Like most of you all- I've had to work jobs for my whole life in order to "pay the bills" because my "art" doesn't pay them for me. This time around though I decided to make a change and get an entirely different kind of job- which I alluded to and explained in a few posts back: http://nateparkerphotography.com/blog/2013/5/maine-the-way-life-should-be--working-on-a-lobster-boat. Part of the reason is that I love the ocean and photograph it constantly so it just seemed a cool thing to do to be able to photograph from it as well. Well, fishy fingers are hard enough on my iPhone that I haven't really been that inspired to bring out my real camera and risk wrecking it- not to mention that I usually have all of zero free time to pursue such endeavors. So I've been making do with the iPhone4- which it turns out, really kind of performs horribly in the beautiful lowlight mornings that I'm shooting. Lowlight iPhone4 photography means noise, noise, and more noise, but there are still some amazing things that I just can't pass up- here's a selection of a bunch from the past month or so and a timelapse and a video at the end of what the actual work is like. Bear with the noise if you can and don't forget to order up some tasty Maine lobster next time you're out! 

Bass Harbor, Maine town dock predawn.

Lobster boats at their moorings.

My ride- the F/V Never Enough.

another beautiful sunrise.

and another beautiful sunrise.

an 80 something year old lobsterman heading out next to us.

calm ocean reflections.

seagull soaring with Mount Desert Island in the background.

gulls looking for a handout-

Danny tending traps.

"spongebob"- our third hand and bait boy Jason. Cool kid he is. 

Jason has his own skiff and 50 or so traps that he hauls as part of the student lobsterman program.

wake.

Drying the boat out at low tide to get to the prop which got snarled with line earlier in the day.

this could have been bad- which reads: it was bad, but it could have been worse!

another beautiful sunrise.

from the lobster boat races-

another beautiful sunrise.

another beautiful sunrise.

another beautiful sunrise.

little fella.

and that's me holding a big fella- actually big girl it looks like.