Early Explorations

This winter I finally took the time to digitally scan selected early photos, some taken 30 to 40 years ago. Prior to 2009 I used only film cameras shooting black and white and color. Some were made with 35 mm cameras but lots were medium format 6 x 7 cm or 6 x 4.5 cm and others were with a 4 x 5 inch view camera.

Many of my color photos were from transparency / slide film that I printed directly onto paper with the Cibachrome process. Ciba prints have great clarity, vivid colors and are archival. (1)

The first five photos in this blog gallery were taken in Rhode Island in the 1970’s and the rest in Maine during the 1970’s and 80’s.

I first worked and lived in Rhode Island after university. The RI photos were shot close to my rural home in Exeter on a wooded area across the road. At the time it was a private estate that I would sneak onto and is now managed by the RI Audubon Society.

While Rhode Island has a rural western corridor, it is mostly urban and escaping to Maine, a day’s drive north, was a major pleasure. I first explored Maine by canoe on its inland lakes and only later the sea coast when I finally moved to Mount Desert Island. This is pretty much backwards for most people but I was particularly attracted to the state’s remote lakes. At the time I could spend one or two weeks camping and paddling while rarely seeing another boat.

Maine is 90% forested, much of it being multiple use, private timber land with public recreational access via logging roads. The state has 3,400 named lakes and 2,600 ponds (a lake is a “great pond” over 10 acres). In addition, there are 2,677 lakes and ponds with no name. The coast of Maine has 3,476 miles of tidal shoreline and 3,166 registered coastal islands. (2)

Scanning these photos has been a real trip back to my beginnings with landscape photography. It’s great to give them new life; I hope you enjoy them!

(1) Unfortunately, the paper and chemistry for this process stopped being produced in 2012. However, the transparency types I used, such as Fujichrome, have stood the test of time and the colors have not changed. But all slide film will eventually fade and shift color. No one knows for sure with general guidance being 40 years for even the most stable types. So, the best strategy is to scan your favorite slides before they are lost. For a while in the 1980’s I shot a fair amount of Kodacolor negative film because it was cheaper and more convenient than processing transparencies. The problem was Kodacolor film was not archival and my photos of northern New England, the Pacific North West and Canada are lost forever.   

(2) Maine Forest Service; Maine Coastal Registry and Maine Planning Office