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Here are some photos from March and April. Months which are, in my opinion, some of the toughest living in Maine. So, it’s always good to be busy at work during the long stretch of winterspring.

Captions: 

(1-3) These photos were from story about the court battle over the adoption of a little girl named Peyton, who was born to a mother who has had all six of her living children taken away from her because of opioid and other drug addictions. All of her children that were tested were born drug affected.

I photographed Peyton after her final adoption ceremony (top photo) and then spent some time with one of Peyton’s older sisters, Makayla, who has cerebral palsy and being raised by their paternal grandmother along with their brother, Mikey. The siblings live about a 10 minute drive from Peyton, but have yet to meet her. They also have two other sisters down in Mass. whose adoptive parents were the ones trying to adopt Peyton. It is a really well-written story by reporter Eric Russell that highlights what can happen to the families and children who are left in the hands of Maine's overburdened child welfare system.

(https://www.pressherald.com/2018/04/08/the-fight-for-paisley/) 

4) Gina Morin poses for a photo in the motel room she lives in in Lewiston, Maine. Morin spoke at the Board of Pharmacy hearing on Thursday urging the board to make the opioid overdose drug naloxone available to Mainers of all ages without a prescription. Morin said she was inspired to speak because she watched her partner struggle with an addiction to opioids and witnessed the damage the drugs have done in her community.

5) A little over 100 North Yarmouth Academy students from the middle and upper school line Main Street in Yarmouth during a student-organized silent walkout in support of ending gun violence in schools. The walkout lasted for 13 minutes to honor the 13 lives lost in the Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999.

6) Rabbi Moshe Wilansky leads his family on the search for chametz, or leavened goods, by candlelight at his home before the start of Passover. Children hide crumbs of bread through out the house, the family goes through searching for them and then burns the bag the following morning symbolizing the cleansing of their home from leavened goods for Passover. 

(7-10) These are photos from the Deering High School GSA drag show. One of the students told me about the drag show last year and they asked me if I wanted to photograph it for the paper. I mean, you can’t say no to that. It was a blast.

(https://www.pressherald.com/2018/04/12/at-deering-high-a-drag-show-for-the-schools-gsa-club-gets-everyone-on-their-feet/)

Thanks for looking!

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I had a couple of great assignments in January and February.

A really fun one was tagging along with a senior in high school named Joey during his first professional drag appearance. He absolutely killed it and our reporter Kelley Bouchard wrote a wonderful story: https://www.pressherald.com/2018/01/29/that-moment-jittery-yet-joyful-teen-ager-enters-new-stage-in-life-of-a-drag-princess/

Another one that sticks out to me is the couple hours I spent with a single mother named Mary Bernier and her son Samuel, who has an extremely rare genetic disorder called Johanson-Blizzard Syndrome. Since parents of children with special needs rarely spend money or time on themselves, every year the Robbie Foundation chooses a parent and treats them to a spa day. This year they chose Mary. I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving. It was just a quick daily story, but I loved meeting Mary and I personally feel better knowing there are humans like her on this planet. In the end, those are always my favorite assignments.

Until next time.

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November! I took a lot of portraits, playoffs meant reaction photos for sports (phew) and I got to work on a photo essay about Hamdia Ahmed, the first Muslim woman to compete in Miss Maine USA wearing a hijab.

For this post, I decided to throw in some photos that I shot during my two days at the pageant that didn’t make the cut for the story. Here's a link to what published: http://www.pressherald.com/2017/12/03/miss-maine-pageant-gets-a-different-look/

Thanks for looking! 

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The first four photos this month are from a story that tried to focus in on one of the 70,000 Mainers that would be covered by the Medicaid expansion referendum on Tuesday’s ballot.

Donna is a single mother of three autistic adult children and she delivers newspapers at night for extra income. I spent an evening with her at work and at home to get a sense of her life. She was kicked off Medicaid last year when her boys, who are nonverbal and need near constant care, turned 19 and she then was considered an adult with no dependents. Donna is healthy as of now, but as a 60-year-old woman, she definitely worries about a future without healthcare. At this point, she can’t even afford to go to the eye doctor for a new prescription. 

Voters passed the measure yesterday, making Maine the first state in the nation to approve Medicaid expansion by a popular vote. Although, today Governor  Paul LePage said that he won’t expand Medicaid unless the Legislature funds it. LePage has vetoed Medicaid expansion five times, and clearly, he will continue to oppose it despite what the citizens of Maine have decided. 

I digress...

The rest of the month was mostly daily assignments. The photo after the football player is of Jamaican migrant worker, Alex Worrie, at the bunkhouse after work at Ricker Apple Orchard. Worrie is one of nearly 600 apple pickers who travel from Jamaica to Maine each year to work. The photo, along with the one after it, was a part of our series on immigration in Maine. The photo of the man covering his face with his hands is of Cheque (not his real name) an undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. after leaving his town in El Salvador that was riddled with gang-related violence. 

Until next month! 

Thanks for looking. 

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I think my favorite part about working at a newspaper is that I’m able to get a window into so many different worlds in such a short amount of time. Sometimes they are really amazing, like witnessing someone become a citizen or be crowned Maine Dairy Princess. Other times it is a glimpse at an unimaginably painful experience, like losing a loved one in a tragic accident. I hate photographing the painful stuff, but you hear a name in the news and you think, oh that's terrible. You see that name in a casket and see their mother sobbing and you feel it. 

It feels weird to put all of these photos that don’t really go together into one post, but it’s a pretty good representation of what the job is.

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I don’t usually do captions since this is pretty informal, but I think most of the photos this month really need the context as they were part of larger stories.

-The first photo is from a citizenship ceremony that I attended at Portland City Hall. Mulhah Albadri, the woman in the photo, had just watched her son Mohammed Al Mashakeel become a U.S. citizen. She just sat in the chairs after the ceremony as people were talking and she twirled her tiny American flag around in her fingers. Albadri came over from Iraq three years ago to join her sons who both live in Portland now. I’ve somehow never covered one of these ceremonies before. This ceremony was extra beautiful, I think, because it was so intimate, it was just five people. I was definitely not the only one shedding some tears.

-The pageant photos are some outtakes from photos that ran in a package last month. I went to two agricultural fairs and photographed the Maine Dairy Princess pageant and the Maine Strawberry Queen pageant. Needless to say, I loved it.

-The sixth photo, after the pageant work, is a photo from an assignment I worked on with reporter Joe Lawlor about the Calais Regional Hospital that shut down its obstetrics unit at the end of August. Patients will now have to drive either one hour to Machias or two hours to Bangor to give birth. That is a lot to ask of the women in Washington County where there is a high rate of people living at and below the poverty line, not to mention the condition of the roads during the long Northern Maine winters. Celia, the woman in the photo, is due at the end of October and had her last appointment with Dr. Hatem Hatem at the Calais clinic. (http://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/17/as-maternity-services-vanish-in-rural-maine-mothers-can-expect-to-travel-long-distances-to-the-hospital/)

-The seventh photo is of Mark Madore and his mother, Cathy. Mark has been diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease, seizure disorder and has intellectual disabilities. He was living in a group home with Section 21 funding for nearly a decade when he was evicted in July for using medical marijuana to treat his seizures, which was not authorized by the home that provided his care but was recommended by his doctor and administered at the request of Cathy. Since then Mark has been living in a room in the ER at Redington-Fairview General Hospital, where this photo was taken. Cathy visits him every day after she is off work, but does not have the resources to take care of him at home. The hospital can’t discharge him because he has nowhere to go, but can’t admit him because he doesn’t need admitting. They’ve tried to outfit the room to fit Mark’s needs, but cannot provide for him in the way that he needs. The staff isn't trained for it. He needs 24-hour care due to his sometimes violent seizures.

It broke my heart to think of him there in that bare room every day and night and he is not the only person that this happens to. The head the head of the ER said this happens all the time. To read more here is Eric’s article about Mark and the trend of a lack of funding at DHHS for services like Section 21: http://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/24/a-maine-patients-ordeal-waiting-for-placement/ 

-The last three photos are from the funeral and burial services for Capt. Ben Cross in his hometown of Bethel. Cross was a Marine aviator who loved to fly. He was one of three marines that died after the MV-22 Osprey they were in crashed into the Coral Sea while trying to land on a Navy ship off the east coast of Australia. The public memorial service took place at his alma mater, Telstar Regional High School. He and I actually graduated from high school the same year. The family told the media we could take photos from anywhere, but I tried my best to stay a bit out of sight. I was on the wing of the auditorium when I saw the young man, a student at Virginia Military Institute where Cross went to college, behind stage getting ready to play Amazing Grace on the pipes. 

I felt sick to my stomach the whole day. I never want to see a mother say goodbye to her son’s casket again. I’ll never forget the drive to the gravesite. People from the town outside of their homes, standing with their with American flags as the procession passed. I can only hope that the outpouring of love and respect for their son and brother gave their family the smallest bit of solace.

Thanks for looking (and reading).

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Sometimes I don’t write anything on these posts. This is not one of those times.

The first three photos here are from the funeral of a 20-year-old Sebago firefighter and EMT Chance Gallant who died in a shooting accident. The funeral was at the town hall/local gymnasium and it seemed like the entire community was in attendance. My stomach always hits the ground when I find out I’m covering a funeral. It never gets easier. 

The fourth photo in this post is part of a series of stories that the paper is still working on which have really shaken me. In August a federal audit revealed how vulnerable, and basically unprotected, many developmentally disabled patients in Maine are. The two people in the photo, Kim Humphrey and her son Daniel, 28, have had a great experience with Daniel’s group home where he lives in Lewiston, but Kim has heard of stories of abuse within the community and knows that it is prevalent. Daniel is nonverbal and Kim said she constantly worries that something could happen to him and he would have no way of telling her. 

From the first article: 

“State health officials failed to adequately protect developmentally disabled Medicaid patients in Maine, neglecting to investigate 133 deaths and properly report critical incidents including sexual assault, suicidal acts and serious injuries over a 2½-year period, a federal audit report released Thursday said.” 

( http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/10/federal-audit-finds-maine-failed-to-investigate-deaths-of-developmentally-disabled-patients/ )

( http://www.pressherald.com/2017/08/20/abuse-reports-deaths-fall-through-the-cracks-in-dhhs-system/ )

I just can’t get over how much Maine has failed what could be considered our most vulnerable population. And I keep thinking about all of the adults who are wards of the state, who quite possibly have no family looking out for them and can’t advocate for themselves. I’ll have some more work from these stories next month. 

As for other work this month, we covered the eclipse like every other newspaper in the country, I had my first repeat assignment, the 2017 Beach to Beacon road race, and I got to travel to Northern Maine a couple times for different stories. 

Thanks for looking.

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The middle of July marked one year for me at the Press Herald. It is amazing how fast this year went by. I still feel really lucky to be here, taking photos every day for a great community paper. 

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June was all over the board. Sports, fires, graduations, organic farms, and a good old-fashioned government shutdown.

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Some photos from April and May. Not much else but the daily grind, and one really fun rural prom. 

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Being tourists with a disposable camera. Havana and Viñales, January 2017. 

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These are some photos from the recent Press Herald series on the opioid epidemic here in Maine. It ran for over a week every day in the paper. There were vignettes of those who have died and also in-depth stories focusing on different facets of the issue.

One of the things I worked on for the project was a portrait series of family members who had lost someone to an overdose. After photographing them, I took a photo of something that they held on to that either belonged to their loved one or reminds them of that person. One man I photographed, Andrew, kept one of the spoons his brother used to shoot up with. Andrew works in governmental policy and says that seeing the spoon every day reminds him that there is a lot of work to be done to help people who are suffering like his brother suffered.

I also shot photos for a handful of the stories that reporters wrote. Including one about grandparents who are raising their grandchild after their daughter's death and another about a mother named Shannon who is fighting hard in recovery.

You can go to http://specialprojects.pressherald.com/lost/ to see the whole series.

The number of people dying is unbelievable, especially when you think of them as more than just a number on a chart. Kristin, an army veteran who wore her uniform with pride until she was raped while serving; Corey, his parents’ only child; David, a counselor at a homeless shelter; Molly, fun-loving older sister to Kasey who still slept with her teddy bear; Matthew and Ashley McCarthy, siblings who tragically met the same end, leaving a gaping hole in their mother’s heart. One in three deaths of people in Maine between the ages of 15-44 is due to a drug overdose. 

Nothing will change in this state, and this country, until we, as a society, prioritize mental health and real-world solutions to recovery, along with working toward destigmatizing addiction. The latter two mean money, and a lot more of it. There are so many people who want to get help in Maine but immediately hit a wall when there are no detox or recovery places for them to go. 

I’m forever indebted to the people who let me into their lives. I can never thank them enough for trusting us with their stories. I’ll always carry them with me.

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I spent most of February working on a project, but I had a couple pretty good daily assignments. Covered a handful of protests, a blizzard or two, some sportsball. I spent one particularly fun afternoon with the Bryant family, whose children will be the fifth generation of their family making maple syrup in Maine. They live on a dream farm that I live on in one of my 100 perfect future life scenarios. 

The past couple months have been interesting. I was so used to things in my life being fluid and recently it’s been hitting me that I’m here. That this is my new permanent. Maybe because this is the point when I would usually be leaving a place. I’ve been here 8 months now and it feels like I’ve barely even cracked the surface. 

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January is generally one of the slowest/lamest months on the calendar for me, but this year it has been a whirlwind. 

I was home for the holidays, came back to Maine for a few days and then traveled to Cuba for a week with Colin. I didn’t take many photos in Cuba. I was feeling pretty burnt out and I wanted to experience the country, drink a lot of mojitos and enjoy my week without internet. I did shoot a bit on some disposable cameras like a true 90s tourist, but I haven’t gotten them processed yet. 

After Cuba I had a few more days back at work and then headed to Washington DC to document and witness the historic Women’s March and inauguration weekend. The best part about the weekend was getting to experience it with some of the best women I know (seen in the last photo!). I’m continuously amazed by how many intelligent, driven, funny, amazing women there are in my life.

Love and girl power to you all. 

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These are some of my favorite photos from December. A lot of winter photos here and more of them to come since apparently winter lasts till April here. So, let me apologize now. 

I feel ready for 2017. This past year has probably been the most challenging, stressful, emotional year of my life thus far. It has been bad in a lot of ways (most notably the dumpster fire election that I’m not going into here), but good in more ways, or at least I’m trying to see it that way. I take photos every day and through that I’ve met some amazing and inspiring people that have revived my faith in humanity. I also moved to a stunningly beautiful part of the country with the person I love. 

Happy New Year, everyone. Love to you and yours. 

Photos by Brianna Soukup 2016 © All rights reserved

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Here are some non-election photos from the past two months. Portraits, sports, a quick trip to New York, a lot of holiday stuff, and I even got to spend a little time with Arianna and her parents. As always, thanks for looking if you do! 

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Like pretty much everyone else I’m grieving for our country after what happened last night. Most importantly, my thoughts and my heart are with all of the people who will be so much more vulnerable during a Trump presidency than I will be. I know I’m not supposed to say much about my feelings toward the election since I work for a publication, but I feel like I have the right to at least express my fear and sadness as a woman living in this country and as an ally who fears for the safety and the rights of people of color, Muslim Americans, LGTBQ+ and all of the American “others”. 

Most of these photos are from the past month of October, with the exception of one from last night, or rather early this morning, at the Mainers for Trump watch party (fourth one down) and two photos from a Trump rally in August, back when this seemed like a dystopian nightmare we would all eventually wake up from. 

Photos by Brianna Soukup  2016 © All rights reserved

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September was a busy month. It seems so strange that I’ve already been in Maine for three months. It feels like I just got here yesterday. Most of the photos here are from daily stuff. I photographed some football, got to tag along with Tim Kaine when he came to town, made some portraits and did a lot of feature hunting. 

The last two photos on this post are ones that didn’t make the cut in a story I worked on with a very talented reporter, Randy Billings, about a homeless family trying to find a place to call their own. You can see the whole project here: http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/25/ariannas-home/

I feel really grateful to live in a place with so many kind-hearted people who reached out to us wanting to help this family.

Photos by Brianna Soukup 2016 © All rights reserved