There’s a trace of the sacred in it — in the light, in the title — plus a hint of the absurd, the faintest whiff of the freewheeling nature of that day at sea.
The shot is all feel-good goofy nostalgia — one part Norman Rockwell, one part Yankee wit.
George French delivered 20 years worth of stirring images, mostly black-and-white, of pastoral landscapes, but he was also a devoted chronicler of working people.
More than a century later Joanna Colcord’s classic shot of her dad still has more bite than any other image from Maine’s nautical history.