All prints are handmade by Peter Ralston on archival rag paper with an archival ink set.

Small Matted Prints - This collection is printed on 8.5 x 11 inch sheets, matted, ready to be framed.

New Work - This open edition is a collection of images created since January 2004. They are printed on 17 x 22 inch sheets.

The Master Prints - This limited edition (LE) print is limited to 50 prints of this image plus ten artist proofs (AP). They are printed on 24 x 36 inch sheets.

Custom sizes of this image are available by special request. 

The story behind The Channel

It was a seriously windy day and I was waiting for a ride out to a small island in the Muscle Ridge Channel where I was going to poke around a bit, as well as spend the night with some friends.

As I drove up near the wharf I liked the lay of the two foreground boats but I didn’t stop to work with it…it wasn’t quite “there” enough for me. But as I got over to the smaller boat that would be taking us across the channel, I saw the larger purse-seiner coming our way, down the channel, heading well to the south to avoid a very considerable beam sea on their run offshore to that night’s herring fishing.

The approaching boat – her wings fully swung outboard – inspired me to jump in the car and head back to my sighting of a few minutes earlier. I got ready for the seiner to come into view and then, just as she got into a nice position relative to that outer ledge and channel marker, around the corner came a lobster boat, ripping right along at the end of a long and wind tossed day, the sternman cleaning up as they headed in.

I love it when a little bit of foresight or, sometimes, even patience (not to mention luck) pays off with several elements all coming together for just that brief fraction of a second. I recall muttering “hot-damn,” or something to that effect, as I made the quick series of exposures.

When I got home late the next afternoon I tore directly into download-and-review mode just to see what this one looked like…I am not very good at delayed gratification.

I immediately liked what I saw on the larger order of things but then the little pieces started whispering to me, especially the gull hunkered down on SANDERLING’s cabin top and, even better, the loom of a distant lobster boat, a mirage out there in the tumult of this beautiful, high pressure afternoon.

Serendipity. Being there.