I live and work in Rockport, Maine, a small town on the central coast. Except for a week in late September (when I try to take an annual birding trip to
Monhegan Island), I’ve hiked
Beech Hill—a
Coastal Mountains Land Trust preserve with an unmatched view—every day with my dog, Captain Jack. The hike is the main thing, but I always bring along a camera and take a few photos of birds (if possible), landscapes, and other natural subjects that catch my eye. After posting these in my
Facebook galleries for the past few years, I had several friends begin pestering me to offer some of the better photos for sale as fine art prints. Well, I’ve finally decided to do it and see what happens.
For now, I’m offering a small selection of prints in four categories: birds, other natural subjects, abstracts—and Beech Nut, which recently (2014) celebrated the 100th anniversary of the eponymous stone hut perched atop Beech Hill Preserve. What you see here are some of the most popular photos with friends, along with a couple of personal favorites. All but a handful of these photos were taken at Beech Hill.
For the heck of it, I’ve recently added a sort of season- and color-matching feature, or two-question game, or whatever you want to call it. First time visitors to the site will see this "quiz" automatically; if you’re a return visitor, you’ll have to
go here. I thought it might help someone who happens to be looking for a print to hang in a room with a certain color decor. (If this little feature generates enough interest, I’ll make it more visible.)
My cameras aren’t the most expensive or highly touted by professional photographers, but they seem to do the trick. Being most obsessed with bird photography, I’ve had several super-zooms over the years. Currently, I’m using a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS, a 12.1-megapixel camera that provides nice, sharp images at maximum zoom and great resolution in all but low-light situations.
My printer is an
Epson Stylus® Pro 3880, which offers gallery-quality output with its MicroPiezo print head and eight-color pigment set, and I absolutely love this thing. I’m offering signed, numbered 17" x 22" prints (14.25" x 19" image size) in a limited edition of 25, as well as open-edition prints on 13" x 19" (11.25" x 15" image size) and 8.5" x 11" (6" x 8" image size) paper. For the larger prints, I’m using
Hahnemühle William Turner Matt Fine Art Paper (310 GSM), which gives a gorgeous painterly effect; the smallest prints are made on Hahnemühle’s impressive (and popular)
Photo Rag Fine Art Paper (308 GSM).
CMLT donation: I’m happy to report that for every purchase of the limited-edition print of
Blueberry Barren, Three Islands Press will donate $25 to
Coastal Mountains Land Trust. The CMLT is a great group of folks whose
mission is to permanently conserve, monitor, manage, and restore land of natural and historical value in the western Penobscot Bay region of Maine.
Please note: the watermarks ("©Three Islands Press") you see here of course do
not appear on the final prints.
In case you’re interested, I keep a daily
blog of what I see at Beech Hill. If you have any questions about the process, the photos, Beech Hill preserve, or Maine birds in general, please feel free to
drop a line. —
Brian Willson
