Feeling Good + Inconvenient Graves
Thanksgiving came and went and I feel great. I usually get really depressed during holidays and I have no idea why. I think it helped that this year the four of us did it without any fanfare and just stayed home and had a nice dinner. Keeping it simple helped me avoid the holiday gloomies, but I'm feeling good in general because I'm transitioning from busy season to slow season by riding my momentum into other projects and administrative upkeep. Normally things slow down abruptly and it's like the end of a semester when you finish all your work and exams and then just crash. This year I've spent this transitional period getting a head-start on end-of-the-year finances, updating my websites and portfolios, and thinking of new, personal projects to work on. I'll talk about one of the projects at the end of this newsletter.
While I was updating my websites I went through and started selecting one photo from each of my shoots this year, to eventually be made into a fun slideshow. So far the collection is up to 91 shoots, and I have 4 more shoots officially booked this year. I would love to make it to 100 shoots, so maybe help me out by hiring me.
On Black Friday I made a conscious effort not to enter any stores and instead went for a walk at Laudholm Farms here in Wells. That's where all of these naturey pictures were taken. I love it out there. This is the best time to go because during the summer the trails are full of ticks. More ticks than I encounter on any other trails in the area.
On the trail I saw a cool owl and pile of guts and ripped out fur. After that I started to this about dark stuff but in a non-gloomy way. By the time I got to the beach-part of the trail I was thinking about all of the small, old grave sites in New England that developers awkwardly built around. I remembered that years ago there was a small cluster of graves in the parking lot of the Taco Bell in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I knew that the Taco Bell had moved and a lot of construction had happened in recent years so I made a point to go check on those graves.
I went home to research it and found out that a Starbucks took the place of the Taco Bell. I decided that I should go check it out and to research more "inconvenient" graves in the area. Cool, a mini-project to work on. I thought it would be cool to check out all of the grave sites in my little town but it turns out that there are WAY TOO MANY. Too many for one person to visit in the short amount of time that I have before I get distracted and move on to other things. Wells has over 200 cemeteries and grave sites. Most of them are on private property.
So I guess one of the things I'll work on this winter is finding old graves that are now in interesting places. There's one in Kennebunk that is just three feet away from the shoulder of I-95. I tried to find access to it but it seems impossible. I walked over a bridge to take a picture and the police stopped me because someone had reported me thinking I was going to jump off. Whoopsie!
Then I went to go check on the parking lot graves in Portsmouth. They are looking great. I always used to joke that a metal band should do their promo photos there. It could still happen but Starbucks isn't as funny as Taco Bell.
Anyway, this should be a fun reason to get out of the house this winter. Will update from time to time. This week I go back to doing some actual photo assignments again. Gotta do some newlywed car portraits. Should be a fun challenge.
