Allie and Tim, who live in Cambridge, serve as directors for the orphanage. I had photographed their wedding years ago at the Newagen Seaside Inn in the Boothbay Region of Maine.

Allie and Tim have traveled extensively since getting married, and as part of those travels spent several months in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia volunteering at an orphanage. There they became fast friends with social worker Abebe Fantahun, who felt a specific commitment to children with HIV. Abebe dreamed of returning to his hometown, M

ekele, in northern Ethiopia to open an orphanage that would accept HIV infected children and their siblings, as most orphanages would not accept HIV kids. Allie and Tim encouraged Abebe to pursue his dream.

Fast-forward to 2010 when Abebe has just returned to Mekele to open his orphanage (which he named Lola) and Allie and Tim had committed to raise funds in the US to help run the orphanage. Allie and Tim set a fundraiser at her family’s home in Portland and invited me.

When Allie and Tim began speaking about Lola it was clear they had a very deep passion for Lola and its mission in northern Ethiopia. What they didn’t have, ahem, was a whole lot of pictures to illustrate the wonderful things that Lola was doing. Sold by their passion for the project and flush with frequent flyer points, I offered to take photos if they would let me tag along on their next trip to Lola. And they took me up on it.

So, this past spring on this unforgettable trip I got to meet Abebe and other Lola staff and of course the Lola kids, and to appreciate firsthand why Allie and Tim are so committed to this project. We also got to help Lola celebrate its first birthday.

Lola Children’s Fund’s mission is to raise money to provide housing, medical and educational services for HIV-affected orphans and local children in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has nearly 5.5 million orphans, with more than 800,000 orphaned by AIDS. About 80,000 Ethiopian children are infected with HIV. In 2010, 14,000 kids were infected and 3,500 died. More than 20,000 children need anti-retroviral medications to survive.

Lola was founded because Mekele had no services available for HIV-positive orphans, many of whom are left without family or government support after their parents’ deaths. Most orphanages will not take HIV children, so only the non-HIV children will be taken in. Many children live on the streets, receiving no food, shelter, education or medicine to help them combat the disease. Lola, on the other hand, will open its doors to the HIV infected children and their siblings so the siblings can be kept together after their parents’ deaths.

When I arrived at the airport in Portland and checked my bags, the same message flashed on the kiosk screen. So, I approached the gate agent and volunteered.

To make a long story short, by the time I got home six days later, I had given up my seat twice, and I had 900 Delta Dollars in my pocket. And, I was cooking up a scheme to go somewhere exotic. No offense, but those $900 weren’t going to be spent in the Lower 48. I was thinking bigger.

Thanks to facebook I’d been living vicariously through other photographers who had taken recent trips to Europe. Zofia Waig and Jennifer Stone had both just taken trips to Rome. Both posted gorgeous photos, Zofia mostly in in black and white. So, Rome was at the top of my list.

But, so was Paris as writer friend Selby had recently vacationed there and shared all sorts of wonderful details. With the advice of my sister, best friend and potential travel mate, Lisa, Paris came out on top.

So, the tickets have been booked for Paris in the Springtime. I’ll fly from Boston, Lisa from Atlanta.

Having the luxury of four full months to plan and research the trip, I’m having plenty of time to find us an apartment, research sights and even learn a little French with lessons I’ve downloaded to the iPod. With future posts I’ll share some of my research in hopes of helping others who might plan a Paris trip in the near future.

Bon voyage!

With the right to host next weekend’s NESCAC finals hanging in the balance, the game incited all sort of craziness. Like fans who painted giant B’s on their chests and players’ names and numbers on their backs.

Polar Bears and B’s showed up on faces and even fingernails.

And then, there was that tee shirt with a special message for Colby.

And, somehow it just seemed natural for a student or two to show up dressed as a penguin. Or as a banana.

Alums and Bowdoin friends of all ages rounded out the crowd.

With Brian Beard of Creative Images Photography there to capture the sports action, I was free to work the area for pictures that captured the emotion of the game, on and off the ice.

The roomy  and brightly-lit Watson arena is a photographer’s dream, offering great vantage points for photos.

The roomy press box is great for capturing the play-by-play announcers

and for straight-on shots of the Polar Bench bench.

The emotion ran the gamut from quiet times during official time-outs

to animated cheering when the game was underway.A third-period goal sent the game into overtime

and the partisan crowd erupted when Bowdoin scored the winning goal in OT.

For information on tickets on next weekends’ NESCAC final games, check the Bowdoin athletics web site.

Here’s forward Kit Smith signing pucks and tee shirts for local youth who hung around after the game.

This is actually not her first foray into professional photography; during the summer of 2006 she assisted Boothbay Harbor photographer Bob Mitchell at weddings in the Boothbay Harbor-Southport Island area.

It’s probably envitable that Angie, who grew up in Jefferson (near Damariscotta), would end up working in some aspect of the arts. With a painter mom (Mary) who teaches high shcool art at Erskine Academy in China and wrote a rap song about the principals of design and a dad (Joe) who is an accomplished Maine stock and marine photographer with work published internationally, creativity is in her genes.

Informally, her immersion in art started at an early age, as both of her parents are also professional potters; many summers were spent making vases, urns, etc., that Mary and Joe sold through craft fairs, co-ops and as custom orders. Angie and her younger sister, Nina, helped out, “decorating” pieces with brown scribbles.

Angie’s formal training was at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design  in Boston, where she took courses in a wide range of discliplines (sculpture, glass, jewelry, ceramics) while pursuing a major in photography. With a focus on fine art photography Angie studied printing techniques, large format cameras and alternative photographic methods. During a semester abroad, she studied at Burren College of Art in Ireland, where she experimented with natural materials and mixed media, including this meticulous arrangement of flies:

Immediately after college, Angie took a summer off from the arts to travel to Sitka, Alaska, where she worked at the Alaska Raptor Center, a rehabilitation center for injured bald eagles and other birds of prey on Baranof Island. Perhaps it wasn’t a total vacation from the arts, as she felt compelled to photograph the “cute, fuzzy mice” stored on site for feeding the center’s hawks, kestrels and owls.

Leaving Alaska before winter set in, Angie returned to Maine, settling in the Portland area, where she managed an after-school arts program for elementary students, an experience which made her pretty handy with pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, Elmer’s glue and glitter.  In the meantime, she continued to pursue personal work in photography, exhibiting in galleries accross the Northeast, including the Portland Museum of Art (Biennial Show), and juried exhibits across the nation.  She has a show which opens next month at Khaki Gallery in Boston’s SOWA arts district. More details about the show are at Angie’s blog.

In her spare time she enjoys travel, camping, hiking, cooking, printmaking, alternative photographic process, and mixed media. And, most recently, she and fiance’, Tim, tackled the challenges of home ownership, buying a circa 1864 cape in South Portland, where they are painting, rehabbing hardwood floors, and gardening.

Below are two of Angie’s images from 2008 Commencement at Bowdoin College, one shot from ground level in front of Massachusetts Hall, the oldest building on campus, and the second, shot from the roof of Hubbard Hall, a campus landmark.

Back in 2001 when I first launched MicheleStapleton.com, choices for portfolios were very limited; most photographers purchased a nice black leather portfolio at an art supply store and then produced twenty or so custom enlargements to slip into its clear pages.

However, the advent of digital photography and the explosion in digital books has completely redefined what passes for a portfolio; today photographers can produce custom coffee table books, many can have full photo covers.

I stumbled upon White House Customs Color’s press printed books about this time last year, and immediately was a fan. I upload digital files from my computer in Maine to WHCC’s lab in Minnesota. Within a week UPS is at my door with the finished book. You just can’t beat that kind of service.

And, the quality is superior to so many other press printed books I’ve had the chance to examine. The price is maybe half what I would have paid in 2001 for a nice art store binder and prints. So, it’s the perfect intersection of high quality, reasonable cost and quick turnaround.

Working with Dana Baldwin, a very talented graphic designer in Brunswick who also happens to be a neighbor, I enjoyed being part of the bookmaking process. I started by selecting 120 or so images for Dana to work with. From that group she picked about half for the final book, selecting images for  impact and how they worked together on spreads.

I’ve always appreciate the talent that a graphic designer brings to the table since I have a sister who is one, but I’ve not always gotten an inside look at the designer’s thought process. It was fun to hear Dana explain why pictures A, B, and C worked together on a spread, but pictures A, B and D definitely did not.

First Dana designed a general book, for commercial and editorial clients. It features a sampling of  landscape, portraiture, higher education, editorial, commercial and architecture.

After that book was sent to White House, Dana designed a book featuring solely education work. For the cover she suggested one of my very favorite photos ever, from commencement at the University of Maine.   It has rained the day before the outdoor ceremony at Alfond Stadium, and puddles of water on the track produced artsy reflections of the graduates walking to their seats. It was a gamble, because most folks will probably have no idea what the cover is or how it was produced (a picture heavily Photoshopped? a graphic?), but I’m so glad she recommended it, as it turned out looking great. The gritty texture of the track provides a speckled backdrop for the outlines of cap-and-gowned graduates walking by.

The books feature very large photos–often just one per page, and Dana finished the package off with nice details; for example, my name and new logo are on the spine.

If you’re an art buyer, magazine photo editor, or other potential client and want to see my work in a form other than what’s online, please drop me an email or call and we can ship a portfolio to you right away.

The new blog will allow me to run photos much larger, install my own logo, and make many more choices that wouldn’t be available with my old Blogger site.  

Being totally new to WordPress and the custom photography theme, I’m stumbling a bit. Hopefully it won’t take too long to find my way around.  

Also, we’ve imported some of the old Blogger posts, which worked for the most part, but the photos didn’t import. So, there is still a bit of tweaking to do to get things right.

Thank-you for your patience as I get things squared away.

She came up with a handful of possible new logos and I shared them in a very hush-hush manner with a few close friends. One by one they all commented on one logo in particular. Then, throwing caution to the wind I posted all the possible choices to a professional photographers’ forum with about five thousand members, and polled folks there. Again, there was a clear winner, a very elegant logo which was a very clever combination of a “m” and “s.”

Today’s project for the rebrand effort was creating business cards. Starting with a design framework set up by Lisa, Dana Baldwin, a graphic designer who is my neighbor is Brunswick, finalized the cards for upload to the printer.

For now we produced two square cards; the front of each card carries my new logo and a photo; on the backside (the salmony-red side) is all my contact information and a larger image of the logo.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the final design and can’t wait for the finished cards to arrive in about ten days.

If you can’t catch one of his classes at places like the Maine Media Workshops, then pick up one of his books. Two of my favorites are, Secrets of Lighting on Location and Spirit of Place: The Art of the Traveling Photographer. See all of his books, including luscious coffee table books, at his web site, aptly named BobKrist.com.

I had not met Bob, but was already a big fan of his work in National Geographic Traveler when I signed up years ago for his class at the Maine Media Workshops. I was not disappointed! In that week he gave me valuable guidance that is still paying off today.

So, I was very happy to learn today that he’s launched a travel photo blog, complete with photography and lighting tips.

As photographers, we should never stop learning. I look forward to stopping in on the blog on a regular basis and taking advantage of Bob’s generous sharing.  I urge all travel photo aficionados to bookmark Bob’s blog and visit it regularly, too.

The talented coach has been selected as womens’ basketball coach at the U.S. Naval Academy. In her ten years on the Brunswick campus Stefanie has guided the Polar Bears to a 235-48 record and amassed the fourth-best coaching record (.830) in Division  III history.

It was just a matter of time before a Division I school snapped her up, but of course Polar Bear faithful hoped the inevitable might be delayed as long as possible.

The photographs with this post are from the Polar Bears’ 2004 season when the team went 30-1, losing only in the Division III national championship game. That year Stefanie was named WBCA Division III Coach of the Year and senior Lora Trenkle was named All-American.

The popular coach leaves big shoes to be filled. For more details of her incredibly history with the Polar Bears, see the Bowdoin College web site.