Behind every successful festival are the people who quietly make it happen. The Plein Air Easton Hall of Fame was created to honor those whose commitment, leadership, creativity, and support have helped the festival grow from an ambitious idea into a nationally recognized event. In this series, we celebrate the 2026 inductees and the lasting impact each has had on the Plein Air Easton story.
When Ted Mueller retired from Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in 2011, he wasn’t looking for another career. He simply wanted a hobby.
He attended workshops, read books, took online classes and practiced whenever he could. Eventually, he opened his own photography business and became a Certified Professional Photographer. Plein Air Easton was one of the places where he first began to put all that practice to use.
“I started doing it for fun,” Mueller said. “I was enjoying photographing the painters, talking to them and learning about art.”
And he got good at it — so good that he entered a photography competition associated with the festival one year and finished second. As he continued photographing artists and festival activities, he shared his images with the Avalon Foundation. Over time, the relationship grew, and at some point, his love of taking photos turned into something more official.
“I’m not 100 percent sure who was first to bring it up,” he said. “I might have asked them if I could do it… I don’t remember. It was too long ago.”
What he remembers is what happened after that.
“Before I knew it, I was the official photographer.”
For roughly the next decade, Mueller recorded nearly every part of Plein Air Easton. He covered artists painting throughout Talbot County, Meet the Artists receptions, demonstrations, award ceremonies, the annual group photograph, exhibitions, and Friday night sales.
While most people waited for the finished paintings, Mueller spent much of the week tracking down the artists at work. Since the artists rarely announced where they planned to paint, he drove from one location to another looking for easels and umbrellas.
Sometimes he found several painters working near one another, each painting a different view while carrying on conversations. Other artists preferred to work alone.
“I enjoy capturing multiple painters in a scene,” Mueller said. “Some of them kind of clustered together so they could talk to each other and enjoy each other’s company and still paint a different scene. Then there were others that were way out in the boondocks all by themselves.”
Asked whether one photograph stood out over the years, Mueller couldn’t narrow it down to a single image — but certain days have never left him.
He recalled one year when a heavy rainstorm swept through during Quick Draw. Most of the artists packed up and sought shelter, finishing their paintings indoors. But one watercolor painter stayed put. “He was right next to a downspout, and his feet were wet because he was basically in the flow of water,” Mueller said.
Another year, an artist arrived a few minutes late for the annual group photograph. Rather than leave her out, Mueller photographed her separately and added her to the final image.
Mueller says the festival helped him become a better photographer. As his skills grew, so did his toolkit — in later years, Mueller added drone photography and videography, giving the Avalon Foundation new ways to showcase Plein Air Easton. But it was the people who remained the part of the festival he most wanted to capture.
By Friday evening, the paintings Mueller had watched develop all week were hanging for the first time. Artists waited while collectors studied the work and volunteers watched the room. “I was trying to capture emotions of the person while they’re viewing the images,” Mueller said. “Sometimes I was able to do that.”
Mueller also watched the festival itself grow. “The people at Plein Air got better at it,” he said. “As the years went on, they added more and more events, and they worked hard at bringing the community into it.”
He points to Nocturne Paint Out and partnerships with other organizations as examples. “When they first started out, the opportunity for the community to see finished paintings was at the end of the week. Now you can see them all week long.”
“It’s a lot of work,” he said. “The dedication and the enthusiasm of the Avalon staff to pull this off every year is something else.”
Festival week was demanding for him, too. For roughly ten days, Mueller drove throughout the county, photographed artists and events, downloaded the images, and got ready to do it again the next day. “My wife said she didn’t see me during that time,” Mueller said. “I ate very little, sweated a lot, and ßput a lot of miles on the car.”
A couple of years ago, after experiencing the early stages of heat exhaustion during one Meet the Artists reception, Mueller decided it was time to step away.
When asked what Plein Air Easton had meant to him personally, Mueller gave a practical answer.
“It stroked my ego,” he said. “Through the ten or eleven years that I worked for them, I would say 90 percent of the images that they used in their advertising publications were my images.”
For more than a decade, while artists were painting Plein Air Easton, Mueller was photographing the week around them. His images appeared in brochures, advertisements, websites, and festival publications. He had started simply looking for something to do — and ended up leaving something behind. Long after the artists packed up their easels, the moments he captured remained.
A selection by Ted Mueller
