Britani & Michael live and work and grew up in Wisconsin but Maine has a piece of their hearts. Britani’s grandparents raised their family on the craggy shores of Port Clyde, Maine where a town can be just a few buildings easily outnumbered by piers and lobster pots. If you’ve never studied a coastal map of the state you might be surprised as I was to see how ragged the land’s edge is, every town on its own peninsula, miles and miles of shoreline that can be home to penguins and seals and moose. I traveled to Maine during one of Britani and Michael’s annual summer pilgrimages to the family home overlooking a small bay and a pier her granddad no longer works, but still watches over. I met them on her grandad’s porch and he fed me homemade blueberry bread that was so delicious I can still taste it if I close my eyes and try. Michael treated us to ice cream at the village ice cream shop and we climbed the rocks by the shore to sink our feet in the sandy mud by the sea. I stood in the wildflowers while Britani led Michael down a rocky outcrop to lay in the sun just out of the shadow of a modest lighthouse, a lighthouse like hundreds of others along the many fingers of the Maine coast. Very simply, they enjoyed a day at home, their second home, and I photographed them doing what they love to do best.
After our day in Port Clyde I spent a few hours on a sunset sail around Portland’s harbor. Portland is a more urban and certainly bigger and more bustling than Port Clyde, but out in the water the city recedes and the sounds of the ocean take over. I love these images that show time stopped or at least exquisitely slowed down.
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