High Peaks of Maine l Featured Photographers John and Cynthia Orcutt

DESCRIBE YOUR CONNECTION TO NEW ENGLAND.

For eight or nine generations my family lived and worked in New Hampshire and Vermont, and since my first experience in New England, as a student at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, I have always felt that I belonged in northern New England. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania prepared me for the climate, but I quickly became comfortable in the mountains, hills, rivers, lakes and forests of inland northern New England. After living away during military service and graduate school, I returned to the Boston area, where I was a partner in a large architectural practice. I moved to Portland, ME, with my wife Cynthia, a landscape architect, in the late 1980’s, where we continued our design and planning practice. During that time, we were commissioned to design a number of projects at Sugarloaf USA, a ski resort in the High Peaks of Maine. We purchased a residence on the mountain, and more than three decades later, we still live there part-time. Currently, we own and operate a gallery/photography studio in Kingfield and have a town house in Portland.

DESCRIBE YOUR EQUIPMENT.

During WWII, my father was in the Army Signal Corps, and was involved in photography. He continued that pursuit when he returned, and my interest was triggered watching him in the darkroom. In our design work we frequently used photographs to inform our clients about specifics of their projects. Today, I work with Nikon and Hasselblad (medium format) digital cameras and lenses. In our gallery we print large format photographs, and for that work I prefer medium format image files with their large capacity and expanded dynamic range. To capture images with great sharpness and depth of field, we work with cameras, set at small apertures and low ISO settings, mounted on tripods much of the time. When traveling longer distances, hiking, skiing or canoeing we use lighter 35mm single lens reflex cameras. Our lens collection ranges from wide angle to medium telephoto focal lengths. We have two large format Epson printers, which allow us to produce prints up to eight to ten feet long. Our post-production work and archival storage needs are handled with Apple computers using Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and In-Design.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

JRO: Inspired by the natural environment, I take photographs of the natural world because, isolated through the lens, I see more clearly the unequalled beauty in the patterns, layers, textures and colors hidden in the chaos inherent in nature’s everyday presentation. The creative moment for me is in the discovery of beautiful vignettes, which are always there, but not immediately evident. Frequent visits to the same sites are essential for me to succeed as a fine arts nature photographer. Natural places are never the same, as they respond to varying light conditions, tides, sun angles, weather and seasons. The natural environment in New England where I live offers me infinite possibilities to explore with my cameras. The varying coastlines, estuarine environments, exposed aged rock, historic structures, mountains, lakes, rivers, forests and fields present a never ending challenge to my quest for meaningful images and my desire to communicate these visions to others. CPO: The natural landscape of New England is small scale and complicated. Vegetation and landforms hide open views. Landscapes are full of various shapes, patterns and colors of a variety of indigenous plants. As a practicing landscape architect in New England, I sought to simplify and clarify the landscape in my site designs. My approach to photography is much the same – to find simplicity by isolating subjects and eliminating clutter, aiming to reveal the basic emotion of a place. This is often achieved by photographing in landscape conditions that simplify a place to basic shapes, light and color, such as a fresh cover of snow or shrouded in fog – common New England landscape phenomena. See more of Orcutts’ work, including info about their book, at johnorcuttnaturephoto.com, or visit their gallery in Kingfield, Maine at schoolhouseartgallery.com.

HIGH PEAKS OF MAINE

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