by Augusto Rosa

I was raised in southern Brazil. I left home for a three-month post- graduate course in Barcelona in 1986 and have lived “abroad” ever since. The last thing I ever imagined doing was living in the United States, but life offers unexpected twists, and I ended up marrying an American girl in Barcelona. We lived there until a newborn child persuaded us to find a place where we could comfortably raise children and exercise our profession (we are both architects).

My wife’s family is from Maine and she has always summered here despite living elsewhere. We moved to the United States.and decided to set up our job-hunting headquarters in the family summer home on Mount Desert Island, intending to find jobs in Boston or New York. Fate again intervened and before we knew it, we were working in Maine. Now, 23 winters and three more children later, we are happily entrenched in Maine island life.

Before my life adopted the frenetic rhythm of running an architectural firm while raising four children, I used to spend a lot of time drawing and painting. Without much time for that, but still feeling a need to express my perspective pictorially, I discovered photography, and it was an instant passion. I capture images with minimal compositions. I love the challenge of expressing a message or mood with as few elements as possible, like this shot of Eagle Lake in Acadia National Park. I like the idea that someone looking at the image can enjoy and feel the same pleasure the photographer felt in the moment of that click, and if they wish to they can invent a narrative.

For this image of Eagle Lake, Rosa used a Nikon D7000 with an 18-105mm lens at an aperture of F/10.0 and a shutter speed of 1/400, with 100 ISO.