Laura Watson, of Cleveland OH, is a regular summer visitor at the Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center in Maine. When she made her first solo flight earlier this year, she wore a logo t-shirt from the marsh for good luck.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

When Memorial Weekend rolls around, I look forward to the Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center opening for the season. I have volunteered there for six summers now, helping to man the register in the gift store and assisting visitors who come to canoe on the river. We get to meet people from all over the world — Mexico, Germany, and Taiwan, to name a few places. We get to hear their stories as well: a man from northern California was excited to observe cardinals (a bird we take for granted here); a young woman who had served in the Coast Guard in South Portland, but who now lives in Washington state, was visiting with her husband, who had always been enchanted by the way she talks about Maine; and a couple from Rhode Island, who moved to the US after they had to leave their home in the Ukraine after the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl, came to spend time with their son, who is doing his residency in emergency medicine at Maine Medical Center.

There was one story this year, though, that stood out for me because it was about how a memento from Scarborough Marsh played a significant role in the lives of one of our regular visitors. Laura Watson, of Cleveland OH, has been coming to Scarborough every summer since 1969, when she was 12. Her mom, Betsy, had had a childhood friend who used to tell stories about spending summers in Old Orchard Beach. On their first visit, the family wound up finding a spot to stay a couple of miles down the road at the Sun & Sand Motel on Pine Point Beach, and that’s where they’ve returned every year since.

The nature center at Scarborough Marsh is about two miles west of the beach. Laura says, “The marsh became part of my growing up.” She enjoyed canoeing, hiking, and bird watching. She met her husband, Joe, at Brown University, and they enjoyed many romantic evening canoe tours on the marsh in the summer. Laura and Betsy usually stop by the gift store at the center to pick up souvenirs. Betsy enjoys the jewelry pins shaped as animals, and Laura says that she and Joe drink their coffee each Sunday morning in mugs they brought home from the marsh. It was a favorite Scarborough Marsh logo t-shirt, though, that Laura wore for luck when she made her first solo flight between airports in a Cessna 172 this spring.

Watson had taken a couple of flying lessons in the late 1990s when she and Joe were living and working in Chicago, but it wasn’t until January of this year, when Joe gave her flying lessons as a 25th wedding anniversary present and encouraged her, that she went ahead and got her student pilot’s license. By March she had done her first solo, circling over the runway at Lorain (OH) County Airport. In June she soloed from there to the 5A1 airport in Norwalk, OH.

Laura says that in the early days of flight, when students sat in the front of the plane and their instructors behind them, the cockpits were open and there was no radio communication. In order to guide their students, instructors would pull on their shirttails to get their attention and then yell in their ears.

“The tradition was that once you had completed your solo flight, your shirttail was cut off,” says Laura, “because at that point you didn’t need the guiding hand of your instructor anymore. I wanted to have my Scarborough Marsh t-shirt on for the flight, though. Since it doesn’t have a shirttail to cut off, I had it signed, instead, by the instructors and students who were waiting in Lorain when I returned from the round trip.” Watson will test for her private pilot’s license later this fall.

Besides our attachment to the marsh, Laura and I share a connection of being photographers, both having switched from other careers. Laura had worked as a corporate executive for University of Chicago Hospitals. Her love of nature and an interest in conservation, however, led her to ask the head of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago if she could tag along on a trip to a scientific research station in the rainforests of Ecuador. Even though she didn’t own a camera at the time and knew nothing about photography, she volunteered to take pictures of the leaves of the tree specimens that the research group was counting. Talk about flying by the seat of your pants!

She went out and bought a camera and a macro lens and began learning as she went. Laura says, “When I started photographing the leaves, I was able to see insects up close. It was like falling in love.” She became fascinated by crawling into tight spots and finding exotic insects, snakes and spiders. Her love of photographing them was compelling, but she was afraid of breaking off from her life in the corporate world to take this up as a career. Wise words from her mother got her to take that leap of faith.

Betsy told her, “Don’t keep pushing and looking for what you should be doing in life. Just watch for doors to open. And when a door opens, step through it.”

Since then Laura has traveled extensively in Central and South America and worked with local biologists to document insects and other creatures living under the forest canopy. Her photographs have been published in field guides and scientific articles, and her first photographic exhibition hung on the walls of the Cuban Natural History Museum in Havana in 2001. Samples of her work may be seen on her website at www.natures-edge.org.

Paula Mahony, left, marketing expert at Words@Work, project manager Lou Christen, and VNA business development director Lisa Fuller with the 2011 Media Award winning slide show.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

When Paula Mahony, marketing expert at Words@Work, comes up with what she calls one of her “harebrained schemes,” you never know where it can take you. Today it took us to the Hilton Garden Inn in Freeport, where one of her “schemes” was honored with the 2011 Media Award by the Home Care & Hospice Alliance of Maine.

The award went to a slide show called “Ask for VNA” that Paula and I produced for VNA Home Health & Hospice, based in South Portland. The project started when Paula casually approached me and asked if it was possible to put words on pictures. I said, yes, you could create text layers on digital images. She then asked me if I knew anything about digital picture frames. I had purchased one for myself about three years ago, but wasn’t up on what models were currently available. My curiosity piqued, I wondered why she wanted to know.

Paula had been doing market research for VNA and had found that patients didn’t know what services were provided by the agency or that they could ask for these services when they were at their doctors’ offices. She was looking for a cost-effective, clever way to educate the public and thought that if patients could see a short slide show while waiting in their doctors’ reception rooms, the message would be delivered directly to the people who could most benefit from it. It occurred to her that digital picture frames could fit in with the décor of most offices and could be placed on end tables or hung on walls. They would be visible, yet unobtrusive. She wasn’t sure, though, whether the vision she had in her head would translate well in reality. The challenge was to use existing client photographs to carry a verbal message in a way that would be easily readable and understandable.

So how did Kathleen Kelly Photo help Words@Work produce an effective message for VNA? We started by creating a small demo, using three images provided by VNA and a rough draft of the text provided by Words@Work and playing it for the client on my digital frame. When VNA saw what Paula had in mind, they gave us the go-ahead for the project and asked us to have it ready to debut for an open house celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Visiting Nurses Association.

I was tasked with researching current makers and models of digital frames and getting comparisons of prices and features. I looked for a frame that could render high image quality at a moderate price. Due to time and budget constraints, we weren’t able to go out and photograph fresh images, so Lisa Fuller, business development director at VNA, selected more photos from pictures nurses had taken in the field showing patient care and acquired additional stock images. I edited the images to make sure that all had similar file size, resolution, and proper color balance and selected fonts for the text display. Paula amended the text, and she, Lisa, and I conferred to determine which words and phrases needed to stand out on the screen. The client also wanted the “Ask for VNA” logo, designed by Judy Paolini of TPDA, to be displayed several times during the slide show. After a second demo, I suggested that we repurpose several of the portraits that I had photographed of a number of the staff two months earlier for the VNA website to be layered with the logo. I reduced the opacity of the portraits so that the logo would pop more on the screen, and now the words were backed up by warm, smiling faces of caregivers. After the third demo, I rebuilt the slides with new typefaces for the text and scanned a vintage photo of one of the nurses from the 1950s to incorporate into the show. With all revisions complete, I loaded the digital slides onto memory cards for all of the frames and set the slide show to play in continuous mode.

After the slide show debuted for the staff and board of VNA, the digital picture frames were placed in a half dozen primary care physicians’ offices in the greater Portland area. Ms. Fuller says that they have been well received and that offices are requesting even larger frames (we are using 8×10 inch now) in the future. VNA plans to expand their reach with slide shows that will target specific services, such as physical therapy or wound care, to be placed in specialists’ offices. I’ve posted a version of the slide show on YouTube that plays with a music track, but the show that runs continually in reception rooms plays without sound.

APRIL 25, 2011

When Becky McKinnell, president and founder of iBec Creative, a web-design firm in Portland, told me she was collaborating with business communications consultant Mark Girr to launch a new company, ikno Intranet, she asked me to take some head shots of them with a high-tech feel. Of course, most of the Old Port looks … well … old. I went location scouting to see if I could find a backdrop that would have clean lines and something that would suggest interconnectivity. Still being a relative newcomer to Maine, I don’t know the lay of the land all that well, so I motored along, hoping something would catch my eye.

I’ve driven along Congress St. numerous times, but this was the first time that I noticed the glass skylight and façade at the Portland Public Library. I entered the building and found a stairway leading me up to the skylight on the second floor where all sorts of pipes crisscross. Ah! Just the look I was hoping for. Sandy in the development office was kind enough to let us come in one morning before the library opened for the day to do the photo shoot.

I learned that the library was founded in 1867, but a renovation was completed just last year by Scott Simons Architects. I called Scott to ask what the function of the pipes is. I wondered if they were part of the heating system or if they housed electrical wiring. Scott explained that the trusses are structural elements. “The library used to be quite dark,” he said, “and it was hard to figure out where you were going. The skylight and glass façade bring more light into the space.” Scott said that the super high-performance glass retains heat better, but with less heat escaping, snow doesn’t melt as fast. In order to support the extra weight of the snow, the trusses are needed to reinforce the structure. Scott said he enjoys the challenges of taking old buildings and bringing them up to the 21st century. “Besides bringing in more light,” he says, “we were able to improve the visual readability of the space.” Sounds to me like his job is really to make a physical space communicate better with its users.

Improved communication is also the goal of ikno Intranet. An intranet is like a mini-Internet and is used by individual companies for employee communication. It is best suited to businesses that have more than 50 employees or that operate in multiple locations. It’s an interactive platform for sharing documents, ideas, and internal communications. It also incorporates its own form of social media. Mark Girr, head of Girr Corp., had a background in internal communications, but he was frustrated by available intranet platforms. He wanted to create a new format and knew that would require a strong, user-friendly website design, so he teamed up with Becky to design an interface. They did a test account for Norway Savings Bank, and they are now developing systems for Visiting Nurses Association and Green Buildings Strategies Group. Mark said, smiling, “Some day we’d like to be nipping at the heels of Microsoft.” Well, I believe he’s got the right partner. Last year Becky was named as one of Business Week’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 25, and if anyone can do it, she can. Congratulations, Mark and Becky, on the launch of your new enterprise!

NOVEMBER 2, 2010
I ran into one of my favorite clients, Derek (I Love Boxes!) Volk, of Volk Packaging, when I went to vote today at the high school. I had the pleasure of meeting his wife, Amy, who is running for the Maine House of Representatives. The Portland Press Herald called hers “one of the key races to watch.” Amy is a mother of four, who has been active in the community through organizations like Young Life Scarborough and Moms in Touch International, but she says it was her husband’s family-owned business that prompted her to enter the field of politics.

“We seem to be in such a hostile business climate nowadays,” said Amy. “I want to work to improve conditions for small businesses to operate in Maine.”

Amy began her campaign for office in March, but she says the last two weeks have been the hardest. “It has been such an intense, crunch time,” she said. “We’ve been doing everything we can to get out and talk to voters. That’s what’s made it the best time, though, as well – getting to meet so many of the people of Scarborough and spending time talking with them.”

Derek has been at Amy’s side all the way – just as he has since the age of 15, when they began dating. Whether it has been driving her to meetings, posting election signs around town, spearheading a letter campaign, or standing outside with her on a chilly election day from the time the polls opened at 6 a.m. until they will close tonight at 8, Derek has been Amy’s biggest supporter. Hang in there, guys — you’re almost at the finish line!

OCTOBER 26, 2010
When the town of Scarborough was celebrating its 350th anniversary, I made a series of blog posts about residents of the town I had come to know since moving here. One was on the Paradis family (6/28/08). I learned some wonderful news the other day about their son Noah, 14. He is one of 32 high school students from across the state of Maine who has been selected to be a member of the 2011 All-State Jazz Choir.

Two weeks ago he traveled to Augusta to compete with 80 students vying in the tenor category – eight were chosen. Along with the sopranos, altos, and basso, they will be doing intense rehearsals during the Christmas break for the All-State Jazz Festival, which will be held January 6-8, 2011, at Scarborough High School, which Noah attends. He’ll also be auditioning next month for the All-State Chorus. Go get ‘em, Noah! You have a beautiful voice!

SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

I suppose each area of the country has its own version of a community meal that involves a day-long, slow cooking of the food. I had heard of clambakes in New England and pig roasts in the South, but I had never heard of a bean hole supper (or “suppah,” as they would say here) until I moved to Maine. For four years I had noticed announcements in the weekly paper for bean suppers, saying that they included things like coleslaw, brown bread, red-skinned hot dogs, and American chop suey (whatever that is, I wondered). I had never gone to one, though, until this past weekend, when I saw a notice board outside the Blue Point Congregational Church, just down the road from me, for an authentic bean hole supper.

I learned that not all bean suppers are cooked in bean holes. More often than not, the beans are soaked and cooked in the usual way in big pots on a stovetop or in slow cookers. Many area churches have revived the tradition of the bean hole, however, in which pots are placed on coals overnight in a hole dug in the ground. According to Marshall Goodwin, a retired dentist who spearheaded Blue Point Church’s bean hole revival 20 years ago, bean holes are part of the lumberjack history in Maine. They provided an inexpensive, convenient meal in camps and on river drives. The cook would head down river on a raft ahead of the jacks. He didn’t have an oven, of course, so he would devise a makeshift one by digging a hole and lining it with burning wood. He’d cook beans all day in it, and then would wait for the hungry lumbermen to arrive for supper.

By reading some articles on the Internet, I found that bean holes may pre-date the logging era. It’s thought that early Native Americans in Maine (possibly the Penobscots) cooked in holes in the ground for hundreds of years and that early settlers learned to make a special baked bean dish from them.

On Friday afternoon I found Dr. Goodwin, along with Shawn Brennan, Mike Wood, Richard Sterling, Arthur Leddy, and John Bauer, manning the fire pit behind the church. They had started burning wooden pallets in the hole at about 3 p.m. Brennan said that they would burn about 12 pallets down to coals over the course of five hours. The temperature inside the brick-lined hole gets up to about 1200 degrees Farenheit. The coals are then raked out and the bean pots lowered in. The hole is covered with an old metal door that they got from the American Legion Hall, carpets, and a layer of dirt.

“Come on back later,” the men said. “Several of our church members will come tonight for dinner and fellowship before we set the beans in the hole.” Well, who could pass up an invitation like that? As darkness fell and a full moon rose overhead, I found about 20 congregants gathered behind the church. They were roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the coals as the final pallets were being added to the fire. Before the fire pit was raked, Brennan took pots of pea beans and kidney beans out of the back of his car, added a mixture of onion, salt port and dark molasses, and placed them over propane heaters to parboil them.

By 8:30 both the fire hole and the beans were ready to go. Everyone gathered around as the heavy pots were lugged from the parking lot. When they were successfully lowered into the pit, the women, led by Nancy Landsman, began clapping, singing an improvised song of  “The beans are in the hole,” and swaying back and forth to their own music while the men covered over the pit. It was theater and orchestra all in one.

“Come back at 8 tomorrow morning,” Mike Wood called to me as I headed to my car. “You’ll get to see us test the beans.” Twelve hours later found a small group of us back at the bean hole. Wood and John Bauer uncovered the hole. Shawn Brennan reached into the subterranean oven to take out a few samples of the beans for tasting and to see if he needed to add water to the pots to keep them from drying out. Arthur Leddy licked his lips and said he could jump in the hole and eat all the beans right then, without waiting for suppertime to roll around. When the beans passed inspection, the hole was re-covered, and the pots were left to simmer until 4 p.m.

A line stretched through the church basement as the food was set out. Baked beans, hot dogs, mac and cheese, coleslaw, brown bread, corn relish, biscuits, and an array of home-baked pies: apple, cherry, blueberry, and pumpkin. The modest fee of $6 for dinner helps to support the church, and a portion is donated to local charitable groups like the food pantry and Project Grace. While many of the diners were regulars at the suppers, there were a number of first-timers, just like me. One was Jane Maroon, along with her husband, Bill, from Delaware, who stopped to photograph the beans while she was being served. I chatted with couples from New Hampshire and Connecticut, as well.

Back in the kitchen as the crowd eventually thinned out, Shawn Brennan was getting to catch his breath. He had been at this process for more than 24 hours. I was beginning to understand why Crock Pots were invented. What a lot of work goes into a bean hole supper! “How did you like it?” Brennan asked. “You know,” he said, “the churches around here all get competitive about their bean suppers. But I knew we were on the right track a few years ago when a man came up to me after dinner and said our kidney beans were better than the Methodists’.”

AUGUST 4, 2010

When I was first studying photography in school, our instructors would show us the work of prominent photographers to help us learn about lighting, composition, and individual style. During my portrait class I was captivated by the work of Arnold Newman.

Working primarily on assignment for magazines, Newman carried his camera and lighting equipment to his subjects, capturing them in their surroundings and finding in those settings visual elements to evoke their professions and personalities. His style was dubbed “environmental portraiture,” and it set a new standard in the post-World War II age of picture magazines. Newman photographed numerous celebrities — artists, musicians, athletes, and politicians. He felt, however, that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer.

A few years later, when I began my career as a news photographer, I found that an inordinate number of our assignments were made up of environmental portraits — often because we weren’t given the time to spend with the subject so that we could photograph them actually doing whatever it was that made them interesting. The challenge that my colleagues and I faced was to keep from letting our “portraits” devolve into snapshots of (as we would call it) “here I am with my thing.”

It’s not always easy to learn from the greats, yet to develop your own style without merely copying their work. In Newman’s words, “Too many people think they are being original when they are copying other people who copied other people. They really think if they put a little twist on it they’re original. This kills me.” What I’ve found to be an equal challenge to developing an individual style is to not get stuck in it — to keep evolving and growing.

All this is on my mind because I went to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME, yesterday to see an exhibition of Newman’s photographs. The show was comprised primarily of images of artists who had lived, worked, or taught in Maine — people like Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, and Paul Caponigro. A great deal of the work had been produced in the years since I left school and so was new to me. Newman died in 2006 at the age of 88, but he was still actively photographing during his 80s. He claimed that true artists never retire. What I was fascinated to see was the progression in his work, becoming almost more mysterious. I’ve posted a couple of images (photographed in the subdued lighting of the gallery) that illustrate this. Newman’s photo of Berenice Abbott, although not one of his earliest images, is still done in what I think of as classic Newman style. But his portrait of photographer Mary Ellen Mark took me by surprise. Mark’s face is almost obscured by a stream of light coming in from a window. The only other element in her “environment” is the top of the back of a chair. No cameras, no photographer’s studio. Similarly, a portrait of the painter Alan Magee showed him in a wooded setting with the shock of a hand reaching in from outside the frame toward Magee’s face.

I came across an interview which quoted one of Newman’s writings from the early 1980’s. He said, “Although my approach has become popularly known as environmental portraiture, it only suggests a part of what I have been doing and am doing. Overlooked is that my approach is also symbolic and impressionistic or whatever label one cares to use.”

The theme of developing individual style and yet keeping it fresh hit home again later that afternoon. I was listening to the radio and heard a segment about a musician I am not familiar with, jazz saxophonist Lee Konitz. He was described as one of the pioneers of “cool jazz.” At age 82, Konitz is still cutting records and playing in nightclubs. (As Newman would note, a true artist who hasn’t retired.) During the interview, Konitz said that when he plays clubs or festivals, his goal is not to repeat what he did that felt nice the night before — that he tries to “build a new row of meaningful tones.”

The interviewer then talked to New York Times jazz columnist Nate Chinen about Konitz. Chinen said Konitz’s early career was defined by his refusal to play alto like Charlie Parker, the dominant saxophonist on the scene when Konitz got there. He noted that while the level of his craft hasn’t wavered since the 1940’s., the challenge of his late career is not to play like another storied musician.

 “Now, as he’s into his 80s, said, Chinen, “the greater specter for Konitz is himself and how to avoid the danger of habitual gestures, you know, your own personal clichés. And I think that, in an interesting way, has been the spur and the motivating factor for him.”

I think that phrase is profound — “the danger of your own personal clichés.” It challenges me to identify them in my own work and to figure out what may be my own new “row of meaningful tones.”

port-resources-invitation-to-stars-by-the-sea.pdf

A few months ago I attended a Chamber of Commerce networking event and wound up winning one of the prize give-aways — a bowling party for 20 at Yankee Lanes in Portland, ME. Several people came up to me right away to ask if they could be invited whenever I chose to schedule the party. I decided, however, to donate the event to Port Resources, a non-profit organization in South Portland. Port Resources (www.portresources.org) provides support services and maintains more than 20 residences in York and Cumberland Counties for the developmentally disabled. Because of cutbacks in state funding, Port Resources has diminshed capacity for providing recreational activities for its residents, and I felt that they could use a party more than I could.Earlier this month, staff members chaperoned a group of residents for their bowling party at Yankee Lanes. I stopped by to take a few photos. Several of the residents came up and hugged me. It was so wonderful to watch the joy on their faces as they gripped the balls and used a variety of interesting techniques to send them rolling down the alleys. It was very touching to see how such a small thing could make such a big difference to them. It was really all due to the generosity of the Portland Regional Chamber and Yankee Lanes. I was just the “middle man.”Port Resources will be holding its largest fundraising event of the year, an auction, on June 25th at The Landing at Pine Point in Scarborough. They’ve got some really terrific items, such as a family vacation at Disney World and a special night for four at Fenway Park in Boston, including transportation, dinner and four box seats. I’ve attached the invitation to the auction and hope that you will enjoy watching the video from the bowling party.

March 15, 2010

In a recent blog post (http://networkedblogs.com/p29106159), Rich Brooks, president of flyte new media, listed five tips to improve your LinkedIn profile. Number two on the list was “add a photo.” Brooks says, “A few years ago it was fine not to add your photo to your LI profile; they were few and far between. But we now live in a Facebook world, people, and it’s time to get with the program. People want to see who they’re networking with. And, unlike Facebook, a photo of your dog, your kid, or that shot of you doing a 10-second upside down keg stand isn’t appropriate. (Although that last one is impressive.) Also, use a photo that was taken in the past couple of years. If you’re sporting a handlebar moustache or beehive hairdo you’re not fooling anyone.”

Are you in need of a professional looking photo for your profile? If so, take advantage of the free portrait sessions I’m offering during the upcoming Successful Thinkers meet-up at The Maine Studios on Presumpscot St. in Portland on April 6th. To reserve a 10-minute time slot, go to http://kkphoto.brownbookit.com/schedules/success . You’ll receive a free digital image that may be used on any of your social media sites. While there, please take the time to talk to the folks from Port Resources, the non-profit group which is being featured that evening, and learn about their services for the developmentally disabled.

MARCH 1, 2010

One of the most interesting aspects of working as a newspaper photographer was having opportunities to be a “behind the scenes” observer. Whether it was documenting the backstage activities of a theater production, photographing in an operating suite while a doctor performed surgery, or spending a day with a political candidate making the rounds in the community, it was an endless fascination to see first-hand how someone’s job is done.

I’m now bringing my experience as a documentary photographer to the corporate world with multimedia. For businesses that would like to share online with their clients an inside glimpse at their world via their company website, blog, or Facebook page, I am offering “A Day in the Life,” an audio slide show that will document the activities of your company, one of its departments, or one of its employees during the course of their business day.

I recently spent 12 hours with caterer Nancy Cerny (www.cvccateringgroup.com), from the time she began chopping vegetables first thing in the morning until the finished dishes were out on the tables and being served at one of the two events she catered that day. My story of her day is told in the slide show attached here. Please contact me if you would like to have this type of project done for your company.