PORTLAND, Maine — The first thing you’ll notice about the April Down East magazine, billed as the animals issue, is the cover. It's an observation that may sound utterly obvious, because the cover is always the first thing we notice about a magazine.
In this case, though, the cover photo of a bull moose caught in profile on a grassy bank along the Allagash Wilderness Waterway is an absolute beauty, an image that grabs your attention no matter how many moose pictures you’ve seen in your life.
The credit goes to Mark Picard, a photographer who runs Moose Prints Gallery & Gifts in Millinocket.
Brian Kevin, editor in chief, who joined us on 207, describes Picard as “the man who’s likely photographed more moose than any other Mainer.”
Photographing anything in the wild is always a crapshoot. Clouds move in, sunlight disappears, animals stay away. Then 10 minutes later, clouds vanish, sunshine returns, and a magnificent animal wanders into view. But since it’s ambling in the wrong direction, all the photographer can get is a shot of its rear end. So it goes.
Kevin asked Picard if he ever gets bored waiting in the field.
“How can you get bored?” Picard replied. “I might get bored sitting in a restaurant in Bangor or something, but how could you get bored out in the woods?”
The animals issue is a "tribute to Maine creatures great and small.”
Kevin also talked to us about other articles on goats, hagfish, a vegan/vegetarian restaurant in Kittery, and an artist in Rockport who creates faux taxidermy, in which no animals were harmed. Watch our conversation to learn more.