There were several photographers that influenced me early on as a teen, growing up in Massachusetts but summering in Maine. One such photographer is Peter Hornby, whom I used to hang with as an early teen while on summer in Ocean Park, Maine. I stayed with my grandmother every summer at this environmentally rich speck of land along the Maine coast, while Peter stayed with his grandparents, the Hotchkisses. At the time, I was using a Canon F-1N, all the while dreaming about having a Nikon, which I couldn’t quite afford, and what drew me to Peter, despite our shared hobby, was the fact that he did have Nikons, which he let me handle and take some pics with. Every day, Peter would ride his black bike down to the beach, camera in hand, and many times I would meet him and we would take photographs together. Peter was a very quiet person, we never talked much, but we allowed our love of photography to be our bond. I grew to love his photos of Ocean Park, memorialized on postcards in the Ocean Park Gift Shop, and I tried to duplicate his techniques and sense of vision.
Another local photographer that had a significant influence on me was the late Edith O. Stephenson. Ms. Stephenson, a lifelong resident of Ocean Park, lived at the very end of a street and, as luck would have it, had a salt marsh in her very backyard. This elicited a love of both nature, and photography, for me, one that would be lifelong to this day. Ms. Stephenson taught me how to photograph birds, she with her Pentax SP-1000, and I with the very same camera, my first SLR. She was adept at bird photography way before it was a thing as it is today, and many modeled for her in her backyard; ibises, herons, egrets, ducks, warblers. These were memorialized on a wall in her den, where she displayed her various photographs. She also taught me the ways of birding in my formative years, and we would be up at dawn and out in the marshes of Scarborough looking for herons. I owe a lot to her for her teaching and stewardship.
One professional photographer that I admired greatly was the late Peter Turner, an American contemporary photographer. I first discovered Pete in Photography Magazine back in the mid-1970’s. He was known for some very vibrant and abstract photographs, and was a very early influence on my photography, my having tried to emulate his artworks. Pete Turner’s works can be found at Pete Turner Photography.
