Michele has been the photo editor of the Portland Press Herald for five years. Previously she was a photographer for the Boston Globe, The Virginian-Pilot, and the Concord Monitor. She began her journalism career as a reporter/photographer for the Daily Eagle, in Claremont, NH. Michele’s first camera was a Kodak Brownie Starflash camera, which she got when she was 9. She used it to take unusual family photos, like one of her youngest sister Megan refusing to move from the neighbor’s driveway. (Megan McDonald is the author of the Judy Moody and Stink series, well-known books for children). Michele still has the camera. It has a roll of undeveloped film in it, which she’ll get around to developing someday. A college dropout (from Bensalem, an experimental college that no longer exists), Michele later won a mid-career Nieman fellowship to Harvard. She was a finalist for a feature photography Pulitzer Prize for her photos of a young woman choosing to die in hospice care. She was a juror for the Pulitzer prizes in photography in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
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PublishedJune 25, 2022
In photos: Two families, one farm for three generations
In Cape Elizabeth, the Maxwells have been farming the land for nine generations. The Rodriguezes have joined them for the last three.
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PublishedJune 15, 2022
In photos: Row, row, row your (cardboard) boat
In the final days of the school year, Casco Bay High School student teams were given the same amount of cardboard and duct tape to design and build their own boat. On Tuesday, the final day of school for ninth, 10th and 11th graders, the school held cardboard boat races at Willard Beach in South Portland. All photos by Staff Photographer Ben McCanna.
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PublishedMarch 28, 2022
In photos: Sweet spring sugaring, a celebration of Maine Maple Weekend
Maine Maple Sunday is always the fourth Sunday of March, and this is the 39th year of the annual event, which features open sugarhouses throughout the state, farm tours, pancake breakfasts and sales of all kinds of maple products. This year was fully open, after a canceled year in 2020 because of the pandemic, and a modified event in 2021. Maine Maple Sunday is more than just a sales event, though. It’s a harbinger of sweet, sweet spring, after a long, cold winter.
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PublishedFebruary 7, 2022
In photos: Scenes of a frozen Maine
Portraits of winter in Maine by the Press Herald’s photographers
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PublishedDecember 25, 2021
2021 Photos of the Year: Photographers’ Choice
2021 was a roller coaster ride. It started with mobs attacking the Capitol to try to overturn the presidential election and is ending with a new surge of the coronavirus. There was enough bad news – fires, floods, disasters of every natural and manmade kind – to make you want to bury your head under the covers and stay there. But there was also the miracle of vaccines – by the end of June, hardly any vaccinated people were dying of COVID-19. We gained a new appreciation of the simple but deep pleasures of meeting with family and friends, going to a country fair or a high school baseball game, looking for beauty in the flight of an owl or a solar eclipse at dawn. For our 2021 Photos of the Year collection, Portland Press Herald photographers voted on one another’s photos, then selected their own favorites from the top vote-getters. We hope you enjoy looking at them as much as we enjoyed taking them.
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PublishedDecember 25, 2021
2021 Photos Of the Year: A Pandemic Story
The wide availability of vaccines was supposed to get COVID-19 under control in 2021. Instead, the pandemic has worsened. With high levels of transmission and the arrival of the omicron variant, the winter months look bleak. But Mainers are resilient and resourceful. Children are in school, live entertainment has returned, and restaurants and other businesses survived – and in some cases thrived. Wearing masks has become commonplace, as has caring for our neighbors. Take a look back at the pandemic in Maine in 2021 through the eyes of Portland Press Herald photographers.
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PublishedDecember 20, 2021
In photos: The hunt for the perfect Christmas tree
The storybook vision of Christmas includes a crackling fire, snow falling outside and a brightly decorated Christmas tree. There’s a growing demand for real Christmas trees, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence, which found that millennial households are looking for real trees as biodegradable and recyclable options. For those in the real tree camp, it’s not just about having a tree. It’s about the process of picking one that tradition and nostalgia demands. Press Herald photographers went looking for the real thing.
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PublishedDecember 6, 2021
In photos: Days of darkness
It’s 4 p.m. in December, and the sun is setting. While the poet Dylan Thomas urged us to “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” songwriter and poet Paul Simon addressed the darkness as “my old friend.” We can’t escape the early darkness and the long nights of winter, however we choose to react. So we eat, drink, light candles and sing as we watch the sun set, until finally it’s spring.
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PublishedNovember 8, 2021
In photos: Scenes of fall in Maine
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns,” wrote Mary Ann Evans, who later took the pen name George Eliot, to her tutor Maria Evans when she was about 22 years old. Press Herald photographers recorded the rich reds, greens, golds and browns of the season.
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PublishedOctober 25, 2021
In photos: Seeing red
Red is a strong color. It can represent passion, happiness, danger or beauty. In China, it is the traditional color worn by brides and symbolizes joy, luck and happiness. In Japan, bridges in the gardens of temples are painted red because they are passages to sacred places, and red is thought to expel evil. In ancient Rome, the words for beautiful and red were identical. In some places in Central Africa, red can also represent mourning and death. The Red Cross changed its colors to green and white in parts of the continent. But red is a friend to photographers. A small splash of it can go a long way to making a good photo. Here are some examples of Press Herald photographers seeing red.