Field Work.... On Wheels

After 3 months and nearly 60 plus hours documenting roller-skating rinks, my photography collaborator, Anna, is finally convinced to give skating a whirl! It made us all very happy. She's back on her feet with a camera in her hand, but with an added perspective to her already-excellent documentary photography. Stay tuned everyone, our final show is just around the corner and there's a buzz in the air here at Salt.

Katie Fuller

Writing Student

Burnt Out

Photograph by Keith Lane

The Blue Door

Photograph by Keith Lane

Rexall

Photograph by Keith Lane

Interview inside a Trash Incinerator

Salt stories will take you to many places you may never expect to visit. While researching a collaborative story, Samuel Allison (Writing), Casey Atkins (Photography), and myself toured MERC (Maine Energy Recovery Company), a trash incinerator located in downtown Biddeford.

Photograph by Casey Atkins.

- Shane... Radio

Spring berry

Photograph by Keith Lane

Boxcar red

Photograph by Keith Lane

Orrs Island

Photograph by Keith Lane

Made in Maine

At the scenic turnout on Route 17 in Oquossoc, Maine known as the 'Height of the Land' we got more than just a great view. Apparently, even taxidermists are feeling the economic crunch, displaying their greatest works (see Mr. Fox) anywhere they can. Mr. Fox is turning to the bottle during these tough times. The sun exposure got to him despite his sweet shades. On our return trip to Portland, he was gone.

Katie Fuller
Writer



Jess Sheldon
Photography

Lobster Fog

Photograph by Keith Lane

Maine Maple Sunday

Sunday, March 22nd. The second day of spring. Every year the Maple farms around the state open up their farms for the public. A few of us headed out to Merrifeild Farm, in Gorham, to check out this widely attended event.

Later that day we had a brief snow storm. Yeah... you gotta love Maine in March.

And yes indeed, ice cream covered in real maple syrup = euphoria.

-posted by Keith, photography student

Urchin Fishing

So Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Anyone?

Pictures from the bear skining weekend

Here is our cozy camper located next to the goat shed where the bear gored the family goats.


Rachel finishes up the Grady paper by headlamp as I backup my images on my laptop plugged into the solar powered outlets in the camper


Rachel lends a hand in the bear skinning.


Jeff, Oceana's dad, looks at the bear meat resting in cold water in his kitchen sink.

"They are pretending they are not here"

Well I shot for a total of 25 hours this weekend, no, not including sleeping, and I am still happy, motivated, and excited about my photo essays. That’s the thing about doing something you love, even if you are putting in a five million hour week, its ok because you are so excited and happy to be doing every second of your work. So In addition to having many break throughs with my subject for my personal essay, I had an amazing weekend with my collaborator working on our homesteading essay. On the drive up we had a sort of epiphany about why we were following each family and what we wanted to show in each family. It was like the photo / writing gods were smiling down on us and granting our every wish! We were staying with the family that we wanted to document to show the homesteading community at large. As soon as we got there the community started flooding into our subjects barn to press apples. Within this community was the woman who started the Montville ordinance (the ordinance that we have based our story around and had yet to incorporate in the context of real live people), The man who started the community outreach for economically depressed families who don’t have food to get vouchers for the farmers market, and some homesteaders from the first wave of back to the landers (exactly what Colin had asked Rachel to find). We managed to sit down with all of these people and conduct an interview that lasted for maybe about an hour! It was one of those amazing moments where everything you were searching for just falls into your lap unexpectedly. We now have the glue to hold the pieces of our story together. After this amazing day we sat down to a great diner. One of the great perks about shooting homesteaders is that they love to feed us dinners composed of fresh food they have harvested mostly from their farm. So Rachel and I started to sit down to a meal of chicken (from the farm), kale (from the farm) cooked in apple cider (that we pressed that day), carrots (from the farm), Pork (bartered from a fellow homestead), and some rice from a store. Just as we were about to sit down I explained to Rachel that I needed to get a shot of the dinner table so, we needed to take our place setting away from the table and wait to be served, so that it wouldn’t appear that we were altering the scene. One of the children asked what we were doing and the mom said “they’re pretending they’re not here”. This struck Rachel and I, we both found it ironic and very comical. Of course we were there! And what were we doing by moving our plates? …. calling attention to our presence! I remember Rachel laughing and saying ‘this isn’t documentary’, and I said something to the effect of sometimes you have to sacrifice one truth to show another. I thought this was a really interesting moment, I can see both sides, in fact I’m on both sides, it’s something to ponder I suppose… After our freezing day outside we couldn’t resist a post dinner sauna in the sauna behind the barn that the family had built by hand out of local cedar. Little did we know that this would mean chilling out with our subjects naked, but at this point there was no turning back. Rachel and I rapidly undressed in the cold and modestly sat in the sauna with our towels surrounded by our buck-naked subjects. One of their moms got up to put the kids to bed and asked if we wanted to stay in longer I replied ‘If I were a good documentarian I would shoot you putting your kids to bed” and with that I ran with her and Rachel back to the house through the frost.

-Heather


Rachel pressing apples ( left) and me shooting (right)


shooting in my p.j.'s


Rachel taking feverish field notes

Mars

Written in Christmas lights on a garage on Chebeague Island.

Campobello, Lubec, and an international eagle.

Jazzy and I have been hanging out in between Campobello Island and Lubec for the 

past few days.  I think tonight we officially became regulars when the Canadian border

didn't even ask to see our passports.  It's been a busy two days of meeting people, running into

them again, talking, and of course, the ever-exciting building of rapport.  We've got enough

rapport to build a house.  There is a lot going on here.  There's the rift between the older generation and the younger one--the old way of living and fishing and the new: which apparently includes a lot of serious drugs.  The high school is shrinking, and might close next year.  Yesterday, when hanging out with locals on the back porch of Annabell's bar we spotted

a lone eagle on the pier.  Having left Marcus's borrowed long lens in the car I took a word of advice from Kate and used a little shoe leather.  I got pretty damn close to the thing before some man came up behind me with a wicked long lens and scared it away.  It was exhilirating though, here are some pictures!

Chebeague Island

Marc and I took the 6:30am ferry out to Great Chebeague Island last weekend to observe a "weatherization workshop" that has influenced the angle of our collaborative piece. He recorded and took notes while I shot photos of the folks at the Methodist church making removable storm windows out of simple pieces of pine and plastic. They are surprisingly effective in keeping out cold.

This gave us the idea to pursue the story of what Mainers are doing to prepare for winter. We imagine there are many people getting creative (some out of necessity) with how they are going to deal with high heating oil costs on top of everything else that seems to be going up in cost this season. We're curious to what we'll find, but Chebeague was a great start.

forest field work...magic can be laborous.

"Fugitive Caught in Flash"

Here's an interesting article from the Sun Journal courtesy of our radio TA Josh Gleason. It's about a photographer who finds himself directly involved in the situation he's photographing. What would you have done in his position?