A Year in Review

The past month has been a flurry of events and activity, leaving little time to work on my personal projects. Now that the holidays are over I have been able to find a little down time to sit and reflect on the past year. It's been full of the usual ups and downs as well as new opportunities, loses, quiet moments and adventures. At the beginning of 2016 I had resolved to take more time to focus on my personal photography. Looking back through this year's collection of images I believe I followed through on my goal. Below you will find a look back at my photo adventures through the year. Some of these images you may have seen already and others you'll be seeing for the first time. I'm hoping next year will bring many more photo adventures. I think my goal for next year will be to focus more on the post production, my editing, retouching and creative effects. And of course I'll still trying to find time alone with myself and my camera.

Enjoy! And Happy New Year!

 Wind chill had the temperature in the negatives when I was out this day

 I found something so striking about those clumps of purple flowers

 I had so much fun this day even though it was pouring!

 I just loved how the tulip petals fell all around my tea cup

 Love finding this little yellow leaf on this monochromatic background

 The gardens at Harkness in full bloom

 Discovering Maine, I think it's my new muse

 Maine rubbing it in my face how beautiful it is

 Belfast at sunset

 Strawberry moon over Belfast harbor

One Farm Four Seasons

Another year is about to wrap up. I can hardly believe December is here. It feels like just yesterday that I set out to begin this photo series. It was mid January and bitter cold. The wind chill brought the temperature down to about negative 7 that day. I truly understood what "being cold to the bone" really felt like. Even when I got home, wrapped myself in a blanket and drank a steamy cup of tea I still felt cold. 

This tree was especially fun to capture throughout the seasons. Winter was taken after one of the only snows we had that year (I think we had about 3 snow days in total). Summer's image was taken right after a monstrous thunder storm. You know the type, they always happen on hot steamy days, they come raging in and less then an hour later it's like it never happened. Autumn was a bit harder, I had to wait until the foliage and the light was just right which resulted in me visiting the spot multiple times. 

You can find this wonderful print collection for sale in my etsy shop!: http://etsy.me/2h1728d

Meet Guinness

Lately Monday's have been dedicated to working on my CPP portfolio. For those of you not familiar with CPP, it stands for Certified Professional Photographer. It's a credential that only 3% of Professional Photographers hold. Becoming a CPP is a two part process. The first is a written exam comprised of 100 questions all about various technical aspects of photography. This part I have aced. I'm now on to the second part, a 15 image portfolio that showcases my technical skills. It has been a grueling process that tests you in many ways; technically, creatively as well as helping you improve and learn. I've certainly learned a lot! 

A few weeks ago I had Guinness model for me. I think the above photo describes perfectly how our little session went, lol! Just like many dudes he was not into being a model! But I always get them in the end and we were able to capture a few great photos including some of him and his human. (Not to mention the above one made me laugh my butt off! I think in some ways it's just as special).

This was our ending image, a perfect addition to my CPP portfolio.

Guinness was jealous that we weren't looking at him so he had to photobomb! 

A girl's best friend

One Road Four Seasons

Over the past two years I have been working on a project where I pick a location and photograph it every season. This is a project that literally is a year in the making (sometimes every longer). Each location is scouted before hand. Then I return as the seasons change. Often I have to visit the location several times each season because of weather or lighting conditions.

Take Spring for example...

This was later in the day however I found the sun was a bit to high for my liking

This was taken in the morning right after a rainstorm, I found the light to bright for my liking.

This is the final spring image I decided to use, the afternoon light was perfect!

This project has been so much fun! I'm currently working on about three other seasons, all of which are in various stages. I think one of the amazing things is how much a scene can change in just a few days. All three of the spring photos above and the summer one below were taken just days apart! The diversity of each season is yet another reason why I love New England!

Spirits of the Night

Halloween is a holiday with a rich and complex background. It grows out of several streams of tradition, principally that Celtic festival of the dead, the Roman harvest festival, All Hallows Even in the UK and The Day of the Dead in Mexico. It is a night were the spirits of the dead supposedly move among us unleashing destructive forces.

In the spirit of Halloween I want share a few spooky photos that I've created in the past month.

A favorite October pastime of mine is to visit old graveyards. One of my favorites is found in my home town. I've used it many times over the years as a source of inspiration. It's in a state of disrepair and has many gravestones that are cracked or broken. For years I've had the idea floating around in my head to create an image of a ghost morning over one of these gravestones. So on the night of a full moon my model Masha and I set out to create this image. We arrived at the graveyard around dusk and did a preliminary scouting of the area to find the best place to photograph. As we scouted Masha made the spooky discovery of various bone fragments sprinkled around the cemetery! (The cemetery was built on top of a swamp and over time has slowly sunken into the ground so it is completely plausible that the bones we found were the bones of the dead buried there) Needless to say this grim discovery certainly set the mood for the evening. Luckily this was our only interaction with the dead and the night went very smoothly.

This next photo was inspired by a spot near my childhood home. Down a path in the forest you will find a cave built into a hill in the middle of the woods. As a kid I was always delightfully terrified of this mysterious cave. Why was it there? What was it used for? Who made it? I would always feel the urge to peak in and see if anything was in there. Even when I revisited it as an adult it was still a little spooky. No matter what time of day the inside of the cave is so dark the only way to see inside is to physically go inside. I still expected something "other wordly" to be living in the darkness.

Autumn Splendor (Part 2)

The beauty of autumn is drawing to a close. The heavy wind and rain over the weekend took down most of the leaves. Luckily I was able to take a trip to Devil's Hopyard last week to capture autumn's last burst of color.