Chesapeake Marine Services, Severna Park Maryland.
Gap Years and Transitions
When Covid-19 struck out and shut the world down in the spring of 2020, like many people, I found myself unemployed and wondering what my next steps were.
I had worked most of my adult life in the “music industry” (mainly in the guitar and guitar products category) and while I had put together a decent career in sales and marketing in that industry, I didn’t have a clear path forward. Faced with uncertainty, I made the decision to do something that I had put off for many years: I went back to school and received my bachelor’s degree in Communication.
Cypress Marine: A New Beginning
In order to provide for my family while I was in school, I took a job part time at Cypress Marine doing odd jobs around the shop. I was not a mechanic, and had never worked around boats before, but the owner Allen provided me an opportunity to apply my problem-solving skills and my ability to learn quickly and offered guidance that allowed me to be of service to him and the clients of the boatyard.
During my time at this boatyard, I scraped barnacles from the bottom of boats, painted hulls, performed basic boat maintenance and worked to lend a helpful hand wherever I could.
I can’t tell you if Cypress Marine is like any other boatyard, since this was the first and only boatyard I had ever worked at, but I can tell you that is not like any other place I had ever visited.
View of main dock at Chesapeake Marine Services, Severna Park Maryland.
Forgotten Dreams
Scattered among the many majestic sail boats, yachts, and power boats that people maintained with great pride was a collection of abandoned and forgotten vessels that laid decomposing and left to the elements. Boats that had once been the subject of so much joy, leisure, and adventure were now rotting and falling to pieces. Their purpose long forgotten. Their owners long gone.
Inside the shop, I found tools that had been put down decades ago, that lay waiting to be picked up again and be made useful. Cabinets and boxes were full of parts and diagrams. Pounds of boat nails and wood screws were stacked in bins and covered in dust from years of neglect.
Reflections on Ambition
Seeing this collection of discarded and forgotten boats, tools, parts, and pieces made me reflect on my own passions and dreams that I have laid down and abandoned over the years. Sometimes intentionally but most often because the fog of ambition can lead to shortsightedness as new ideas become distractions and then turn into abstractions as time continues to move the goal posts. I just need to do this, before I can do that…
A Glimpse of the Past
Many years ago, while still in my junior year of high school in Monroe, Washington, I had the opportunity to be on the yearbook team. I worked as a photographer shooting pictures of the high school’s football games and candids of students and faculty around the campus.
We shot everything on film and in black and white and I processed and developed the film and prints. I enjoyed using the camera to capture details that were not obvious to the casual observer but were revealed once the final print was produced. I only spent that one year shooting and processing and since then, I have only used my phone to capture photos.
Return to Photography Through Communication Studies
Which brings me back to the boatyard and back to my communication studies.
As a communication student, I was looking at the ways people use symbols, texts, images, and non-verbal communication to understand and make meaning from the world. As part of a visual and digital communication track I had an opportunity to take a photography class and I again found myself with a camera in my hands, snapping photos of seemingly mundane things where I was intent on revealing a bigger picture.
I no longer have the pleasure of spending hours processing and developing film in a dark room, but now I get to tweak, edit and correct in Photo Shop.
The following photos were shot on a cloudy day in November of 2022 at Cypress Marine where I used to work. Some of these photos were taken for a class, but all of them were taken because the boatyard inspired me to point my gaze in its direction and it challenged me to see its story.
I shot all of these photos with my Fujifilm XT-4 and processed everything in Adobe Photo Shop, using a variety of techniques to produce the result I wanted.
Beauty Amidst Decay
I found beauty amongst the decay where a sense of potential lay just beneath the surface of rust, moss, and neglect.
Conclusion
My journey from the music industry to Cypress Marine and back to photography has been a rediscovery of passions and an exploration of the visual storytelling potential within my communication studies. As I share these photographs from Cypress Marine, I hope they inspire you to find beauty in unexpected places and to reflect on the stories that lie beneath the surface of decay.
Thank you for joining me on this visual and reflective journey.
Until next time.
Jon C Croft
Jon C Croft 