The Story of "M" - part 1

What "M" did to get itself so precariously perched is a mystery. Clearly, "M" is bummed about it. It is similarly a mystery when this strange building in the center of Wassaic was built or for what purpose. It is as unique to this town as the grain elevator. I'm told it served as a grain trading depot for local farmers before the grain elevator was built in the early 1950s.

If shapes and texture are what make me love old barns, it is good clear light that paints and etches their surfaces for me. It carves the space behind the chicken wire, scores the clapboards deeply, and brings painterly blushes and overtones from M.

It's not clear any of this will make "M" brighten up.

Elegy

I'm not sure its a healthy relationship for a photographer to have with his subject, but today I'm in mourning for a barn. Yesterday I went back to Bunnell Farm after an absence of a month or two, and the main barn had been demolished. Rick said, "I told you I was going to do it. The old barn was too low for anything."

It's not outright mourning; it certainly isn't a willed act, but a feeling has been with me since yesterday morning of something important lost. I'd like to think I had shot the barn thoroughly, but I know there's always something new to find. Yet it really isn't about shots not taken. It's true that the ceiling was low. That's how the sun could clear the top and light the courtyard on the western side - a view best appreciated through the barn's west windows Without the barn to hold the middle, there isn't any courtyard. It was built low because built for cows, and also for that reason painted white as required by law. That's why the sun pouring through the great row of eastern windows lit the space so brightly. This photo taken several months ago may be the best elegy.

The two silos and the tall barn in the back still stand. So does the back shed and the little garage on the right. Everything in the middle is gone, and a new slab portends whatever is to come.

Saving the Undercroft

The beauty of old barns for me begins with their riot of shapes and panoply of textures. Barns are industrial buildings that often meet a complex architectural program. They grow with the farm they serve and change with changes in agricultural markets. Their organization usually follows considered decisions about how to get more out of the work day with fewer sore muscles. One can often trace the history of what was farmed and how, by additions and changes made to the farmstead.

A lot of hands went into the making of any old farmstead. Every window and every wall carries the particular quirks of each hand & mind that hammered on it. In some old farms, even today, a great great great grandchild has taken me to places where great grampa set a mark.

Sadly, all of my encounters with old barns also remind me that these geriatric structures are often crumbling. As they fall, they plow under a rich history and a lifestyle. I'd like to think that "plowing under" is the compost of images such as this.

Title Search

I intended to post more of Southwest Harbor, but then we went to Salem, MA, to see our friends Lou & Vicky; I chose a shot on our walk near Marblehead for posting, but last night I was back at the swamp and the sky was perfect, and so it went. Why plan? Today I shot barns at midday. I never shoot at midday.

This shot is crying out for a name. Any suggestions?

Staying Rooted

June 8, 2007, Southwest Harbor, Maine
The sun, barely up but soon to be blanketed behind slate clouds. I climbed from bed at 4:30 AM for this? At first the sky looked clear - scrambling to set up tripod, bag, camera, position... Three shots before the clouds appeared from nowhere. position... sun rising fast. position... **5:12:54 AM - snap:shot #22*** I must make something else before the sun is totally gone. How to shoot when the world isn't holding still??? Well, perhaps that's NOT what you thought this photo is about.

In fact, I went on shooting for another 17 minutes, long after the sun was behind the cloud bank, and with some good results, but I especially like this one with its lone tree, cropped but braced against the clouds and the rising sun. That there were many competing shots of vastly different character perhaps testifies to the richness of the scenic components, to the constantly changing light, and to a certain uncertainty by the photographer as to what the hell he was after. I struggled with the "contact sheets," but finally chose this. It seemed to me that it had the most complex story to tell. That so many came so easily tells me there's much better yet to be had in Southwest Harbor. 'Until I discover what it is, be sure to click the thumbnail to see this shot full screen.

Meditation on Robert Adams

I've just finished two complementary books by the same author, photographer Robert Adams. The first of these, "Beauty in Photography," explains and illustrates with precision and humanity his Apollonian aesthetic. It is an aesthetic that leads him to embrace illustrative painters such as Hopper (Just saw the magnificent exhibit at Boston MFA) but dismiss as "decorative," the Abstract Expressionists. What really kept me going through his discussion was the way he illustrated his thoughts with some gorgeous images by many photographers.

However, it is in the second book, "Why People Photograph," that he gets down to what, for me, is the nub of the matter. The two chapters on American Photography are written with a prose that reverberates like Loren Eisely's. The nub comes near the end of the penultimate chapter: He writes,

"It is worth adding, finally, a truism from the experience of many landscape photographers: One does not for long wrestle a view camera in the wind and heat and cold just to illustrate a philosophy. The thing that keeps you scrambling over the rocks, risking snakes, and swatting at the flies is "the view." It is only your enjoyment of and commitment to what you see, not to what you rationally understand, that balances the otherwise absurd investment of labor."

The statement follows a long discussion of the destruction of the American West in the 20th century - the open, empty space where one could be alone and at a frontier. The observation is the richer because he links it to another truism, "You can never go home." As one who grew up in Colorado, Adams must feel all of this very deeply, and it is, in fact, a part of the few images of his that I've seen.

As it turns out, today I was at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and saw another half dozen of his photos. They are very beautiful in all the ways that he describes in "Beauty in Photography." This is the first time I have seen original prints of his work. There is no prettiness to them. Instead, the compositions drew me into thinking about the choices of elements and the relation of parts. In one, neat echoes were created between the roofs of tract houses in the desert and the lines of distant mountains. Another showed people at a distance, sheltering themselves from heat beating down on the barren land. All of this is portrayed in a very matter-of-fact manner. Even the small size of the prints, approximately 8X10 inches forbids entry into the visual space in any detail. They perhaps follow in the tradition of leaving a record, in this case a consciously literate one, of the landscape at a given time. Of course there are hints of distant grandeur, but they are in retreat and very cerebral - unsensuous. Why do their ironic hints of tragedy leave me wanting something more - some swatted flies maybe?

At the risk of being "decorative," the thing that keeps me, "scrambling," in my feeble way, " over the rocks," is the very sensuous experience of the moment be it in the musty creak of an attic or in the bubbling marsh. How could I do other than seek to make that sensuousness be the living breath of my image? Alas, I will forever be confined to calendars with pages torn off by the month - nor ever twisted enough to be an artist.

The Heart of the Hollow

This photo is very hard to appreciate on a computer screen. The image when "fit to screen" is too small to permit much entry into the picture space. Those who can zoom should do so, but then try zooming out again to see the whole. Printed copies offer no such challenge.

So why have I put it here? Because it reveals a new love of mine, the swamp that lies in the very center of The Hollow. Hollow Swamp is a mysterious place, long, amorphous and difficult to enter. So far my only approach is from country roads along its perimeter. At the outlet end of the main belly of the swamp it is crossed by such a roadway, almost a causeway. The roadway and the swamp are at war. The funneling effect where swamp water must pass under the roadway forces the otherwise dense swampgrowth to retreat a bit and leave a small, clear pool to catch clouds' reflections. The swamp in its turn has begun to undermine the roadway, leaving deep holes in the shoulder asphalt. What part the beavers are playing in this counterinsurgency is hard to know, but their constant re-engineering of the water flow assures the town crew of certain amount of re-engineering of their own.

For my part, the resulting pool and its edges are proving a useful new shooting spot if I can keep from being tripped up by the holes. For all of you, this puddles in some of the center land between the farms I have photographed here. Hollow Swamp is undoubtedly the most ignored feature of The Hollow; but its profuse diversity populates the Hollow with a richness, a blossoming of life that sings through day and night and echoes off the surrounding hills. It is a song and an echoing that is choked silent in too many places by urban sprawl.

Thanks to all those who write back from time to time if only to let me know which images you liked best or liked least.

For information about the current CAMERA'S EYE photo exhibition, go to:
http://the-cameras-eye.blogspot.com/

Etude in Diagonals

This afternoon I gave in to the urge to shoot sunset in the area around Amenia, NY. I've been resisting late shoots there because it means I get home to dinner much later. On a normal evening I can usually hold myself down to under 150 exposures. On the way to Amenia I saw this barn, and I could not keep the car from pulling to the side of the road. I took just five shots of the barn of which this was the last. It was also the last shot of the evening. By the time I reached Amenia a haze had come in diffusing the sunset, and all the sites I knew looked unappetizing.

I drove around for awhile hoping to stop somewhere, but it never happened. Finally, I told the GPS, to take me home by the shortest route. To a GPS "shortest" is distinct from "fastest." As it turns out, the shortest route from the spot I'd wandered to quickly turns to dirt then cuts through Taconic State Park and then, still dirt, enters CT. All in all, I think I passed over two mountains, through several dark chasms, past one area where the side of the chasm was so steep the road was falling away and barricades narrowed passage to a car width; it took me 40 minutes to get to an intersection and a bit more to get back to pavement somewhere above Salisbury, CT. I never knew there was such a road in the area. By the time I reached the ridge in Sharon, the sun was a fire ball through the haze, and a deer posed just 50 feet off in the field, but the car had already fallen into back-to-the-stable mode and was not to be resisted.

In spite of only catching 5 images, I'm delighted with the evening's shoot; one takes what one is given, and I prize geometries such as this. I've had many evenings where I shot over 150 images and had nothing that pleased me as much as this.

No Trains Stop Here Now

Unusual clouds, the result of changing atmospheric conditions, sent me back to Wassaic on Thursday, By the time I drove into town the skies were better than expected, and I took some shots of the grain elevator with track and rail-crossing lights. I half-heartedly imagined how I might photoshop the light to on.

Wassaic is a tiny crossroad in an unlikely valley, hugged between two steep mountains, just off of busy route 22. If you didn't know it was there, only an improbable wrong turn could put you here. It is urbanized enough for sidewalks, but few people walk on them. In the tiny general store the owner can often be found playing chess with a customer. She makes change without leaving her seat at the chess board.

There are a number of surprises in Wassaic. None is more striking, however, than this building, vestige of another time. Then, active farms were scattered over these hills, most started by immigrants who arrived from various parts of Europe in the late 19th century. Then this little crossing was a center of activity, and the grain elevator was a keystone in the farm economy. Passenger train service just began from NYC to this area two years ago. The shiny new station is up the track a bit and situated on route 22 so Wassaic continues to snooze, but the sleep may be short lived. The restoration of this grain relic is but one of the signs of change. In the meantime some of the old farms hang on with large herds of cattle. Many of the hillsides are still covered in corn rows. Also among the hills abandoned barns decay awaiting the transformation still in the wings.

I was around back of the grain elevator when I heard the crossing bell ring followed by a loud blast from locomotive's horn. The train was bearing down and closer than expected when I crossed the track, and it raised my heart rate. I had only seconds to prop up my already open tripod and snap the shutter. I fired off two good shots, one with each light lit. In the other shot the train and the blurred break between the cars are both further down the track. In this one everything happened just right - and then the train was gone. No train stops here anymore.

REMINDER: Our photo show opening today was busy and successful. If you're in the area, we'd love you to stop in. For more information, visit the web site (http://the-cameras-eye.blogspot.com/) or send an email.

Antique Bowers

Once they were as ubiquitous as stone walls in New England, those neatly planted rows of trees that marked a roadway's approach to a farmstead and canopied the way with a cathedral of branches. Long ago those vaulting limbs provided cool respite for the farmer in his summer chores or the neighbor passing by. Even more than the physical shade they provided, they were a mark of pride and neighborliness and civilization. Where these survive today, they still comfort our eye as we pass at carbonated speeds. I never pass without thinking of the farmer who measured and planted and nurtured each tree. Did he think about the generations to follow that might continue to stop in the shade of his bower?

Shot this evening at Hillside Farm for my neighbors.

To learn more about the upcoming CAMERA'S EYE exhibition, "Fog, Mist, Flowers, & Clouds," visit http://the-cameras-eye.blogspot.com/

Radial Composition with Shrub

Photography provides a unique hinge between the world as its reflections strike the lens of our eye,
and the abstract "musical" language of colors and forms which strike our spirit.
Photos like this one, it seems to me, force the issue.
What would you call it?

Thanks to the owners of Hillside Farm and to Joe Mustich and Ken Cornet who introduced me to them so that I could make photos there. This photo is from my second shoot there. The barns are terrific, and I will be back again soon. There are hundreds more shots to be taken of this window alone.

Elevating Grain - The Vanishing Farmscape

Meanwhile, back in Connecticut I've returned to my barnstorming with photos from two new farms currently in process. Last Sunday I met photographer Ivan Goldberg just across the border in Dutchess Country, NY, where we followed our whims through the labyrinth of country roads and shot what we saw. Ivan shoots with a digital camera outfitted for infra-red, and he has posted his wonderful, surreal images on his web site (http://psydoc.smugmug.com/gallery/3223540#178002106). The clouds were especially conducive to good shooting, and Ivan's images captured the day beautifully. His full gallery is on my list below on the right. It's well worth a visit.

One spot that was especially attractive to me was the hamlet of Wassaic, part of the town of Amenia. We were both attracted by, among other features, an old grain elevator that is being renovated. I only took three shots of the elevator on our first visit as I didn't think they would read so well as photos. How mistaken I was! yesterday I went back to Wassaic and the surrounding region and shot a lot more. I especially like the way the new metal siding catches the light and makes the massing crisp and clear. I expect to return to this area regularly. If the image above has moires through it you need to open it larger.

After shooting the grain elevator I continued my walk around the town shooting other structure. At the back of the grain elevator I met two men working on a section of roof. They gave me permission to enter the grain elevator, and I climbed the roughly seven floors to the room at the very top. The wood structure on the first level was much more massive than I expected with columns and beams made of lumber as much as 18 inches on a side. There were also large wooden chutes that descended from the floors above. As I climbed, I saw large steel screws that must have been used to move the grain inside some chutes. There was also a conveyor belt that ran vertically from the bottom of the elevator to the top. It was outfitted with hundreds of scoops that each held perhaps a quart of grain and carried it to the top of the elevator.

Rumor was that the elevator was to become a restaurant serving different food on each floor, but it's hard for me to see how fire codes could allow such an enterprise. After leaving Wassaic I explored more of the area. There's still more I want to post from the Maine trip, but new photos call for attention too.

Stay tuned for information on the next Camera's Eye Exhibtion, "Fog, Mist, Flowers, and Clouds," which we are preparing now and which runs on Aug. 11, 12, 18, and 19.

Returning to Southwest Harbor

When I left Bernard the sun had fallen below the hills and the harbor was in shadow. In about 5 minutes I would pass the spot at the head of Southwest Harbor where I had missed the shot the summer before, but I knew I had missed my last chance to get it this summer. I had followed the principle of not chasing after a preconceived shot and had gone to Bernard and Bass Harbor instead to catch what was given me. My B&B was near, and I was already thinking of the cheese and porter I had purchased earlier. I was eager to look at the evening's catch. I still had a full evening ahead.

As I reached the spot at Southwest I saw another photographer packing up his tripod I stopped and called out, "Have I missed it?" I'm not sure what he replied, but his actions made his answer unnecessary.

Yet, there was still something magical about the way this body of water caught the evening light, and my camera and tripod were already set up before his car pulled away. I had already shot from this spot several times on this trip, so I had a good idea what my options were. The shot above makes it appear wide open and easy to shoot, but foreground bushes and trees, the arrangement of boats, piers projecting from the shore on my right all put severe limitations on my composition, and I didn't have much time left for fine tuning. Somehow I found time to shoot 64 images before low light turned to no light. Perhaps I rushed too much. The previous summer's whipped cream froth at the harbor mouth was missing, but a number of the shots I took managed to make something of the moment.

I wish the big sailboat was not right in the middle. I wish I had a shot that used the double birch in the foreground to frame the scene. I wish I had a few more shots that included the long pier that reaches out into the harbor from just to my left. Lights lined its handrail, and I know they would have added much as they reflected in the water beneath. Once again, this may not be the ultimate answer, but it will serve to remind me to pass this way again next summer, and in the meantime, it manages to catch a bit of the magic of Southwest Harbor, a magical place to go to with a camera.

Harbor Watch (Bass Harbor from Bernard)

As much as I enjoyed the reflection from the harbor in Bernard, I also wanted to capture the cluster of boats and buildings that made the view of Bass Harbor so appealing to me. When I first reached Bernard the rows of fishing boats and sailboats were all turned as if noting my arrival, but in the shifting wind they nodded lazily first toward the open sea, then back toward the inner harbor, sleepy sentries. A woman in desert camouflage and her two children were fishing from the end of the main pier. A ytoung man and his girlfriend loaded empty lobster traps onto a fishing boat and prepared to head out to sea to deposit them by moonlight. Occasionally a boat would pass and the water would rock things gently faster. I tried shooting them all.

I returned to shooting the nodding boats at anchor several times. I struggled much of the evening to resolve that chaos into an image where the elements would read and harmonize. The gaze of the boats helped add a polarity. In some directions I could include as many as 30 or 40 boats watching me.

Of the images I shot there were several candidates, none quite what I was after, but this shot through a 260mm lens comes as close as any. Whether this shot remain my best solution or merely a study for something better next time is unclear to me. It was one of the last shots I took before heading back toward Southwest Harbor past where I had missed the shot the summer before.

Tesnus at Yhgnid

I hope there was a moment when this came on the screen where you said, "What the hell is that?" That's why I wrote the title backward.

I spent several hours debating with myself between this version of the image or another. Everything depends on how far left or right one places the dinghy, and the two images were the best of very different approaches. I chose this, but I'm not at all sure I'm right. Everything depends on where one places the dinghy.

Probably it doesn't matter at all. In any case, whatever I decide tomorrow, I made a decision today and I may never bother to look back.

Dinghy at Sunset

The Underdocks

The more I shot in Bass Harbor, the more I realized that the beautiful sidelight was the province of one pier only. My shooting trailed off into small objects that happened to catch good light, and I became aware that the only way to shoot a wider canvas was to relocate. Fortunately, directly across the small bay from Bass Harbor is Bernard. From there, my back would be to the sun, and I would be looking head on at sunset-lit Bass Harbor.

Once in Bernard, everything was gleaming in warm sunlight and I was interestingly disoriented and found a whole new range of subjects. Every photographer is always in danger of carrying his experience of a place into the images he shot there. I may recall the sound of the gulls & the waves or feel the tempo of change as I look at my image, but you have no such memory to resonate there. If the photo is intended as a document to jog memory to recall time spent somewhere, that's not a problem. However, if the goal is to capture a mood or experience and convey it whole to others who weren't there, the image needs to be resourceful in calling up sensations to fill out what has been lost in "translation."

Compositionally, this image is not so comfortable as the last, and I do wonder if it works for anyone but me. In framing the shot I wanted to minimize without eliminating the material world. Though I was aware of places where the image meets the edge in ways I would normally consider fussy, this seemed as I took the picture and still seems to me now to be the correct place to cut it. I'm certain one can't get it without caring about the underdocks, or, perhaps, as noted, it is just for me.

Below is a second alternate version of the image. Viewed small the difference will not matter, but it becomes substantial when clicked to full screen. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a preference.


http://rothphotos.blogspot.com

Lobster Traps, Bass Harbor, Maine

The back yard of the enchanting cottage is one kind of underworld, and it took no less will power to extricate myself from its charms than Odysseus needed to escape the power of Circe. While my family and several others indicated it was not to their taste, a few of you suggested it let you step briefly into some grim bit of Grimm - to poke your nose around behind the witches gingerbread oven or walk a bit with a dark elf. Eventually I did move on.

By then the promise of a good sunset was becoming a reality. My plan was to watch it develop in Bass Harbor where I expected excellent sidelight for the next three hours. Reflections in water always open another sort of underworld for me, and we had several discussions at the workshop regarding how much of the reflected original to include or exclude, how much explaining needed to be done. Of course we reached no conclusion except perhaps that each composition will provide its own answer to the question, and too much explaining undervalued the viewer. That bit of wisdom seems to have wide applicability.

In any case, this composition should not cause difficulty. I'm especially intrigued by the odd area to the right of the ladder, back underneath the dock and its bit of daylight double. I can hear Frank Lavelle wisely wondering if that was the shot. Well, maybe, but that's easier to guess at now. When I shot this, the water was flickering, and I don't think I quite believed those under-docks would be so richly visible. My eye was riding the colorful lobster traps over the ripples, and I was wondering if I should be using a video camera. Finally, there are a number of things in this composition that made me select it, of which the drama next to the ladder is but one part.

Bass Harbor was filled with lobster traps, neatly stacked on docks sometimes ten high. I wondered, if the docks were filled, what was in the water? Everything was sleepy here and in my visits between Saturday morning and Monday morning I saw fewer than 4 boats load traps and head out. I had shot trap reflections here the day before after a lousy plate of clams and when the weather was overcast. My shooting interest then was gulls periodically flying into my image to pull a bit of dinner from my canvas. I have a hundred of those that you will probably never see.

This one's for you, Jonathan. I make no promises on the next one.

Enchanting Cottage III

If your idea of enchantment includes a white picket fence, just step out back. It's a whole other world back there. Please excuse if things are not quite in move-in condition.

Enchanting Cottage II

Part of the enchantment is the salty patina achieved by the fine wood shingles, but the cottage is a joker, faithless, and not to be trusted, bedeviled by potions and herbs..

Enchanting Seaside Cottage, 2 Rooms, Furnished

On the way out of Southwest Harbor I looked again around the bay for some recollection of what I'd seen the previous summer - the shot I'd missed. The bay looked gray and flat. I drove out to the shipyard, but I remained disconnected from the place. I turned and headed for Bass Harbor. It was beginning to clear and I thought the orientation of Bass Harbor would provide interesting side lighting as the sun got low in the sky. I had no idea I would be transfixed along the way by the magnificent palace in this photo.

I yanked my forester to a halt, grabbed my gear, and began to set up to shoot. As I shot I slowly moved closer. Soon I was shooting from all sides, close up, far back, through doors and windows. I was compulsively drawn to the cottege, and only when I saw certain doom staring back did I draw strength to disengage. Of 262 shots, relatively few were extreme wide-angle like this one, but it may be this shot which best captures the siren's song.

New Horizons II

That was a heady time a year ago in Southwest Harbor shooting, as I thought through the lessons of that first summer workshop. There was much that drew me back to Southwest Harbor now, but especially on my mind was the shot I missed. Of course, there's nothing worse than looking for some shot. One winds up seeing nothing. One must stop thinking, watch, and take what is given. Midday on my one full day in Southwest Harbor and I had been given listless gray skies, but I had been given hope of some late day clearing. I decided to find a high prospect from which to shoot the harbor while nothing else was possible. The clerk at the wine and cheese shop had proven himself a connoisseur of good stout, so I took his advice on a trail just north of town, and a good cheese for dinner later. I also took another bottle of the tasty stout.

The trail rose steeply and was much rockier than I expected. As I neared the top, it began mounting over boulders. Threatening clouds began brushing me with rain, and I worried about the nasty trip down and how much more slippery things might be if the full storm came my way. If I tripped and fell would anybody pass for the rest of the day? I thought about retreating, but the clouds that threatened rain also beckoned with the promise of images. At least for me, shooting into fog and mist is very uncertain. Sometimes when I think it is too thick for shooting, it turns out perfect, but I've also been surprised at how uninteresting, pale fog can surprise me with passionate images. At other times, the best looking fog has totally failed. Perhaps I need more fog experience. A similar process of reasoning persuaded me ignore my sense of vulnerability and continue across the top of the rocks toward some interesting, low clouds just passing in front of me.

I haven't made up my mind on the series of shots I made up there above Southwest Harbor, so I'd appreciate some honest feelings about this one. It was one of the very last before I turned and headed back down. Just as I did, a dog appeared and licked my hand. Then I heard someone call and two parties of hikers with kids and backpacks and good wishes appeared. We stopped, exchanged talk about our homes and our travels and compared weather news. As stragglers caught up and the crowd grew, I turned and headed off for my next photo destination. The sky had grown a bit lighter.

New Horizons

Even if my failed hard drive caused my Maine photos to be lost forever, the trip was more than worth the time, effort, and cost. Yesterday evening I went out shooting for the first time since getting back from Maine. I returned to one of the sites that I have been shooting repeatedly, but I saw it with new eyes. Part of the credit for this must go to the perceptive comments of the workshop leader, but more often the changes wrought by Frank Lavelle's comments have focused me more clearly and critically on shots I would have taken before. Certainly, my new eyes were in significant part do to shooting alongside 10 other photographers all of whom saw the same sites but differently. However, at least as important in refreshing my vision was the very act of shooting in very different places for two weeks. My strategy of going back and back and back to the same sites won't change, but I'm also now more aware of the value of sometimes varying my diet.

The shot above was not taken last night; it is one of the Maine shots taken at a remarkable antique junk shop that Frank took us to. Next to the day spent shooting people at the July 4th festival, this junk shop was the most difficult shoot. Aisles as tight and sometimes as dark as mine shafts led through mountains of unidentifiable widgets, tools, fabrics, furniture, household clutter, taxidermic survivals and more. Periodically glaring flourescents would cast ugly light across this debris. Even when I found myself intrigued by objects it was tough to find light and space to shoot them as I wanted. I spent too much time arranging a bunch of large pulleys into a still life that was stillborn. I spent less time arranging 50 shovels so they would like like the scales of an animal - another failure. I shot where I could and tried to see more. I never expected to see a landscape in old saws. I wish the shot above had a slightly sharper focus. By the time I took this I was rushing and moved on. Like the previous shots from Maine, it remains at this point unsigned, a work in progress, perhaps, but to me an interesting attempt.

The good news is that this morning I got a call from David Mafucci of Visionary Computer in Lakeville, CT. He had worked his retrieval magic. His computers worked on my hard drive through the night, and I now have my Maine shots restored. In the next week I hope to process some of these as finished images. I have paid the bill but remain indebted to David for his rescue work.

Backup, backup, backup

I had intended to post another people photo yesterday as a follow-up to the shooting image. However, on Tuesday night, as I was copying all of the Maine photos from my travel hard drive to one of my normal drives, the travel drive failed, and I have been grieving the possible loss of 80% of the images I took over the past two weeks. The failed drive is currently with my local computer repair guy who this morning reported a tiny bit of success recovering my images; he was able to grab a handful. I had no heart to post yesterday. I'm posting today in the light of this bit of hope for the sick "patient."

I consider the image above one of the best I made at the workshop. Sadly, all I have left of it is the full resolution jpg copy that I processed for our daily photo review & crit. It happened to be left on the thumb drive I used transfer images to the workshop computer. I've done a bit of recoloring here, but it is not the final I would like to produce. This is a third generation copy of that jpg reduction.

The very best images I took in Maine were taken after the workshop as I shot at my leisure in Southwest Harbor, Bass Harbor, Bernhard, Seawall and along the roads of Mt. Desert Isle. I reviewed these once the night before I left Maine, and I will be deeply saddened if they are lost. Light was perfect, and the post sunset images caught that final night in Southwest harbor were a big part of what drew me back to Maine this year. I had driven by that spot a year ago after I had finished shooting. The water in the harbor was pink and blue and seemed topped with whipped cream. A similar effect was there this year as I returned to my B&B on my last night in Maine, and i knew exactly how I wanted to shoot it.

I'm waiting for the full prognosis on the sick patient. What lesson will I take from this experience?

Shooting People

Shooting people is tough. The sniper stalks his prey unnoticed and must make settings and compose in an instant. Alternately, he must ensnare his subjects with charm and wit, coaxing them into complicity in the finished composition. In either case, he strives to harmonize foreground and background, include supporting "actors," exclude distractions, determine appropriate depth of field, watch for hot spots that will be blown out, and all before expression or gesture of the primary subject is lost. At all of this I am a rank amateur, a beginner. Too often the prey got away. I'm much better at shooting bottles. This was the greatest challenge I faced at the Rockport workshop. I think most of my colleages at the workshop felt similarly.

Frank LaVelle, our instructor prepared us expertly and then took us to the Thomaston, July 4th festival and parade, a place where people did outrageous things, wore outrageous costumes and expected to be photographed. The best shooting was at the staging before the parade, but it was clear from the moment I began that I needed to think and to use my camera very differently. I'm used to shooting manually, but if I tried to set shutter speed and f-stop for each shot, the shot would be long gone before I ever pulled the trigger. As I had switched to a new camera 2 or 3 weeks before the workshop, I didn't even remember how to switch it to aperture or shutter priority. Once in shutter speed priority, aperture is then set automatically, but one must use exposure compensation to cope with very bright or very dark scenes. This was in the same place as on my old camera, but I'd forgotten where that was. (Heck, until this assignment I didn't understand why anyone would prefer exposure compensation over manual adjustment.) And, of course, one must be aware of aperture to get the desired amount of background blurring or sharpness. I got some quick help from a colleague with a similar camera and was on my way, but with parade staging chaos all around me and new shooting technique, I found myself very quickly in overload.

The real lesson occurred some hours later when I reviewed the 400 or so shots I'd taken. Amazingly, almost all were properly exposed. That does not mean that there were many images I liked. Reviewing them made me aware of pieces of Frank's prep that I had not made use of. I spent much of my time wandering around looking for shots. I engaged lots of people in conversation as directed, but I never went to the next step of moving them around to put them in front of supporting backgrounds and setting up my composition. Only rarely did I spot a supporting background character. In spite of all, I found enough useful images to make a showing at our review crit the next day, and it was reassuring to see that most of my workshop colleagues felt as I did.

Well, that's why I chose this workshop, to stretch me into new territory, and the 4th of July festival was a great place to do it. Since leaving the workshop, I've begun challenging myself occasionally to engage people in my shots, but I'm still happier shooting bottles.

Christina's World (updated)

I can't look at this or yesterday's TODAY'S without lamenting the many shots I missed - not those that my colleagues saw (We all see differently, and that is what makes workshops such as this so incredible) but those I tried to get and botched through rushing and those I walked right by as my logical mind swept past my receptive self. Well, this one seemed too obvious to miss, but, though some classmates shot from here, nobody else shot the house through the graves.

When I'm back home, I'll crop out the power lines. Christina is behind me, perhaps perched on my left shoulder.

Christina's Gone

No photo could better follow my week-long photo workshop at Rockport (Maine) Multimedia Workshops than this one which I'm titling, "Christina's Gone." I shot it on the fifth day of our workshop on a very special visit to the Wyath Farmstead. I took it on my way down the hill to the small family cemetery where Christina is buried. I chose this workshop because it seemed like it would do most to stretch me into photographing new subject matter. After 4 days of shoots that fulfilled my expectations, coming here brought me home to safe territory.

The house and barns were open to us before regular patrons arrived, and we had permission to go anywhere and rearrange furniture to suit our image-making needs. Like all of the shoots, time was limited. I don't work well under such conditions, and my time in the house always felt rushed; I knew I wanted to spend time outside shooting the property. Normally I have the patience to shoot for 3 or even 4 hours from a single spot. However, when offered the candy store and told I have limited time to pig out, I find myself frantically trying to consume a bit of everything as I explore. When I finally got outside, time had become limited there as well. Under normal circumstances, I would have tried a shot from under one of the wheels of this hay wagon, or I would have shot down the side to catch the partially hidden barn. I would have tried a hundred different angles. The energy of this meadow and the lovely magenta flowers were most welcome, and I have no complaints with what I caught here with its hint of Wyeth's landmark painting.

Photo workshop shoots are always under pressure, not just the pressure of time, but the pressure to produce for an audience of peers. We were asked to present 10-12 images each day. Most photographers are happy if they produce one good photograph a day. It seems that while patience may be my greatest photographic virtue, it is also my greatest photographic weakness. In any case, the figure walking across the field on the way to the harbor is one of my workshop colleagues. There were ten of us in the workshop. We all felt the pressure to varying degrees, and we all presented a mixed bag of images. Well, there was comfort in that, and much of the value of the class was in learning why those weaker images were not working. Frank Lavelle, the workshop leader, is a wonderful photographer and teacher. He is director of photographic education for the Smithsonian and has taught widely. His crits were clear, focused, and humane. His wisdom was always balanced by great humility, and he when he didn't know his own mind, he was quick to say so.

I'll meet you all tomorrow down by Christina's grave.

The Futile Photo Chase

I'm writing this from the campus of the Maine Photographic Workshop in Rockport, Maine. As I'm outside and running on battery this note may be short. Earlier in the week I woke at 6AM and found my yard filled with fog. That is a call to arms, and after hurrying to dress I decided to make a quick stop at Mt. Tom Pond just three miles from my house to catch a few shots quickly in case the fog lifted. I wanted to make it quick and then head for Straight Farm where the long view of the valley might offer many possibilities. Alas, it is the old syndrome of chasing photos. I should have spent much longer at Mt. Tom. How could I expect a more photogenic scene anywhere? Perhaps it was the hum of the state highway that made me move on, or simply the prospect of a quiet morning at Straight. However, foolishly I snapped just three shots at Mt. Tom and then moved on. Looking at what resulted, I can think of lots of other shooting options that might have kept me snapping for hours. Straight was not nearly so good. In any case, I'm pleased with the single image that resulted, but the lesson remains one I still need to learn.

This image was coverted for posting in Photoshop which tends to wash things out a bit. However, as it is too complicated to follow my usual procedure, I'll just hope for the best. Under current light I can't see the shot which I edited for posting last night. I hope I like it when I see it under better conditions.

Making Choices & the Shooting Process

On a good morning or evening I can shoot between 150 and 400 images. This part of the image-making process is utter joy as the whole effort is directed at opening possibilities and perfecting them as conditions constantly change. I am my own companion and there is always more to see. If it is a site I know well, as I shoot I'll plan ahead to follow sun and clouds, but primary focus is on expanding the possibilities of the moment, on standing at the edge.

At some point I must take those images back to my computer and go through them all. If I feel the shoot was good, and I had found my shooting self erupting with ooohs or even ahhhhs, I'm eager to see the results, though sometimes shoots that felt weak turn out much better than expected, and good shoots don't always pan out. However, the best review is done at some remove from actual shooting and then begins the task of selecting one or two images, from the, possibly 400, that I consider worth finishing.

Selecting is the lonliest part of the job. I'm not out to make a slide show; I'm hoping to have one image that will remain memorable, that I'd like to think has gotten hold of some essence or has an expressive purpose beyond the unframed reality. On a good shoot I am always on the edge of my seat with expectation. The view is always opening. At selection time my task is to eliminate possibilities, settling on the one best choice.

I had walked about half of the sheep's pasture when I shot this image. I've learned that I don't know what things really will look like until I stand the ground, but I knew as I shifted my tripod slightly and made final adjustments for this image that I had found the one best spot to pull the barns of Kallstrom into the compositional relationships I had been striving for. I knew after I clicked the shutter I would move on to another idea. So it was with some pleasure that I later reviewed this shot and confirmed my initial judgement - Oooooh! Aaaaah! The one best choice was clear.

Then I came to the shots taken a few minutes later after I had climbed a few more steps up the hill, and sheep flooded into where I had stood earlier and I zoomed. The towers were no longer optimized but sheep had changed the equation, and my reaction was that their presence had superseded the mere balance of towers. Normally, today's TODAY'S would have remained in my computer archive, unfunished, merely an abandoned possibility, an unnecessary redundancy.

Reviewing to make choices is a lonely activity filled with uncertainties, and it would be wonderful to always have someone at my elbow to stop me and say, "Wait, don't dismiss that one so quickly," - another pair of eyes, another sensibility to sit by me through the long hours of reviewing each day's shoot would be a great aid in helping me to see more. How many times I have come back to a shot months or even a year or two later that I had completely overlooked. Tomorrow I'm off to Maine for a week-long photo workshop where, hopefully, we will all be looking over each other's shoulders and helping us see that work more clearly.

In the meantime I'm left wondering if this shut is merely a redundancy after "The Joker," and "Sentries of Time," or does it offer something all its own, not captured there?

The Sentries of Time

Old barns are among the most practical buildings ever built. One can read the logic in the layout of a good farmstead, but this utilitarianism often yields a beautiful mix of vertical and horizontal forms. Then time leaves its mark on old barns in a multitude of textures and colors which grow especially rich in dawn and dusk sunlight. Most farmsteads grew and changed constantly. Today most bear the marks of many generations.

I like trying to compose the textures into, "samplers." This sampler is also a gathering of generations. The green roof facing us is the latest addition. It was added this spring and replaced wood shingles. It's sad to see the old roof go, but good to know something of the original is now better preserved. The cupola was recently restored honoring the grandfather's design. Who was the practical-minded farmer that resurfaced one barn wall with black shingles?

With the right choice of angle and lens we can almost listen in on the conversation among the old towers. What do you think they are saying to each other today?

Hollow Barn Dance

The Barns of Hollow Farmstead almost never dance. They are stately and symmetrical, their roofs well matched, their siding intact though worn to painterly perfection. They all meet at right angles. No animals dwell here. Periodically someone comes to cut and bale the hay from the long rectangualr field which the barns bisect, and then for a few weeks the fields look like great lawns to house and barn, too formal for a dance. To make them dance one must poke them with the long lens and turn them askew; the barns behind each gable, although here squashed flat, stretch 60 to 100 feet. The shot was made some months back, and and I like the way the trees dance along. Wearing their lush, green leaves, they are not nearly such good partners. Straight Farmstead is shy and withdrawn; Kallstrom is The Joker; Hollow Farm wears its age with complacent dignity, but every once in awhile I try to coax from it a little jig.

Kallstrom Barn Dance II

It's hard to make the Kallstrom barns stop dancing. When I shot them last winter (see: http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2007/04/processing-image.html ) they were dancing despite a noreaster blowing sleet and snow through the farmstead. No goats stepped out into that furiant; the barns danced alone. This week the tune was more bucolic, and here they blush in the warm evening sunlight. But it's the same dance then as now.

The Joker

Susan Sontag says, "All photographs are momento mori. To take a photo is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt." If so, the images of Kallstrom farm have the mark of the joker about them, laughing in time's face. Where splintered boards seem about to fall baby lambs scamper beneath their mothers. A ladder lies on a rooftop waiting for repairs to resume. A truck lies rusting in the weeds, it's cargo still aboard. Nobody can remember a time when it wasn't parked just there. Goats with curved goats and long beards graze and cast a cynical eye and answer back to the bahhh-hbahhh of the lambs. All about are the relics of 100 years of Kallstrom farming, custodians of an inscrutable story. Cows, goats, lambs, and people barely notice as each carries out its appointed task.

Having just produced a more comprehensive image of Straight Farmstead, it's satisfying to follow it with a similarly comprehensive image of Kallstrom, the former quiet and shy, this one, a never resting prankster.

Why I Never Shoot Sky

I hate sky. You may have noticed that most of the photos I post include as little sky as possible. Most of the time it's in my way, and I do my best to push it aside. I like the way an overcast sky can intensify some colors, but, unless I want the effect of a gray day, I'll try to sneak under its grayness. Even worse are the all too common "atmospheric" days where the blue isn't quite blue and the light at dawn and dusk isn't quite as intense as it should be. Such gray-blue emptiness adds nothing of interest to a photo and is so bland it is good for nothing but a timid yelp of existential boredom. A crisp blue sky makes a great flat background, but it's rare one needs or wants lots of great, flat background.

Add to those the days when it is too wet or snowy to shoot, and I've shot in some, and that's half the year, at least in Connecticut, when I don't want to shoot the sky. What's left is an assortment of days with clouds of various kinds, most good only for adding a bit of texture to great, flat background.

This was the first shot I made yesterday at Straight Farm when the clouds were rioting, Fasalt and Fafner trampling across the hills. We've had a spell of god-cloud weather lately. Last evening at Straight the line of approach was right over the nearby hill so it was impossible to get the measure of the cloud until it was almost overhead, and I ran for cover from rain and lightening several times but neither happened.

What did happen was a lumbering parade as good as anything Macy's can put together. The problem was that the parade began at the top of the hill behind the barns and to the left in this picture, and stumbled along the side of the mountain and down the long grasslands in front of the barns, and the sun alternately burned deep behind the mass of clouds and powered through, dappling and casting spotlights randomly. Sometimes soundless shadows slithered over the lumpy hills, while I ran circles around the barns, up the hill and back down, trying to predict where the next good extravaganza was taking place.

It has bothered me that I've been so far unable to compose an image making use of the full cluster of barns at Straight. The problem is that trees and orientation keep it from getting decent light. Last night clouds taught me how to shoot it.

While the Sun Shines

This image was taken 60 minutes and 37 seconds after the previous blogged image. With such precision our cameras plot our every shot. It was, I had hoped, with similar precision that I observed what I thought was the approaching thunderhead. I have no burning desire to be bacon, and at such moments I am aware of a god's presence. I'm also aware of the potential for a good photograph. Yes, precision is crucial.

So the sudden, fat drops of rain were unexpected. The storm was still far off. I dismissed them and kept shooting, waiting longer than normal before stowing and waterproofing my gear. I finally turned around when I heard the rattle of the cow shed's tin roof. Behind me cats, dogs, whole cows were ricocheting tin. The thunderhead I had been watching was in retreat.

So it is that I can tell you with absolute precision when the first rain drops hit my lens, and I packed and fled past the newly planted corn, past the out-to-pasture cow, past the giant silo, and into a tractor shed. It was a splendid, if somewhat smelly, window on the storm.

At the top of Rabbit Hill where one can watch the weather pass, I forgot to look the other way.

Out to Pasture

I shot this before the storm broke. It was the day the front moved through and I hoped to have good clouds to play with. Driving up Rabbit Hill Road the view is all sky and then the top of the great silo pops over the horizon, and the sky did, in fact, offer possibilities. I thought those clouds would look best behind the Rabbit Hill barns and the rows of newly planted corn in the adjacent field. However, on my way to the back where the corn seedlings had popped up a few days earlier, I passed a lone cow. It was, apparently unteathered, but it wasn't going anywhere. It didn't even nod as I passed.

My eye was on a storm cloud to the north, and I gave little thought to the old cow. Minutes later and some hundred or so yards further back in the field I heard rain, like a snare drum, beating on the tin roof of the cow barn to my south. It took a few moments to register that I was about to get very wet. I had just time to pack my camera away in my backpack and pull up the pack's concealed rain hood before the downpour enveloped me. On my hasty retreat to the shelter of the nearest barn I passed the same cow, still not moving nor registering my passage or the downpour. Like this old barn that I had shot ten minutes earlier, I guess she had little choice but to silently take whatever occurred.

I've photographed this barn before, but here the compression of my long lens makes it seem isolated in a wilderness about to devour it. The same long lens creates a kind of cardboard cutout effect in front of the distant hills, and I've been looking at this for a few days to decide how I feel about it. I've toned the background to minimize this effect, but I'm curious how others feel.

Wine

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Wallace Stevens

Here is yet another shot from the ridge above Hill Farm. For the past three years I've been looking toward this ridge through my long lens from one range of hills farther west (behind me), wondering what it would be like to stand here. Yes, I'm trying to take life one hill at a time. I've now explored many of Hill Farm's byways and walked the full circuit half a dozen times.

It's worth the tick threat to finally cross the ridge and descend into the hidden valley and abundant grasslands ahead. The loop I follow descends beside the trees on the right to more grasslands deep in the valley, then across and back along the river to the lower farmstead shown in an earlier image. Finally, I climb the main farm road to the upper farmstead (previous image) and follow the town road back to my car, just on the other side of the ridge. This trip with 35 pounds of camera gear is good for my calves, gentle on my knees, and it revitalizes both heart and soul.

Is it strictly antiquarian to wish that there were cows in those fields? Undoubtedly, and the future for Hill Farm is exciting. The posts set on the other side of the wall are waiting for the planting of hundreds of grape vines later this summer. On two other hillsides vinyards are already leafing, and in a few years wine will be flowing, and I'm looking forward to shooting as the valleys turn from from milk to wine.

Finally, you may have noticed the cairn. Was there a battle fought here? Did George Washington stop here on his way through town? Does anyone even remember why it was built just here?

The Old Farm Road #2

This shot was taken a few hundred yards down the old farm road from the yesterday's TODAY'S. A bit of the clover can still be seen sprouting from the ridge between the ruts of the road. The farmstead to the right is the main farmstead described in that previous posting. Still no sign of bees.

Throughout New England farmland is vanishing. As fields are no longer cultivated or minimally cultivated to preserve tax benefits the beauty of the landscape changes. When the farms are finally sold, the fields sprout rows of houses instead of corn or beans, and something of our connection to the land vanishes with the farmland. Then we no longer think of the problem of the bees. It may also be that something more essential is lost when we can no longer stand in places such as this and look out across the ranges of hills.

For the past year as I've hiked and shot images I've been striving to capture the rock and roll of the hills as they tumble around me. For me, to feel the tilt of the land in this way is to feel connected to something timeless and vast. Fortunately, where I live there are still numerous places where I can feel that rush. As I drive elsewhere I'm increasingly aware of how fast such places have vanished from most of Connecticut. When I moved here in 1974 interstate 84 was still lined in places with fields of tobacco and rows of long tobacco barns. Today those fields and barns have been demolished; none remain. In their place stand strip malls, warehouses, and shopping plazas.

Fortunately, all the land in this picture and the previous two have been preserved for future generations. Elsewhere, I try to capture pictures before it is too late.

The Old Farm Road & the Problem of the Bees

I've been driving past Hill Farm since I moved to the area, and I began shooting images of it from the public road as early as the winter of 2005. It was a magical vista to me always - a destination along a tour when friends visited, and one of the ultimate subjects for "a pretty picture." Meeting the owners and getting permission to explore the property made me aware how little of the magic I'd seen. As to this picture, I'm still hoping for a truly clear sky before the clover starts to turn.

Hill Farmstead (not the one in the picture) sits on a shoulder of land just below the main ridge. The dirt road climbs steeply before it turns right and passes through the middle of the main farmstead. After it leaves the farmstead it turns left and climbs higher, then turns to the right and passes over the ridge. Viewing this image, that farmstead is about 45 degrees off camera, to the left. The spot where the dirt road crosses the ridge is about a third of a mile to my left and near the farmstead. The farmstead commands the long valley before it, farmlands and hills for as far as the eye can see. It has stood here since before the revolution, and it has looked the same much of that time. At the height of Connecticut farming it must have been quite an operation.

The farmstead in front of us, part of the Hill Farm operation, is on the banks of the river which flows through woodlands beyond the fields. Among this farmstead's features is a mail-order barn (the big one in the picture) and two pens with stone walls 9 feet high and 3 feet thick. That's where they penned the bulls. The upper barns are horse barns now and probably were then. These lower barns must have been cow barns. It makes sense. The owners of a fine farm like this wanted their transportation nearby, but they might not be so keen on having the tons of manure produced weekly so close to their noses.

Once this field and all the fields in view were cultivated, probably for feed. It's clear that this one is mowed, but my guess is that it has been all clover for awhile. The aroma as I shoot images is a heady concoction that ought to be bottled. One can't help in places such as this to feel the great life force which, left on its own, powers forth this frenzy of blossoms. All around me here nature is exuberant. Of course, the blossoms are not there to tempt and intoxicate me, and that is the problem. It seems to me that this place should be buzzing as loudly as it is chirping and singing, but in the 3 or 4 days I've walked up here, in weather both chilly and sweaty, early and late, I've only counted three bees.

Perhaps the more deeply moving photo will be when the clover turns. I'll keep you posted.

The Meadowing

Those of us in the northeast who have lawns know that in spring and fall it can be impossible to keep up with mowing. Farmers who grow hay have a different perspective on this phenomenon. Not so long ago I described Straight Farmstead as sitting astride one of the gentle hills within Kent Hollow. Suddenly the fields above and below the farmstead have filled with tall grasses. Last summer I spent much of my time in the meadows of Macricostas, shooting into the sun at dawn and dusk when the strong golden beams make the meadow fibers dance. I find myself again drawn to those strong textures.

I debated a long time before posting this photo because of it's odd lighting. At this season of the year the southern face of the main barn at Straight Farm only gets midday sun. At sunset the sun glances past this corner pouring beautiful light on the end face of the barn, just beyond the left side of the image. When the meadow grasses are dancing this most expressive southern face has a deathly grimace and the contrast of ancient barn and buzzing meadow is most acute. Whether that is caught here, I'm still uncertain. Perhaps the contrast is too great as the grass seems almost a cutout pasted on the surfacve. Or maybe that is the idea - the two worlds of life and death which never meet.

In spite of appearances, this is one of the most stable barns I've shot. A new roof and reinforcing structure have preserved it just in time. I returned the window frames (found lying inside) to their sockets a few weeks back, my way of celebrating that this barn still serves farming. The hay that will be mowed in these fields will be roll-bailed and stored in this barn.

The Frog in the Swamp

They were there all along. Only I was facing the other way, wrestling with the barns of Hollow Farm while enjoying the unusually multivoiced choir of birds around me. Jannequin's polyphony had nothing on these guys, but the barns were stubborn, stuck there like cows with their heads down in the pasture. I had hoped that the carpet of pink blossoms would somehow help me make the picture I wanted. I had been moving around, looking for angles on the setting sun and the fiber of the blossoms. The barns textures glowed as the sun got lower; the paintpot was ready, but the whole would not compose itself. I had probably shot 200 images of the barns when I first turned around. Beyond the curtain of trees the sun skated across the marsh grasses, a last thrill of golden, warm sunlight, and the birds were exalting, and I heard frogs there too. I snapped just 4 images and knew I had something I would like. Then I turned and snapped another 200 of the barns.

When I went back the next day for another sunset shoot the field had been mowed. It was just a large lawn between the barns and the old stone wall.

Unarbitrariness

The arbitrary is the enemy of the artistic. If you find that proclamation a bit overbearing, I'm in sympathy. I usually try to avoid such terms as "artistic," and "artist," and I'd much prefer principals to laws and rules. Defining art usually raises more problems than it solves as does this concept of arbitrary, but I address it now as I try to understand why I have published so few photos from The Hollow Farm and what that has to do with my own intuitions about photography.

As already mentioned, this farm is unusual in its orderliness. The land is flat, the barns sit along a straight stretch of road, and all lie at right angles to each other and to the road. All this means that each time I reposition myself and shoot, the elements of my images adjust themselves in ways that are not wholly distinct from the previous shot. As I review these numerous images, and watch the compositions slowly morph from shot to shot, it is usually hard to single out any one shot. Then I begin wondering if the image would be improved if I had shot under different light or with a change in leaf color or when the grasses are turning to seed. I'd like to address that orderliness in a way that seems, if not definitive, at least complete in order to set off the ways one can make it dance, but no single or set of images has emerged to do that.

If one seeks merely to publish pretty images, such concerns are largely irrelevant. One goes looking for pretty sights and then uses a camera or paint brush to document them. They exist at one level removed and inferior to the real thing. For me photography is not be about finding pretty images to shoot or even about shooting pretty images prettily; it's not about documenting the external world. It is about taking the scene in front of me, whatever it may be, as raw material and composing elements of it into a new whole that expresses something beyond the original, a mood, an emotion, something universal or iconic or surprising. It may make us see something old in a new way ormake us fit something new into a familiar emotional resonance. In the end, the compositon should feel like the inevitable arrangement to satisfy the ends of the image.

Susan Sontag, in her book on photography, suggests that painting is ill equipped to express the surreal, that the medium of photography is much more capable of truly capturing the surreal because it is so firmly attached to capturing the light of the real world. I raise this point here because I think it is a perception that goes well beyond strict surrealism, that in fact the relation of real and super-real is a fundamental paradox that forms a cornerstone of photography as an art form.

While my intuitions tell me that a given image is or isn't arbitrary, explaining why can sound a bit like intellectual rationalization. It's easy to talk about elements of a composition and their meaning, but whether the image is merely an intellectual construct or expressive in a way that goes beneath surface reality resists the verbal explanation. The image included here struck me as a likely candidate to illustrate what I mean by not arbitrary. To explain its non-arbitrariness I might talk about its division into two equal rectangles top and bottom, about the way barn and moon balance and their symbolic reverberations, about the way the dividing line of the trees seems to echo the roof line of the barn, or I might even try to justify the odd point at which I have decided to cut the barn off at the knees, but my words can't capture the deeper harmonies of the work which I feel. That is not to say that the image is profound or that one ought to like it or even that I consider it among my best. For me, it merely means I feel this image has received its ultimate form here and fulfilled its super-real potantial.

The opposite of the arbitrary is the committed. A month from now, when the moon is again rising full at dusk, I may see a similar shot with a spot of cloud in it and say to myself, that adds the finishing touch; it is more committed to the initial vision than it was before. Or perhaps it is my lack of vision that is keeping me from seeing what all those other images taken at The Hollow might become.

I risk this wandering philosophizing in the hope of eliciting thoughts that further clarify my understanding. I invite comments which may help me think further about this issue of arbitrariness.

Weekend one of the photo exhibit was a success. I look forward to seeing those you you who have told me you plan to attend this coming weekend.

The Other Side

No matter how I plan for a series of related TODAY'S, that plan is diverted by the passion of the moment. My note awhile back on The Hollow was intended as the first of perhaps 4 or 5 images in a series on The Hollow Farm. Similarly, the post on the Bunnell Windows Book was intended to introduce numerous Bunnell Windows. It's not that I later think less of the images never posted; one of the Hollow Farm images has a key place in the Camera's Eye exhibition. Rather, I am diverted by some new passion. In the end, however, things usually come round. And so we return to Bunnells.

The image above was worked on after it was shot and then set aside; it never reached completion. I rediscovered it tonight as I reviewed a folder of such temporarily abandoned images, and maybe the variety produced by such circuitous posting habits is a virtue. I set the image aside for technical reasons. My normal habit is to compose in the camera, and it is very rare that I crop a shot after I shoot it. I have no aesthetic objection to doing so, though cropping yields lower resolution images. This one may never be able to print out at 13"X19", my usual size. However, when I did the initial editing, I found the focal interest of the image in what you see; I cropped the rest away as superfluous.

What you see above is the cropped version, my first thoughts on the image. Below are my second thoughts, my current thoughts. Or maybe they are alternative thoughts. Your thoughts on which version is preferable would be most helpful and interesting. There is no question that the effect is very different.

Peeking In

These are the same velvet surfaces posted under the title: "The Hollow," on May 1. However, it was the windows that first caught my attention. I've never seen windows like these on any other barn, and the contrast between their soft, if perhaps forced, cheeriness and the view through them intrigues me. What the shadowy diagonal form inside the barn may be, I have no idea.

Of course, if you've looked at "Peeking In," and "The Other Side," you realize they are not two versions of the same image. They are two distinct shots from the same series. However, they have been worked up differently as described.