots must have been made of this Awe-some sight by tourist and Ellis Island bound immigrant alike since the Statue of the Goddess Liberty was dedicated in 1886 (a mere two years before 'The Kodak #1' gave birth to amateur photography itself)? It still never fails to inspire, even as a quickly shot snap.

Old photos have that magic about them. So often I hear folks say, "Well, my photos aren't any good. I throw most of them out." That is a shame. While professional portraits are a nice thing to have as well, I think that everyone should make (and print!*) as many photos of their every day lives as they can. More especially of the people and places that they care about. One, for their own enjoyment years down the road when those people and places may not be around any longer, and two, for posterity to enjoy and learn from those same lost people and places.

One of my favourite books of photography is the 12 volume set of Burton Holmes' Travelogues that I found in great condition at an old book shop a few years ago. Burton Holmes traveled the world with a camera in the late 1800s and early 1900s and provided a window into the rest of the world that at the time, was the only glimpse of another culture that most people would ever get. Today, these Travelogues (he coined the phrase) serve as one of the best documentary looks at a world that could not fathom global conflict (much less two of them in such short time) that would destroy so much of the natural beauty and the wondrously executed works of man that then existed with the ruthless hands of ignorance and war.

'Fine photographic art' has its place of course, but there is plenty of room in future history for snapshots as well. The moments fly by as the speed of time and if they aren't recorded, they are left only to the fading prospective memories of the few people who may have been witness to them and have been paying attention.

(*does no good to make lots of cool digital snapshots and not print them...committing an image to print gives it a chance of survival to be seen by future generations...keeping it ONLY in a temporary electronic form, almost certainly dooms it to being lost as technologies change and CDs and hard drives are corrupted with the ravages of heat, moisture and time.)

20070803

Bucksport/Deer Isle

Tracey came with me to photograph a wedding on Deer Isle. We made a weekend of it and stayed a few nights in Bucksport.
I'm bored on the way up...


and then got a few photos of the new Penobscot Narrows suspension bridge...and one with Ft. Knox also the next day...



Bambi

Bambi's mom jumped up out of the road and into the woods as I was driving up to our house. Bambi here, looked a bit perplexed as to what this big rumbling gold thing in the road was. Stared at me long enough for me to get my camera out and take a few photos through the windshield and then ran off in the other direction from mom...

Wierd Onion Ring

No commentary. Just a cool onion ring...

The Cats

(The grrrls wanted me to post photos of their cats.)

Keiko


Starbuck


Cassie

20070721

Stuck in Hogwarts Hel

So the last of the Harry Potter books came out last night. While I've not been all that interested in reading them myself, my wife has began reading them to the grrrls soon after the second book came out and we've all been going to see the movies. Like any red blooded grrrls, mine are smitten with young master Radcliffe and really like the series. All manner of media frenzy has broken out over this last of the books release and MuggleFest Portland was conceived of.

While the concept of any such socially phenomenal event such as this is often brilliant, it is another thing entirely to pull it together in reality. The energy of the event was palpable, and in the long run, I suppose we can say that we are happy that we were among the 5000 people who purchased tickets, but it was a trying many hours. Here are some of the photos that I made of the event to give you some idea of what you may have missed:

The Narrow Gauge Railroad on Portland's Eastern Prom was transformed into Hogwarts Express for the afternoon.


"All Aboard!" and the train is away ...well, except for those of us who wouldn't push and shove our way to get onto the train...we gave up waiting for a second attempt at boarding and we walked down the tracks to the event...It was a pleasant walk at least.


A half a mile later we arrived and queued up to get our (sold out!) tickets punched and our green arm bands. We then adventurously entered the warehouses of The Portland Company Complex which had been converted for the day into Diagon Alley.

There were certainly many colourful characters and great costumes from volunteers to attendees:




There were shops in the 'alley' from a number of very good causes such as Habitat for Humanity and the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital and there were on hand even some commercial entities such as our favourite local Portland Purveyors of Spritual Goods...


Again, the concept, the design and all the work put into the event...and all of the awareness and money that was probably raised through the event is admirable and to be applauded, but there were 5000 tickets sold to this event and everyone wanted to stick around until midnight to get their books. Sadly, what I will remember most about MuggleFest was 10 hours of this:


No, there is nothing quite like a 10 hour experience with 5000 sweaty nylon costumed mugglespawn all near brainless sugar-high on Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Droobles, Ice Mice, Fizzing Whizbees, Cockroach Clusters, Jelly Slugs, Blood Pops, and Chocolate Frogs crushed in tightly together suffering +100° heat and high humidity in a 161 year old collapsible firetrap of a warehouse complex built to hold maybe 1000 people comfortably and safely.
Oh the joy of the shared social experiences that I get talked into forking over cash for!

20070709

4th of July 2007

The fireworks were washed out on Saturday night, but were held on Sunday...Here are two shots of the grrrls enjoying them...



Denmark's Bicentenial Park

Some dedicated Denmark residents have raised a lot of money to purchase a parcel of land near the town's damn to fix up and create a town park.
The park was dedicated this last 4th of July Weekend.



Denmark Bicentennial T-Shirts, buttons and posters for sale to benefit a local family who lost a member in a recent shooting in NH...


Bringing in picnic tables to seat the crowds...


A view of the new bandstand and the grounds...


The flags are raised to open the dedication...


Words of thanks are offered to the many dedicated folks in town who made this park happen and a reminder that the park and indeed our town is everyone in the town's responsibility...








A view of the pond from the shore of the new park...