For me and my family, 2022 has been a big year filled with soaring ups and pretty devastating downs. First, we completely renovated and sold our old home on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Then, we picked up and moved our entire existence almost 700 miles away to Maine which we love and where we have dreamed of living for years. This meant however leaving friends and family very far behind us. Then in September I unexpectedly lost my mother before she was able to visit our new home.
Though these are tough events to handle, I’m finding it incredibly exciting embarking upon this new journey. You see, for the first time in my life I am faced with learning to build a whole new community of friends, which is actually pretty fun and interesting! Not just that, but I’m making a go at being a landscape photographer, full time. So “the future is wide open” as the famous troubadour Tom Petty said. All of this excitement however has contributed heavily to a drastically lowered motivation for making imagery of any kind lately whether it be photography, painting or sculpture, I find myself feeling pretty unsure about a lot of it.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love making photography. I still love drawing, painting and sculpture. In fact, I spend most of my time thinking about artistic pursuits and what’s coming next. I even got out quite a bit this fall on creative journeys. I went on a couple of trips and put together a half way decent portfolio for the season as well. No, I didn’t make any videos for Youtube but I think that the time off from YouTube recently has been a blessing, not a curse.
YouTube was taking up too much of my bandwidth for too little return. In short, I felt as though I was spinning my wheels. The time off has allowed me to regroup and to begin rethinking my goals for my work as a whole and for the YouTube channel in general and that has been exactly what was needed.
During my time away from YouTube, I have been working out how the new house will shape up (yep, we bought another fixer upper) and learning the guitar again for the first time in 30 years, and generally reshaping how I live. I did after all, move to the country from the city. No stops in between at all. My closest town is 10 miles away and my closest neighbors, at least on my side of the street are a quarter of a mile away. The trade off for this isolation is the view from the back of my house, the silence, and the access to the outdoors that I love so much. It’s spectacular!
Living with such beauty right outside your front (and back) door doesn’t come without dangers of course. Bears, sharks, and the occasional fisherman coming up the cove causing a ruckus. It’s all quite risky business you see, but I think I’ve decided that I can handle it just fine. The other danger is the over-saturation of beautiful things in ones life. Now, I never would have thought this possible but I’ve noticed that from time to time I take some of it for granted now that I live on top of it. I quickly rein that in however as I am well aware that I am fortunate beyond words and will never actually take any of it for granted. Besides, the lack of stress of the big city and the ability to just relax without interruption is amazing and something I have wanted my entire life.
Speaking of, there is one upside to seeing the beauty every day that I find very important. and that’s that I am learning far more effectively how to discern the difference between what I want to photograph and what is just “surface” nice, and therefore should just be for looking at. This is hard to come to terms with when you are spending short amounts of time in a location. You tend to “spray and pray” a lot, hoping to get a shot out of as many things as you can fit in to shoot during the time when the light is as you want it.
I can go on about all this “newness” infinitum, but it all starts to feel as though I am boasting, or bragging, or I don’t know, saying “look at me!” but that’s not my intention at all. I’m just working out the ups and downs of a new place and the positives and negatives that come with that.
All of that said, I hope you enjoy the portfolio. As I begin my journey working in Maine, the evolution of ideas and techniques is bound to occur. These are my first of what will be many many more works in and about this place we now call home.
All image are available as prints from 8.5x11 to 17x22 inches. Drop me an email on my website to inquire!
Click on the Images below to see the full size uncropped image! (Once in full screen left and right arrows will cycle through images)
