Posted August 23, 2024
In the first week of August I took a vacation trip to the little town of South Brooksville on the coast of Maine. My family has been going there since before I was born, so it's a place full of childhood memories, and whenever I arrive I'm amazed all over again at how little has changed. The same cold salty grip of Atlantic sea air, the same harbor with boats swaying at mooring, sheltered by the same pine-clad island green in the sun just offshore (my family used to own it in days past; now it's mostly public land). The narrow roads, church and corner store look about the way they did represented in pencil in Robert McCloskey's book "One Morning in Maine" (1952), which was set there.
My cousin still has a house in town, but in recent years I've coordinated my visits with a good friend of mine from Chicago, whose extended family ALSO has a house in town, and I've "slept over at his place" the same way I did when I was 11.
So, I did bring my camera, but between the reunion with my Chicago friend (we had a lot to catch up on) and the hugs and boating expeditions with my adventurous cousin it was often too social a time for me to pause and insert a photography break. What follows, therefore, are a just few shots I was able to sneak in here and there, most of which I can't distinguish from ordinary tourist photos.
What can I say? I was too busy living life.
The camera I used was the Olympus E-M1 Mark II, and this year I was able to bring my newly-purchased 25mm f1.2 Pro lens to go with it; all shots were taken either with that or my 75-300 telephoto. The Pro lens gave me a fully weathersealed kit for the first time in my life to bring aboard boats, offering peace of mind when the spray started flying.