Notecards of this image can be ordered here.

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 for you to frame. Priced at $135.

New Work Edition - This open edition of 17 x 22 inch prints is priced at $500.

The Master Prints - This limited edition print is limited to 50 prints of this image plus 10 artist proofs (AP). They are printed on 24 x 36 inch sheets and are priced starting at $2000.

Custom sizes of this image are available by special request.

Welcome Home

On the recent election eve, our wonderful Governor – and special friend – Janet Mills emailed a handful of us about what looked to be her decisive victory celebration.

I mentioned that I would be out photographing the full moon that night. I happen to know that the Gov., a poet and romantic at heart, especially loves full moons and indeed this was her emailed response to me:

It’s beautiful. And I have now seen it rise and hover above a hundred different towns and cities in Maine; and it always seems to say, “Welcome Home.”

Without either of us knowing it, she had given me the title in advance. If only the rest of it had been that easy.

I knew precisely where I needed to be on the west side of the harbor to line up the rising moon over the lighthouse on Indian Island at the mouth of our harbor. Down over the rocks I clambered and found myself in a sublime little spot just below a big, beautiful summer home, the owners of which I have still not met. Creative trespass at its finest.

I fretted as the sun set, followed by the very rapid descent into darkness which characterizes this time of year at 44°N. I am woefully unlearned in the finer aspects of nighttime photography and realized that the disparity in lumen values of the unobscured, sun lit moon and the now very dark island was going to be a serious technical challenge.

With my telephoto on a tripod, I did my best, making numerous images at different exposures…. bracketing, as it is known. In the moment I realized that I would just have to figure out how to make it all work after the fact. I am pretty good with Photoshop, the software I use for making my prints, but there are aspects of it at which I am clueless and one of those aspects is combining images which is what I needed to do in this case ….. namely the well exposed moon and well exposed island. I turned to my brilliant friend, renowned photographer and instructor, Gino Miele. The long and short of it is that he blended my exposures and voila, after a bit more darkroom work on my part, you behold the result.

Oh, there is one more thing ….. as I was working in my digital darkroom putting final touches on Welcome Home I sort of spaced out at my desk and when I swam up and out of my reverie I realized that I happened to be staring at a piece of paper taped to the side of my monitor. On it is a poem, Beannacht (or Blessing, in Irish) by John O’Donohue, given me by a special friend. As I “came to” I was looking at the following stanza ….. I swear to you, these very words found me at that moment:

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

More and more and more, these things find me…. uncannily, always at precisely the right moment. I cannot explain it, but I am surely grateful.