Maine spring

I didn't get much free time during my week in Maine, but a few hours did come available on a partly cloudy afternoon. I wanted to get out and document a portion of spring in Maine, at least within a 1-mile radius of my parent's house. Above, an ant climbs on a dandelion.

Another ant, in the center of a dandelion.

You can make out the specks of pollen on this ant.

A bee hangs out on a dandelion.

A bee fly, or bombyliidae, collects pollen.

Chokecherry tree blossoms.

Ah, true love is found on cherry blossoms. Not yet sure of the insect species here.

A bee on a wild apple blossom.

Another bee on more apple blossoms.

Wild strawberry blossoms.

It's ironic that the last time I visited Maine, the leaves were falling off. This time, they were growing back, like these apple tree leaves.

The flower of a striped maple tree, also called moosewood.

Burdock.

Alas, mosquitoes buzz at the top of a pine tree. The black flies also were out in full force when I was home.

Maine storm

At home in Maine on family business all week, I was greeted Monday with a nice storm over Grand Falls Flowage in Princeton, my hometown. My parents, brother and I were out for a W-A-L-K when this gust front rolled swiftly over the lake, bringing a short downpour and a period of strong straight-line wind. These storms seem to follow me; it's not quite the storm season yet in Florida.

It's easy to see the defined leading edge of this storm as it makes its way over the lake that I fished on nearly every day during my childhood summers.

A heavy rain core is clearly visible across the "back bay," as my family called it during my early days. My childhood home, where my parents still live, is located on the end of a half-mile peninsula on the lake. This is a backyard of sorts, behind the house.

Out in front again, in the main portion of the lake, rain falls over the "downtown" area of Princeton, if there is such a thing. It's a town of about 800 people, making it one of the more populous municipalities in eastern Washington County, the "Sunrise County" -- so named because it is the first place in the lower 48 to receive sunlight each morning.

More dark clouds as the rain continues to fall.

Later on Monday, the day I flew in to Maine, the sky cleared. As the sun set, the bottoms of the these lingering dark clouds were "oranged-up," as I like to say.

A close-up of the clouds. The "family business" I referred to, by the way, was the death of my courageous grandmother, who miraculously survived a horrific car accident 47 years ago, in which all of her family of six were involved. She got the worst of it: Her husband was told she would never eat by herself, walk or talk again. Yet, she did. She learned to walk and talk again. She learned to write with her left hand. And she lived a full life, raising four children, including a son who suddenly died two months ago. It has been a rough spring for the family, but we're a resilient bunch, as evidenced by my grandmother.

Fire and sun

The sun sets amid smoke from a wildfire in Melbourne that I covered for the paper Thursday. It was a small but briefly worrisome blaze for firefighters.

Purple space station majesties

Taking a break from reporting, I hastily stumbled out of the newspaper last night to watch the International Space Station's high flyover through the dusk sky. It reached an apogee of 84 degrees, almost directly overhead, so it was special. But the thin, widespread cloud cover made it not worth traveling to a more scenic location to shoot it. Instead, I pulled out my camera -- after the station had already started its four-minute flyover -- and took one 71-second exposure of the event. I put together this photo gallery of past passes to accompany a quick little notice to our readers about the flyover.

Children being photogenic

Jake enjoys some cake in celebration of his turning 3.

As a family portrait photographer, I live vicariously through my friends. What does that mean? With my best friends here in Florida being co-workers with awesome young families, I tend to enjoy shooting them whenever I get a chance - and some time off from work.

The latest opportunity came on Jake's third birthday. I've done a 3-year-old's birthday once before, and it was attended by many of the same adults and children. Though the company's the same, the experience is different with each gathering. And the end result usually includes me doing more mingling with the children than with the adults. They tend to accept me as one of them. I'm not sure who teases me more, though.

Anyway.

Jake's big day was my first birthday event at which I was equipped with my newest piece of portrait-taking equipment: Nikon's SB-600 flash. It offers full, quick light and stops subjects' action - even the squirmiest of children.

Too bad it malfunctioned early in the evening.

But it did an excellent job for the above shot of the birthday boy, blue cake frosting covering his lips and chin. With the help of the flash, my newest piece of glass - a 105mm macro, also from Nikon - proved to be an able close-portrait lens.

Thanks, Nikon. Now send me free stuff.

The flash didn't fire for this one. (I realized later that the flash's malfunction was mainly my own brain's malfunction because the battery had died.) So this shot of Julia, the other 3-year-old, holding her baby elephant Ella turned out a bit softer.


But, truthfully, these family-shooting opportunities came weeks and weeks ago, before I started my new job. It proved, however, to be good practice for shooting people again -- like this sheriff's agent, right, and his 2-year-old boy with Down syndrome.