Q&A with Maureen Minehan

MEG member Maureen Minehan's solo show, "One Morning" features images from a single shoot on the Delaware coast last summer. MEG will host a reception for the show this Sunday, 4/15, from 3-5 pm. In the interim, Maureen answered a few questions about the images and how the mantra "live where you are" figures into her photography. 

Your show's subtitle is "One Morning. Two Hours. Eleven Images." How does that reflect the images in your show? All of the images were taken on a single morning near Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I shot from 5-7 a.m. along the shoreline. At first, I was completely taken with the sublime quality of the light as the sun rose. Everything was awash in pinks and lavenders. Then, as the sun moved higher, the light started to shift to gold. I'd been worried the light would be too bright by the time I got to the lookout towers from World War I, but the gold set them almost aglow. Toward the end of the shoot, the sun was pretty high, but by shooting through the seagrass, I was still able to capture the lifeguard houses along the beach as I started to pack up. 

                                                                  (c) Maureen Minehan

You've said your mantra as a photographer has become "live where you are." What does that mean to you? It's a reminder to be creative wherever I am or with however much time I happen to have. I have two children that are still young (ages 6 and 7), I have my own writing business and I donate a considerable amount of time to several organizations. I'm living a life that I love, but it doesn't leave me a lot of time to focus solely on photography for extended periods. That doesn't mean I can't live a full creative life, however. I just need to make the most of what's right in front of me, finding inspiration wherever I happen to be. The images in my show reflect that -- I might have only had a  two-hour window on a family vacation to shoot, but I immersed myself in the experience and came away with images that mean something to me both artistically and personally, given where they were captured. 

                                                                   (c) Maureen Minehan

Many of the images have an ethereal quality that makes them resemble paintings almost more than photographs. Did you do something in the post-processing to create a watercolor effect? A number of visitors to the gallery have had to be convinced that they are photographs, not watercolors. Others have speculated that I handcolored the images. In reality, the post-processing of those images was pretty minimal. The light and the colors that morning combined into a luminous, very ethereal, tableau. Printing them on Epson Velvet Fine Art paper added a degree of texture, which heightened the painterly quality.

This is your first solo show at Multiple Exposures. Any lessons learned from the process of putting it together that might help other artists launching an exhibit? Calculate the amount of time you think it will take and then double it! It's a long process. Shooting the images is the easy part. Selecting which images make the cut for the show is harder as you look for cohesion among them in either content or look and feel. You need to always keep in mind that while you may understand how they are all related, you won't be standing next to every person who looks at your work so they need to "get" it without any input from you. Also printing, followed by matting and framing, requires an enormous attention to detail. In my opinion, those skills are critical to fine art photography in an era where everyone with a phone or even a Nintendo game device can capture a scene. Something can look really good on a small screen, but getting it from there to the wall is a completely different undertaking.

Please join us for Maureen's reception on Sunday, April 15th from 3-5 pm at Multiple Exposures Gallery, Studio 312, Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union Street, Alexandria, VA.