I moved to Maine the day after I graduated college in May 2006. A good friend who was a year ahead of me in college, Kate Izor, went to Maine and liked it there. If it was good enough for her it was good enough for me, I thought. She and I were both right, but I give her all the credit. I’ll have to tell her next time I see her.
I started working at the Maine Photographs Workshops (now Maine Media Workshops) as the Digital Service Bureau Manager; fancy title. In reality I was responsible for running a usually flawless digital lab, making sure everything was as close to perfect as possible, and overseeing 3 wonderful employees, all of which became great friends.
The position was seasonal and I wanted to stay in Maine, so when John Paul Caponigro and his wife, Ardie, came to teach at the Workshops, I made sure everything was 100% flawless vs. the usual 99% flawless; gotta have the 1% to relax a little you know. I heard through a friend that they were looking for a part time employee and that they were great people, so he set up the interview which was really more of a “hey let’s meet you and make sure you mesh well with our team… and see if you can become acclimated to Angel, our enormous white German Shepard.” Usually I’m super allergic to dogs but somehow my body was able to tolerate Angel.
The day after I stopped working for the Workshops (10PM to be precise, but who’s counting..) in October 2006, it was at 3AM that I started working for JP! We braced for a wild ride up to Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park where he was teaching a Fall Foliage workshop and it was a big success, of course.
Fast forward two years to October 2008 after many Champagne Thursday’s, endless laughter mixed with (usually) mild debate over scotch (JP) and Jameson (me), photographs photography photographer, a million and one prints printed, snow storms, summer days, friends, family, and everything in between. It was at this time that I decided I wanted to leave the States, go to Africa, and help something, someone, anything. I said this to Ardie and what the hell she had a good friend, Chandler, who started and ran A River Blue, a non-profit based in Uganda. Well what the hell again, Chandler and I started emailing, and emails led to phone calls, and phone calls led to purchased tickets.
Rewind a little… it didn’t happen that fast but it sure felt like it.
Chandler and I started talking, and we both became serious about my going to Uganda. I sent countless emails a former volunteer, Beth, and asked her a million questions. Then I began a print sale and raised a good chunk of change (thank you to all who supported my journey — your kindness is unbelievable!) and two weeks before I left, I emailed Fujifilm USA to ask for a film donation. Times were tough (and still are) and I didn’t think I would get the donation, or at best not the amount I wanted.
A couple of days later I received an email back and all it said was, “LET ‘ER RIP!”. Are you serious? Exactly what I was thinking. Two days later I had the requested amount of instant color and b&w film for my students and I to use, and I packed it all into a Pelican case that Chandler gave me. Below is a picture I made of the students and I after using the film. Thank you, Fujifilm USA!
My coworker and seriously second mom, Diane, donated a Polaroid 100 Camera for the students to use and it’s a good thing she did because without it I would have been entirely screwed. I purchased a second camera off eBay but didn’t have time to test either before I left. No joke, Biggest mistake a photographer could make. Well, only Diane’s camera worked in Uganda!
I purchased my ticket two weeks before my departure, somehow lucked out and found a what I thought would be forever out-of-stock Canon 5D Mark II in-stock at RIT, bought a second battery which I thought would also be forever out-of-stock, borrowed JP’s Canon 45mm TS-E, and purchased (2) 8GB SanDisk cards and an extra tripod plate for my Gitzo. I literally finished packing right before my flight, boarded the airplane, and off I went.
Needless to say, I thought the journey ahead would be remarkable and life changing but I truly had no idea that it would be to the extent that it was.
