By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

For nearly 40 years, South Portland’s Nance Trueworthy has been behind photographs featured in “Time,” “Newsweek,” “Sports Illustrated” and five major book publications featuring the Maine coastline and its residents. While Trueworthy is now a well known photojournalist and stock photographer for clients and publications around the world, she said her self-taught professional career started not very far from here. 

“I submitted a few photos I had taken to the local papers when I was young,” she said. “I thought ‘Hey, what the heck,’ and it went from there.”

Trueworthy said she has had a passion for photography since childhood. She enjoys looking at photos her mother has of her using an Instamatic camera.

“I was always photographing something in one way or another,” she said. 

One of those early pictures won young Trueworthy a Coleman sleeping bag in a local competition. It was the first, but certainly not the last time she would be recognized as a talented photographer. 

Several years later her work was featured in “Photographers Marketplace,” the book she had studied to figure out how to make a living with her camera. 

“I researched what greeting card companies wanted and what was marketable,” she said. “I made every mistake you could along the way.”

Focusing on photographing “people in places,” Trueworthy traveled the world and became more widely known over the years.

“I photographed George Mitchell before he was a senator, worked with Mel Gibson during the filming of ‘Man Without a Face,’ and saw [Bill] Clinton when he visited Maine for a governor’s conference,” she said. “Looking back now, [Clinton] was like a baby then.”

Trueworthy said she works every day, whether it be to a photo shoot in Australia, Holland, Italy or the greater Portland area. 

“I just got back from Europe last week,” she said. “I’m always on to the next thing, I can’t think about things too often. I just have to keep going.”

While her work has been featured in the Smithsonian and even inspired the architectural design of an art center in southern Holland, Trueworthy said being a well-known professional photographer isn’t all about fame and fortune. Some of her most satisfying projects have been conducted on a volunteer basis, she said.

Trueworthy has taken photos benefiting local organizations such as the Maine Cancer Foundation and the Dream Factory of Maine in Portland, the Animal Refuge League in Westbrook and Camp Sunshine in Casco. 

“I think everybody should volunteer,” she said. “Everybody wins.”

Trueworthy’s said one of her most memorable projects is the book “Down the Shore,” published nearly three years ago. The “raw and real” collection features photographs of Maine fishermen and women.

“The photos give a realistic view of someone’s life as a fisherman,” she said. “It was touching to have done something to call attention to men and women who make their living from the sea.”

Trueworthy said the book was meant as a “thank-you” to often overlooked hardworking New England fisherman. When the book was published in 2005, Trueworthy hosted a gathering of nearly 300 people at her home in South Portland. All of the guests applauded several local fishermen in attendance, she said. 

“We sold 88 books and raised about $2,000 for four families of fisherman who were lost in an accident on Cape Cod,” she said. “It was wonderful.”

Although she often travels around the world for her profession, Trueworthy said her favorite photos were those taken in “off the beaten path” locations along the Maine coast. 

“The coast of Maine is so beautiful,” she said. “We live in a postcard.”

One of the greatest challenges Trueworthy has faced in her lifelong career is adapting to digital photography. She said she often misses the more primitive, film-based cameras. 

“I am not a technical or computer savvy person,” she said. “I’m a people person.”

Trueworthy said she’s “not in love” with the new digital world, which not only means she’s taking pictures differently, but communicating with clients, family and friends in a new way that’s not necessarily better. 

“I prefer the older times, I miss the personal connection,” she said. “Now I spend a lot of time typing. There’s a whole personal connection that’s lost.”

She said despite her best efforts to stay old-fashioned, she now does all her work digitally. 

“I held out for a while, but I knew I had to buy all the bells and whistles, so now I’m up there with the best of them,” she said. 

Modern technology has changed the field forever, she said. 

“Everybody has a digital camera now,” she said. “It’s much harder to get started in this business than it used to be because it’s so easy for people to take their own photos. They think ‘I can do it,’ but there’s really so much more involved in doing it professionally.”

Aspiring professional photographers should find a particular area of photography to specialize in to survive in today’s digital marketplace, Trueworthy said. 

“You have to find your niche, excel at that and then show the public,” she said.

When Trueworthy isn’t doing freelance work for magazines and other publications, she is most likely creating jewelry. What began as a hobby making earrings has developed into her own complete jewelry line now available in 20 stores across New England, she said. 

“It takes me away from the computers and the technical world for a little bit,” she said.

Trueworthy’s photography is to be featured in a book called “Inspired Gardens,” a collection of photographs of 24 artist-owned garden patches. Trueworthy said it was interesting to meet the different painters, sculptors and other photographers in the New England area.

“I met the nicest people working on this book,” she said, mentioning one woman she met who was able to take pictures without a camera. 

“She takes things, like say a dragonfly wing and enlarges it into a print,” she said. “She actually gave me one of her originals; I was honored     
   “Inspired Garden” is scheduled to be release in February 2009.