A word from the photographer…

This year’s solar eclipse was kind of a big deal. Even though it was only a partial eclipse here in Maine, it was the lead story for seemingly every news outlet, and our photo editor, Michele McDonald, assigned several staff photographers to cover it. I was working the afternoon/evening shift, so I arrived at the office just as the moon began its transit. The other photographers were already in position at Monument Square and L.L. Bean – locations with organized eclipse-related events. We weren’t aware of any other similar happenings, so Michele asked me to think of a place that might have a high likelihood of awestruck viewers and go there. A last-minute impulse propelled me toward Old Orchard Beach.

When I arrived, I felt immediately defeated. The beach was packed with people, but very few wore the telltale opaque sunglasses. Asking around, going from beachgoer to beachgoer, I was amazed by how few people were aware that a rare celestial event was unfolding directly overhead. A feeling of dread crept in – the heartbreaking realization that I might return to the office empty-handed. But then I saw them. About 100 feet away, a large group of people simultaneously raised homemade glasses to their eyes. I was desperate to get to them before the moment passed, running with such panic that my feet initially dug a hole in the sand like a cartoon character comically struggling to gain traction. By the time I finally reached the group, several of them had already left the scene and waded back into the surf. Still, five people remained and I managed to squeeze off a few shots before they were aware of my presence. I was initially angry with myself for not getting there sooner, and transferred that feeling onto this photo. At the end of the assignment, it was my least favorite shot from about six viable options. But Michele saw the photo without knowing the context of my disappointment, and she knew right away it was the one. Over the course of days, weeks and months, my own feelings toward it softened and eventually gave way to love. Today, I think it might be one of the best photos I’ve ever made, and I’m thankful Michele recognized it so quickly.

A word from the photographer…

As I was driving north on I-95 to the Pittston Fair, I was questioning, maybe even slightly regretting, my idea to photograph small county fair pageants. Will it even be interesting? Am I wasting the paper’s time? I’d never been to a pageant before, but the minute I arrived at the fairgrounds I knew, at the very least, that I would have fun. The pageant director let me follow the girls around the whole afternoon. It wasn’t just a pageant, it was really a community event. At times I would look around and think, “This is probably almost exactly what it looked like 50 years ago.” I think that is what I like about this photo. There is no real way to tell when this photo was taken. There aren’t any cellphones or cars in the frame. Nothing but a little girl at a county fair, just like many little girls before her.

A word from the photographer… So it’s March, it’s snowing again, we need a feature for the local page, and the page designers are dreading seeing another shoveling photo, or an image of a snowplow traveling down a city street. Wondering where I would search or what interesting photo I might be able to make, I stumble out of One City Center and a young woman with pink hair instantly catches my eye. Her hair was a nice contrast to the surrounding tones of black, gray and white, and I thought it could be a picture. Then she moved past me and I saw her fringed purse, which looked and moved like her hair &enmdash; a wonderful harmony of swinging and dancing strands of pink. Thank you, photo feature gods, thank you.

A word from the photographer… It is often said that photographers make their own luck by knowing ahead of time the right place to be to capture a moment. In the case of the ordination of the Rev. Anthony Cipolle at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, my luck was made by reporter Megan Doyle, who had attended the ordination rehearsal the night before. She explained the different parts of the ceremony to me and related that at one point, Father Anthony would lie prostrate on the floor before the altar. I knew I would want to get to the center aisle right behind him before that point so I could create a symmetrical composition of Father Anthony against the distinctive mosaic tiles of the cathedral floor.

A word from the photographer…

Workers from as far away as Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia came to Maine to help restore power to more than half the state’s homes and businesses left in the dark, many for days, following a fierce storm in late October. This crew from Gagnon Construction of New Brunswick, Canada, was working on power lines on Veranda Street in Portland.

I used a long lens to convey a sense of how many line workers were working together to restore power to Maine after this storm.

A word from the photographer… If the deadline had been a little tighter, this photo may never have seen the light of day. At the end of every game, there’s a scramble to get the photos processed and sent to the sports desk. The sports editors have some of the tightest deadlines in the newsroom, so you try to respect their urgency and avoid any dilly-dallying. Just upload the memory cards to the laptop, flip through the photos, make snap decisions to narrow down hundreds of photos to a half-dozen keepers, then tone and write captions. (This is often done from the seat of a car.) As you flip through the “contact sheet,” there are certain criteria you look for in a sports photo. You choose photos of the winning team demonstrating the upper hand. You make sure there are players from opposite teams in the frame. If the players are dueling for possession or making a play of consequence, all the better. This photo of Deering High School player Abdirizak Ibrahim accomplishes none of that: Deering lost the game to Falmouth, 2-0; there is only one player in the frame; there is no context or sense of competition. He is simply booting the ball downfield. But still, every time I flipped through the contact sheet to rule out the untenable photos, I’d pause on this one. “Ah, they’ll never use it,” I said to myself, and moved on. After three passes through the contact sheet, and three lengthy pauses on this photo, I decided there was something to it: the dense rain, the balletic athleticism, the lighting. So I looked at the clock, realized I had about five extra minutes to work, and filed this shot alongside more conventional images. I was correct that the sports department did not use the photo in print – which I still believe was the right decision – but, to my surprise, it gained a life of its own on our website and social media. I’m happy that readers and co-workers were drawn to the image as much as I was. And I feel very lucky that I had those five extra minutes.

A word from the photographer… It was a last-minute assignment. The citizenship ceremony had already started when I walked in the door. I wasn’t expecting it to be so intimate and felt a little awkward walking in late. I had always imagined the ceremonies to be in gyms with dozens of people. Instead, there were just five people becoming American citizens, their friends and family sitting among them. I also wasn’t expecting it to be so emotional. I photographed Mulhah Albadri’s son, Mohammed, becoming a citizen that day. Originally from Iraq, the family had the most American paraphernalia in the room. Mohammed was wearing an American flag tie, his son a Stars-and-Stripes bow tie. They all had little flags. After the ceremony I glanced over and saw Mulhah sitting there, twirling an American flag between her fingers while her family talked with friends and took photos together. I took the photo of her and then went and tried to explain myself. Her other son helped translate for me. I apologized for photographing first and asking later, which I normally don’t do. She just shook my hand, said thank you and smiled. In a long year when the country has seemed so divided, in that room, for at least a little bit, it felt like we were all a part of something bigger. We were able to live inside of the idea of America and forget about the rest of it for just a moment.

A word from the photographer… The annual Beach to Beacon road race is a very big deal: The Maine Today Media photo team’s coverage of the event involves the entire staff over the course of several days. My assignment for this year was to photograph the elite and international runners who were the leaders in the 10K race as they ran through Cape Elizabeth. As the media truck neared Fort Williams Park, it sped ahead to allow photographers time to get off the truck and get to the finish line area to photograph the finishers. As I joined fellow staffer Ben McCanna to shoot photos there, I noticed one of the runners collapse several yards before the finish line. Robert Gomez, of Windham, was a few steps behind the fallen runner and immediately stopped to lend assistance, lifting him and helping him to cross the finish line first. Gomez’s unselfish act of sportsmanship gave Jesse Orach of Gorham the win in his division as the first Maine male to cross the finish line, while Gomez finished in second place.

A word from the photographer…

When fishermen on the Finlander began cleaning the 600 pounds of groundfish they had caught on a January day in the Gulf of Maine, with a flock of gulls trailing overhead, I knew a killer image lurked. It was a pretty intense situation. We were motoring back at full throttle, six hours from the fishing grounds to port in Eliot. Often I was positioned precariously over a large crate of fish, holding my flash in the air with my left hand, the camera to my eye in the right, and my body balancing on the edge, trying to put the camera where it needed to be and keep from falling in with the fish as the boat sped along. I shot nonstop for what seemed like an hour, trying to put all the elements together: the birds in the right place, fishermen’s faces and body language correctly articulated, and the subject of their efforts – cod, haddock and pollock – prominently displayed close to the lens for emphasis. At first the sun was partially obscured behind the clouds, but then it emerged beautifully, creating contrast and separation of elements that made this frame jump off the screen when I was editing through the few thousand images from the shoot.

A word from the photographer… After photographing a late-winter storm’s relatively standard images of traffic and people shoveling, I decided to check coastal areas for possible flooding. When I saw this lobster boat barely visible from the heavy snowfall, I almost passed it up. I wasn’t sure I could make a nice image with all the white in this frame. I stopped, shot it – and I’m glad I did. It works. The boat is just visible enough. Time magazine chose the image to post on its Instagram account and, last time I looked, it had more than 23,000 “likes.” My daughter Taylor is an Instagrammer with a big social network and usually gets hundreds of likes for her photos – more than mine do. This time I finally got more than her.

A word from the photographer…

If there’s a theme to my contributions to this year’s collection, it’s learning when to ignore preconceived notions. And the courtroom may have been the perfect venue for that realization. Anthony Sanborn Jr. had been convicted of murder in 1992 when he was a teenager. Nearly three decades later, new evidence suggested that police had settled on Sanborn before considering other possible suspects. In light of that, Sanborn was in Cumberland County Courthouse for a bail hearing. The dramatic scene included a key witness who recanted her testimony from the original trial, among other bombshells detailed by our crime reporter, Matt Byrne. When it was clear that Judge Joyce Wheeler was going to grant bail, Sanborn covered his face and wept into his hands. As he cried, I didn’t take any photos. There was no use. “The editors will never run a photo that doesn’t show his face,” I said to myself. So I just sat there with the lens trained on the scene waiting for him to lower his hands. But then his attorney, Amy Fairfield, raised her hands to her face and suddenly it became a powerful image. I snapped a single frame, almost involuntarily.

When I got back to the office, it was clear that this was the strongest photo of the hearing. And even though it didn’t show Sanborn’s face, it ran as an A1 centerpiece in the next day’s paper, proving once more that sometimes the best kind of learning is unlearning.

A word from the photographer…

Track meets are exhilarating. And chaotic. And challenging. There are endless moments of photographic opportunity amid the many different events. This image was made as I followed the relay and looked for emotion at the connection. Often it seems impossible to capture the two together. When it works, the endeavor is all worthwhile, freezing the effort and agony of competition for further and frequent reflection.

A word from the photographer… My photo editor has this habit of adding an enormous amount of pressure in six little words: “We are hoping Page 1 centerpiece.” Ahhhhh! What if the subject is visually boring? Well, this graduation ceremony was a bit underwhelming visually, and I was sweating it until we adjourned outside for the demonstration. Thankfully, I was able to capture the intense concentration between officer and dog, and the composition worked in my favor as well.

A word from the photographer… Meeting Donna Wall was such a privilege. She does not have the easiest life. After working nights seven days a week and taking care of her children when they aren’t in school, you would think she would be totally checked out. Instead, Donna is an amazingly upbeat person, even at 2:30 a.m. during her paper route. I was guzzling coffee just to be able to keep up with her. She is willing to talk about her hardships and she doesn’t sugarcoat them, yet she remains positive and continues to fight for her children. I photographed her as she went through her nightly routine with her twin sons, who are 19 and autistic. She bathed them both, brushed their teeth and got them dressed in their pajamas. She does this routine with them every single night of her life, but she still does it with such care and love that it was incredibly touching to witness. She is truly devoted to her children and I think it shines through in the photos.

A word from the photographer… This was pretty cool to see and photograph from a distance, but I knew the best shot would be up against the building with the dancers moving against the backdrop of the clear blue sky. I could have stayed there all day watching this.

A word from the photographer… I’m always happy about a sports assignment that is feature-based, instead of action-based. I really love the atmosphere at sporting events and it’s refreshing to be able to focus on capturing that. It was a beautiful summer night in Sanford and there was a pretty good-sized crowd cheering on the home team, the Sanford Mainers. The manager told me that I could run out onto the field and shoot in the dugout in between innings. So I kept running out and then back over and over again trying to get the layers right. I really wanted to capture a scene that summed up small-town baseball and I think this photo does that.

A word from the photographer… In discussing this photo, I’m going to give away what I’ve long called my $10 secret weapon. About eight years ago, I was assigned to photograph kayakers practicing Eskimo rolls in a pool. I knew I wanted to try to get the kayakers when they were underwater, but I didn’t have a waterproof camera or a GoPro at the time. After some thought, I came up with this solution: I went to Goodwill and found a used, 10-gallon aquarium tank. When I got to the pool, I checked to make sure it didn’t leak and then put my DLSR camera into the bottom of it, placing the lens flush against the glass of the aquarium. I connected a cable release to the camera so I could trip the shutter while holding on to the top edges of the tank. Pushing the tank halfway into the water put the camera below water level and allowed me to make the underwater photos that I wanted. For this photo of children swimming in the Kiwanis Pool in Portland on a hot June day, I used the same aquarium tank but tried to keep the waterline right in the middle of the lens plane, so the image would show the scene above the water as well as below the water. Because so many children were swimming in the pool, the surface was quite wavy and I had to shoot hundreds of frames to get this image.

A word from the photographer… This image is all about the composition. There was a chain-link fence bordering the street and I was able to climb on top of it to gain an elevated view of firefighters surveying the scene. I used a wide-angle lens, which allowed me to include the severely burned buildings, the blue sky above, and the smoke from the buildings on the other side of the street. I think this helped add interest to the photo by giving it depth.

A word from the photographer… For a photo essay on the summer solstice, Press Herald photographers were asked to document different times of the longest day of the year. I chose to head to Long Sands Beach in York before dawn to photograph the sun rising behind Nubble Light. After making some images of the sun coming up behind the iconic lighthouse, I drove farther up Long Beach Avenue to look for other scenes at the northeast end of the beach. I was sitting in my car looking out at the beach when a bicyclist passed by on the road. Realizing that time was of the essence, I grabbed my small Sony a6500, which is always on my passenger seat, and ran out to the middle of the avenue. When I looked up the road to see how far the bicyclist had gone, I was blinded by the sun. Having seen the mottled sky earlier, I knew I wanted a low angle to accentuate the sky, so I bent down and put my camera on the road. When I flipped up the monitor to compose the photo, I couldn’t see anything in it because my eyes were adjusted to the bright sun. I took about 10 frames and hoped for the best. When my eyes readjusted, I was happy to see that I had been able to capture this moment, despite the fact that I was shooting blind.