1st entry – maine 2009

On September 24, I am heading up to Maine to take pics.

The itinerary is to go from Boston up to Portland driving along the coast.

The last time I was in this part of the country I was in college and it was late March early April. A group of us drove from NYC to Boston to Quebec  City. What I remember of Maine is tunnels of snow-covered fir-trees. We had left New York City full of spring. Boston was overcast and dreary. Maine was scary. Giant firs looming over us. I still remember thinking – the trees are going to fall over and bury us, the car battery is going to die, it’s getting dark, I hate winter . . .  Ah! the joys of college.

Quebec City wasn’t much better. One night we were walking on the Plains of Abraham, a historic site in the city, and it began to snow. April snows in Canada are never easy. You’re exhausted from the long months of winter-white and here comes more snow. I had on loafers and my feet froze.

This time I get to revisit Maine with my friend John who actually knows where he’s going. And I get to stop and shoot pictures. He’s supposed to paint, but I haven’t gotten a firm yes on this.

A Side-note
After Calabria, I realized I needed a camera case with wheels. I really like the one I have, but it’s miserable lugging it around. At Rome Fiumicino, I swallow my pride, found a cart and used it to wheel the camera case around. So this will be my first outing with a new, wheeled case.

The Sunday Times, in the travel section, had an article on Maine . It was about the small town where Winslow Homer spent his years painting the Maine coast.

I’ve gotten away from shooting nature, I removed the nature title from the header on the website and replaced it with structures. I’m curious to see what I’m going to do with Maine and its nature. My hope is to find the lines in the rugged coast and to present the landscape as structures. My reference for this approach are the images of Panarea. There too I was stuck in nature, but the images are of structures, volcanic monoliths pushing away the blue and the green. I concentrated on the sun on the rock-face, the white-waves of streaking motorboats, the verticals of sailboats, the pitch of sun-umbrellas, the flat blue horizon, the white-washed housing. I need to find their counterpoints in Maine.