Maine Editorial Photographer/Photojournalist » Professional Maine Photography Brunswick Portland ME

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  • Michele Stapleton : Photographer

    Based in Brunswick, Maine (just east of Portland) I am a professional location photographer specializing in documentary photography for editorial, education & commercial clients. My photography takes me from my home in Brunswick to wonderful places all over Maine and New England.  

    With an an ever-expanding collection of Maine stock photography, I am known for evocative images that use strong color, exceptional light and careful composition to create impact.

    I belong to the American Society of Media Photographers, the Maine Professional Photographers Association, and the Professional Photographers Association of America, and was one of ten Maine photographers selected to participate in the America 24/7 project.

    Thank-you for visiting my blog, and please also visit my main web site.

I’m in the midst of a “re-branding” for my MicheleStapleton web site, and part of the rebranding is designing a whole new look. I’m lucky to have a very talented graphic designer for a sister, see LisaWeldon.com, so obviously the rebranding job fell into her lap.

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.”
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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.

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  • May 20, 2009 - 9:08 pm

    Alison Bennie - These cards are beautiful!

  • May 20, 2009 - 11:17 pm

    michelestapleton - Thanks. Everyone should have a very talented graphic designer sister.

If you like taking travel pictures and want a photography mentor, there’s no better choice than Bob Krist. A long-time contributor to some of the most beautiful magazines in print (e.g., National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, and Islands), Bob is not just a fantastic photographer; he is also a generous teacher and delightful writer.

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.

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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.

That sound you heard coming out of Brunswick earlier this week was a collective groan over the news that record-setting Bowdoin womens’ basketball coach Stefanie Pemper is leaving Maine.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.pempergrin

I was fortunate to be asked to shoot a story on the Maine Fiddle Camp for Down East magazine. The story, shot last summer, appears in the April issue of the magazine, which is on the newsstands at this time.

I was told before shooting the story to focus on the camp food, and having spent many a summer at camp–first as a camper and later as a counselor–I thought I knew what to expect–s’mores, shepherds pie and spaghetti night. 

 Boy, was I wrong.

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Omigosh, this was a camp food experience like no other. Think rosemary focaccia, beet salad and blueberry cobbler from scratch.  And, everyone insisted that I not go home hungry. I can’t remember the last time I was fed so well on an assignment!

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If you are a Maine fiddler, no doubt you already know about the camp. If you are a Maine fiddler and haven’t attended, don’t put it off any longer. You owe it to your stomach to go to this camp!

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m smitten with the new Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory. I’ve been to the top of the observatory at least ten times and I still smile in amazement each time I round the bend on Route 1 and catch my first glimpse of it up ahead. I can’t help but pull over and jump out with my camera, hoping to catch a tugboat or ship making its way under the span.

The new structure, which is located adjacent to Fort Knox, carries Route 1 traffic across the Penobscot River near Bucksport. Well, more precisely, it’s between the communities of Prospect and Verona Island.

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More than just a bridge, it’s an engineering marvel, a work of art. The 2000-plus-foot-long cable-stayed bridge (in the style of Boston’s Zakim Bridge) sports one of only four bridge observatories in the world, yes, in the world. And, of the four, it’s the only one in the United States. The 420-foot observatory towner, fashioned after the Washington Monument, which was made with granite quarried nearby, offers incredible panoramic views in all directions. On a clear day visitors can see The Camden Hills, Acadia and even Katahdin.

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Kudos to the Maine Department of Transportation, to Figg Engineering Group and to whoever it was who came up with the ingenious idea of incorportating an observation tower into the new bridge. In its first season the observatory drew almost twice as many visitors as officials had been anticipating. I guess that shows that lots of folks are smitted, or at the very least intrigued.

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I was fortunate to be asked to shoot photos of the bridge and observatory for a story that appears in Down East Magazine’s Vacation Planner issue. The issue won’t be on magazine stands until the middle of March, but subscribers are getting a sneak preview as the magazine is already showing up in mailboxes. If you are a bridge aficionado or just enjoy great views, check out Jeff Clark’s story in the magazine.

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Last week I was able to travel to Mississippi and Louisiana and witness firsthand the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Though I grew up on the Alabama Gulf Coast, and visited Mississippi numerous times after Hurricane Camille struck there in 1969, I still wasn’t prepared for how widespread and intense Katrina’s destruction would be.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll repeat what so many others have said: it’s difficult to appreciate how complete the devastation was until you see it in person. Pictures in magazines and newspapers and reports on the television news just don’t prepare you for mile after mile of houses rendered uninhabitable by the August 29th storm and the subsequent levee breaks which sent storm waters rushing throughout the New Orleans suburbs.

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I spent several days with a group from Bowdoin College in Brunswick that traveled down to work as volunteers in a free soup kitchen located in St. Bernard Parish. While there I was able to drive around and photograph some of the worst devastation in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish.

When we entered into an area of heavy devastation (adjacent to one of the levee breaks) the first thing that caught our eyes were four houses slammed into one another. Overhead dangled traffic signals that were still inoperable nine months after the storm.

Unfortunately, things didn’t get that much better as we proceeded. Driving a few blocks to the left we saw empty lots littered with vehicles, broken wood, and mostly-unidentifible dirty-brown debris.

There was a giant tree trunk sitting on top of a car, a car on top of another car, and a sofa dangling precariously off a pick-up truck turned on its side.

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A truck was rammed up against a set of concrete house steps, the only sign of the residence that one stood there. Another house had been shoved off its foundation and stuck out into the street.

As we progressed to streets where homes were still standing, I imagined this must be what a war zone looks like: gutted ruins of houses with no sign of life. A vandal with a can of spray paint apparently agreed.

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Homes that were still standing were most likely stripped of all their contents, either by vandals or by their former residents eager to salvage any relics they could find of their pre-Katrina lives.

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And, it was not only homes that stood vacant. At least ninety-five percent of the structures we saw appeared to still be in ruins: fast-food restaurants,entire shopping centers,churches,doctor’s offices, banks, the library, fire stations, schools, the post office, government offices. Katrina got them all.

Wherever we drove (for miles and miles) in St. Bernard Parish it was desolate, damaged and depressing.

The handful of businesses that had re-opened stood out. The Home Depot had a full parking lot. We stopped at a Walgreens drug store with a “NOW OPEN” sign, and patrons were lined up at the two cash registers. At the Murphy Oil filling station on the main drag, one of the few filling stations we noticed open, there was a car at every pump.

It’s difficult to even imagine being a resident of St. Bernard Parish today. I know that I would have given up and fled to a new home had I lived in St. Bernard Parish pre-Katrina. I would not have the heart to go back and face the struggles that are there now.

The new norm is FEMA trailer parks everywhere. On the parking lot of the Dominoe Sugar refinery, in grassy fields adjacent the main drag, flanking the pond in the public park behind the parish government center, there are rows and rows of identical white trailers.

katrina_137 And the FEMA trailers are not house “single-wide” trailers, but instead tiny travel trailers. Many of the trailers we saw had only one window per side. Surely, it must be like living in a tin can.
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As the new hurricane season opens today, we can’t allow ourselves to forget the victims of Katrina. These people, in New Orleans and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, have years, maybe even decades of uphill struggle ahead of them trying to rebuild some semblance of a life. They need our continued prayers and support.

Bowdoin College’s advance through the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Tournament came to an end Saturday at the hands of cross-state rival University of Southern Maine. The Polar Bears were eliminated 56-53 when a last-second desperation three-point shot failed.It was the second Polar Bear loss this season against the Huskies, both on the Huskie’s home court.

The game capped an outstanding career for seniors Justine Pouravelis, Vanessa Russell, Ashleigh Watson and Lauren Withey who have been to the NCAA Elite Eight each of their four years, and in 2004 played in the National Championship game.

The Bowdoin College women’s basketball team inched its way into the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Tournament with a hard-fought win Friday night over the University of Mary Washington of Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The Polar Bear women came out on top 62-54 in a back-and-forth battle; the Polar Bears started slow and trailed by as many as eleven points before going into the half tied at 26-26.

The game was played on the campus of the University of Southern Maine in Gorham, and even though Bowdoin is in its Spring Break, a vocal contingency of fans–students, parents and friends–made the trek to Gorham.

The host USM Huskies, ranked #1 in Division III, overcame Bridgewater College of Bridgewater, Virginia, 68-55 in the second sectional Friday night to set up a rematch between USM and Bowdoin for Saturday night on the USM campus; when these two rivals played earlier in the season, the Huskies dealt the Polar Bears a 64-55 blow, one of only two Bowdoin losses this season.

On a night when many of the Polar Bears struggled to make shots, Bowdoin Junior Eileen Flaherty (below right) turned in a stellar performance, leading all scorers with 29 points.