Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Web Catch


PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Thurston's lobster pound in Bernard is a great place to eat the freshest lobster available, and the wharves at Thurston's are one of my favorite spots to catch photos of the lobster industry. When we were there just after Labor Day the wharves were beginning to fill with traps. I've been there in early spring, at the beginning of the season when only a labyrinth of narrow passages, littered with buoys and gear winds mysteriously around each wharf between walls of piled up traps.

On the second day of our trip we caught our first sunrise in Southwest Harbor, then picked up coffee and were on Thurston's wharves in Bernard just after the sun topped the hills across Bass Harbor. I didn't know what I wanted to shoot when the low sun beamed down a row of traps. It caught the webbing of these three that stood out of alignment.

Around the corner I found another web that I thought worth photographing. A spider the size of a half dollar had built an enormous web in the sun among the traps. Photographer's are mostly scavengers, ragpickers. We wander and observe and find our prey where we can, not at all like lobstermen or spiders.