Weekends with Yankee

New England doesn't give itself up easily. Ten seasons of Weekends With Yankee taught me how to look.

Weekends With Yankee is a national PBS program that reaches 95% of the PBS marketplace, bringing New England stories to millions of viewers across the country. Over a decade my role evolved from cinematographer to director of photography, producer, and editor. On any given production day I'm directing on-camera talent, tracking dialogue, cataloging b-roll, managing crew, operating a camera, and shaping the visual narrative in real time. At the end of the day, ten hours of footage becomes a stringout, becomes a paper cut, becomes ten minutes of television.

But what I didn't expect was what the show would teach me.

Every episode was a deep dive into a corner of New England I might not have otherwise explored: craft traditions, culinary innovations, hidden landscapes, and the people who steward them. The show didn't just document these places. It gave me a relationship with them. I've returned to many of them with my family, seeing them through new eyes, sharing what I learned behind the camera.

Ten seasons in, that's the part I value most. Not the credits, not the reach. The education. And the friendships that came with it.