Mitchell Baum    is a self-taught photographer living in Maine. As a teenager he did a little black and white shooting and darkroom work. Much later, on treks in the Himalayas, he began taking more pictures. Not liking to be photographed himself, he rarely takes pictures of people. Over time he realized that he tends to exclude man-made objects from his images, though this falls apart when he walks the streets of beautiful cities in Europe.

       While he admits to admire the skill of many black and white photographers, he hates to see the world robbed of color. He also is generally little interested in meaning. He says he is after a purely visual encounter with beauty, although he is pretty sure that is not possible. He is often most excited when he has made an abstract image in which the viewer isn't sure what is depicted.

       Baum is fascinated by the power and biological origin of beauty. Why do Monet's Water Lilies move him to tears? He feels the phenomena of beauty is a great mystery and blessing conferred on us by evolution.   

     Bryan Gagner   is a self-taught artist with a passion for landscape and nature photography. He moved to Maine with a degree in Environmental Biology and Secondary Teaching from the University of Colorado in Boulder. His new Nikon SLR competed with his other occupations as middle school teacher, furniture maker, carpenter, and stern man on a lobster boat. The Nikon won!

Now resident in Mascarene, New Brunswick, with his wife and son, he returns often to the Blue Hill Peninsula and Deer Isle where his values, aesthetics and talents first coalesced into a career. He is committed to the sense of community around farming and fishing, and to recording and preserving the way of life and the surrounding land and seascape of coastal Maine and New Brunswick.

"I think people need to be reminded of their profound connection to nature, and my photos are intended to encourage that realization. Capturing the motion of wind and rising mist is essential to this. My images are meant to be calming -- to imitate the feeling of sitting in a field watching the wind blow waves through the grass and flower .... or lying on your back twiddling dry stems between fingers and watching clouds drift overhead."