Our Portland ME Anniversary & Mini Vacation
Drew & I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary on July 15th. For our anniversary I bought tickets to see the band Ween play in Portland ME. Ween holds a special place in our hearts, all of our friends from college love them. We listened to them all the time at SSC & traveled far & wide to see them in concert. Drew & I even danced to a Ween song for our first dance at our wedding (it was Stay Forever off of White Pepper). When I found out they were playing a show in Portland ME on the pier I knew what this years anniversary gift was going to be.
We drove up to Portland from Lowell on Friday afternoon (the show was Friday night). We got there with enough time to check into our hotel & head downtown to find the venue. I wish I could say that finding the venue was easy, but that would be a lie. I couldn’t find an address anywhere online for the show. All I found was that it was at the Maine State Pier. When I tried to find out which pier was the Maine State Pier I couldn’t find anything. If you haven’t been to Portland before, there are many piers. We walked around & walked some more & weren’t finding anything (later we realized we should have trusted our gut instinct & walked down the largest pier instead of trying to use google maps). We asked a few people & finally someone pointed us in the correct direction. We got to the show with plenty of time & as the sun started to set Ween came on and played an amazing concert.
We didn’t bring our DSLR’s, we just brought our canon point & shoot (which is pretty great for what it is). We should have brought them though because the space was an amazing place to have a concert. It would have been awesome to get some better quality shots.
For our friends who like Ween, you should know they played Piss up a Rope, VooDoo Lady, Buckingham Green, The Mollusk, Ocean Man, Pork Roll Egg & Cheese & many more delightful songs. They even did a cover of David Bowie’s Lets Dance. It was AAAMMAZING!
The day after Ween we walked around Portland, did some shopping, enjoyed some food & went on a duck tour. We were going to go our a boat tour of the harbor, but when we went to purchase our tickets the girl working the counter at the harbor tours suggested we take a later tour. She said that tour was packed with people & it wouldn’t have been enjoyable. Unfortunately we had to leave Portland before the next tour. We really appreciated her being honest with us & not just trying to sell us a ticket! We did the boat tours & our guide was very entertaining, so we still had lots of fun.
On a side note: All the photos below were edited using Jared Platts Lightroom Presets. I went to his Lightroom Workshop at the beginning of August. On most of the images below I used his Direct Positive Preset. It really punches up the color & contrast. I haven’t used that preset on too many portrait shots, but I really like what it did to these images. If you have a chance to go to Jared Platt’s Lightroom Workshop, I definitely recommend it. He is very knowledgeable & was a great resource for developing an efficient workflow. He gave us a bunch of presets that are organized in a really easy to use way. I can’t wait till his newest presets come out. He was working on some top secret ones when we had our workshop.
I appreciated the TLA on this sign. Later in the day we got some of the yummy lemonade here.
Drew says I need to explain this image…I was getting my nose pierced. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for awhile, but had never done & probably wouldn’t have if it meant I had to plan it & make an appointment. It needed to be on a whim. We walked by Til Death Tattoo on our way back to our car & I mentioned getting my nose pierced. Then Drew said let’s go now. So we did. It ended up that Joe who did my piercing is from Fall River & knows Aaron from Up in Flames Tattoo where Drew has gotten most of his work done (I’ve also been tattooed by Aaron). I instantly felt like it was meant to be & was an comfy as can be.
