Inside the B&M Baked Bean factory

For as long as I have lived in Maine I have been fascinated by the building that houses the B&M Baked Bean factory.  Driving North or South along I-295 through Portland it is hard to miss the iconic smoke stack and large main building that sits right along the shore of Casco Bay in East Portland.  The building complex sits by itself and juts out into the water just across from the Eastern Prom Path and is often a awash with beautiful evening light at sunset.  It is one of those factory buildings from a bygone era that luckily has not had it's jobs shipped off to a foreign land.  The latest generation of workers still produce the famous B&M Baked Beans using the same recipe and techniques that have been in place for decades.  Two years ago I was fortunate enough to land an editorial assignment to photograph the factory for Port City Life Magazine, now Maine The Magazine.  I was elated to finally get a chance to view the factory and see a Portland landmark  that very few people outside of the workers have seen.  There is a quiet beauty inside these large factory buildings that I am attracted to and always speaks to my cameras.  I spent a good part of the day there and received the full top to bottom tour and had the pleasure of meeting the latest generation of workers.  Photographing the factory and seeing it as an industrial landscape was fantastic.  The faces of the workers, some third generation, really left the biggest and warmest impression on me.  Highlights from this shoot can be seen here.