5"The Winter Coast of Maine" is the first fine art book dedicated to color photographs of Maine's coastal landscape made exclusively during the coldest months - a time of year that most visitors and summer residents rarely get to see. The Maine coast is a place of exquisite beauty at all times of year, but especially in winter. The topography of this region ranges from long sandy beaches in the south to tall granite headlands in the area known as "Down East." Photographer and Maine resident Ed Kenney has spent the last decade compiling a portfolio of stunning images capturing the essence of a coast that is at times serene and still, and at other times ferocious, stormy, and bitterly cold. A photographer for over a half century, Ed Kenney can barely recall a time when a camera was not close at hand. His skills were honed using a succession of film cameras that began with a Kodak Hawkeye and progressed over the years to an Arca Swiss 4x5. Although the view camera still sees occasional use, these days almost all capture is digital on high resolution sensors matched with the finest lenses. Thirty-three year National Geographic veteran Sam Abell has written the foreword to this volume in which he asks: "Was summer fiction? No, but without summer's growth the winter declares a hard granitic truth: All else is temporary." The luminous photographs gathered here forcefully make the case that while some things pass, many things seem eternal on "The Winter Coast of Maine."