Hay for Sale

JOHN SZARKOWSKI: "Painting was difficult, expensive and precious, and it recorded what was known to be important. Photography was easy, cheap and ubiquitous, and it recorded anything: shop windows and sod houses and family pets and steam engines and unimportant people. And once made objective and permanent, immortalized in a picture, these trivial things took on importance."

I shot this photo in February during one of the big storms. I'd passed it hundreds of times before, but I never thought to take a picture. I posted a number of shots from that storm shoot, and this one was always in the "almost" category, but it got cycled onto my desktop periodically, and each time it came up I liked it more. In late March I even edited it for TODAY'S. At that time I experimented with removing the electric wire, but the space above the barn looked too empty. It was set and ready to go on April 1 with the wire, but again something else nudged it aside, and it fell to the back of the pack. I exhibited it with The Camera's Eye in May, but it attracted little attention, I think. I wish I fully understood my attraction to the image.

Last night an ice storm passed across Connecticut (as well as much of the rest of the country), and this morning all the branches to their outermost limbs were glazed and crusted with ice. It could have been a photogenic moment. Instead, I went to the mall and post this.

Through the Fog, a Barn

It was very September. I was also very trespassing, shooting at what I've come to call, "End of the Bog Farm." The propery was vacant, lonely, and still. Just in case, I was watching the mist. A trespassed tresspass is best answered by a quickly tendered handshake. I was watching for a person. I didn't expect another barn to appear in the mist just there. And it was red. The barns I was shooting were distinctively tan.

The Sunken Forest

The weather has suddenly turned cold. Yesterday they predicted snow, but what we got was unphotogenic, so I'm looking back over photos taken earlier in the fall. The morning I took this shot near Coleman Station, NY, I was disappointed that the fog was not thicker. However, the effect it made from the top of this ridge was startling. I took the shot not believing it would make a good picture. It's been haunting my computer desktop ever since, and I've been looking for chance to post it. It looks especially nice now that the leaves are off the trees and everything has nearly lost color.

Outside Space

[A NOTE ON THE PREVIOUS TODAY'S - HELP REQUESTED: I received a number of comments both positive and negative on "Inner Space." A few people commented on its darkness. In fact, if your monitor (and my monitor) is correctly adjusted there should only be a few shapes visible other than the two bright forms. It should appear as if you have just come from sunlight to the edge of a darkened room and your eyes have not yet adjusted.

If the barely visible highlights between the two forms were not visible at all or, alternately, if you could see the interior space clearly, please let me know. One of us needs to adjust. As I've just calibrated my new monitor, I'm very curious to find out if it is in sync with most of you. Any comment regarding how the image looked on your monitor would be helpful in assessing whether my calibration has been successful.]

Inner Space

Geese in Bucolia

The skies were terrific yesterday morning. I wish my camera could have caught it. It wasn't the cloud formations, though there were some magnificent ones both early and late, but certainly not in this picture. No, not the skies themselves but the flocks of things the flew through them.

These are rolling hills with a number of large ponds, so I'm used to being interrupted by gangs of geese. One hears the barking of the pack long before it arrives. They have been so frequent, that sometimes I don't always stop to look at their neat formations. However, this time it wasn't quite barking, at first, perhaps a distant clamor. I turned and waited as it grew into a frantic hubbub, and what emerged from the distance was not the usual squadron, but multiple squadrons, a battalion arrayed for full invasion.

Whatever they were doing wherever they were going was, as always, only in the mind of a goose. There were multiple such waves of invaders moving through the skies to the northeast. A new wave came every 5 or 10 minutes, so there was barely a lull before the next advance, and then they were again all over the sky at once, and it continued so for 40 minutes, and then there was an eerie silence.

The silence was eerie because the wings still flapped and the clusters of birds still passed overhead, but these were not geese. They were black and larger than crows. They might have been turkey vultures; I never trained my long lens on them, and they were not in goose formation, but flew as a clan the way crows do; and in and among these large birds were what might have been swallows, flying tight like a school of fish. At first I thought it might be some flock of little birds defending their nests against larger birds, but this is not nesting time, and these birds were all allies, probably on their way to the great goose convention. The swallows' paths looped and twirled around the vultures. It was quite a show.

It took a long time for all of these to pass, and the first of this mixed formation were long out of sight before the last came through, and then there was nothing. The last of the swallows and vultures were a bit ragged like the end of most parades.

As to the picture above, for me it's all wrong. I wish I knew how to convey the experience properly, but perhaps it is a better subject for dance or film or even architecture, or perhaps I'm just not up to the challenge. I can make interesting images of a squadron of geese flying in formation, but to convey any part of the spectacle, a photo would need to bring sensation as close as that clamor of yelping geese and as close as the intense silence that followed. At the same instant it would need to be as wide as the horizons. I fear it's not a subject for photography.

Crossing Bucolia Grandis

For those who may have thought to question the linguistic pedigree of recent titles, I have requested clarification from my staff of linguistic scholars. Here is Larry's letter of authentication:

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Roth [mailto:eshtooter@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 8:21 PM
To: Larry Friedman
Subject: Re: linguistic inquiry

Yes, One can cross it and it's biggish.

t
-------------------------
Then, yes, it is "Crossing Bucolia Grandis". But remember, you MUST BE CROSSING Bucolia at the EXACT same moment that it is being grandis. I tell you, IT MUST BE EXACT, otherwise, one would have to use the Hortatory Subjunctive in this case, and that always hurts. L.
-------------------------

The dance continues. What distinguishes true variation from a reductive redundancy? Where is the boundary between a new composition seeded by an earlier and a weak parody?

Composition in Bucolia with Diagonalia (for Larry)

One of the most useful concepts to reach me, came via Frank Lavelle at his Maine workshop. It was the notion of supporting characters in a photograph. Putting it that way helps me clarify an image.

If I want a broad landscape for my stage, the act of casting parts can look like a mysterious dance as I meet the actors and watch them move. Sorry if it sounds corny, but its a kind of communion dance. At one point in the dance (I'd like to think as I took this or the last shot) an admiring cow moo'd quite loudly. I stopped for a moment to see her neck stretched farther than I had imagined it could and took that as a sign of her approval. There was no shortage of potential actors here. The cow was a ham. The fun for me is in turning & moving as everything undergoes parallax rescrambling until something clear appears. The task then is to explore the variations and slowly refine the content and trim the frame.

In this shot the corn crib no longer plays a noble hero as in the last image. this time, it must counter and support the new lead's bravura display. If you have the tools handy, zoom in and taste one of the apples.

Composition in Bucolia

JOHN SZARKOWSKI: "The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture's edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it."

"If the photographer's frame surrounded two figures, isolating them in a crowd in which they stood, it created a relationship between those two figures that had not existed before."

Not Keeping an Eye on Corn (for Louie)

I would provide something for your ear, but I don't know how to upload music.

Corn Crib

How far the distance in psychic miles between this image and the food store where we shop! Somewhere the harvest is real, but I had little thought of it Thursday while eating the traditional harvest foods. A day later as I shot this corn crib newly filled and ready to support milk and beef production through the winter, I had no sense of the aptness of my subject matter.

We were 20 people at my daughter's and son-in-law's house on Thanksgiving, and the board was spread with turkey and yams and corn and corn bread, and cranberry sauce in two varieties and squash and rutabaga and nut stuffing and cider and pumpkin pie and apple pie and yet more that I can't recall, and it was wonderful beyond description, but at some point in our national history, whether we lived in the city of the country, we would have understood the journey from field to table and been inwardly thankful for the harvest to our very core. How long ago was that and how are we changed because it is no longer so?

Hillside Redux (for Jonathan)

I was almost ready to pack up and had returned to my car when I noticed the setting sun penetrating beneath the low branches of trees to light this spot of ground in the middle of Hillside Farmstead. It was an impossible lighting situation of high contrast between the very dark shadows and the brightly lit surfaces where the barns caught the last light of the sun, and I didn't expect anything to be useful. Hillside's finest feature is the series of "backhouses" that enclose a compact dooryard, and this shot caught them from an unusual angle. I was surprised and pleased to discover how much detail I could lift out of the dark shadows with Photoshop, and I was pleased with the zigzag composition that resulted.

I was directed to the beauties of Hillside Farm by my friends Ken Cornet and Joe Mustich and began shooting there when I returned from Maine in mid July. This was the first photo from Hillside that I prepared for posting, but then I had hard drive problems and thought the prepared photo lost in the related system crash. This morning I set out to reprocess the image and found, to my delight, that I had in fact saved my original work.

This is an ideal photo to make a request for your help. Last week, concerned about the accuracy of my laptop screen for editing photos, I purchased a stand-alone monitor which I have now calibrated. This should mean that the image I see is similar to an image seen on any properly calibrated monitor. As you look at this and subsequent photos please be on the alert for any image that strikes you as too light, too dark, or that seems to have an unusual color cast to it. Notifying me of such possible issues will help me considerably.

Finally, after the last TODAY'S Jane asked to be associated with Jonathan's viewpoint, and Jonathan wrote to indicate that, as I expected, the particular photo would not be desktop wallpaper. It is a decision with which I fully respect. On the other hand, Jonathan's wife Wendy, an artist, wrote in to say how much she liked the image. For my own part, I feel a bit awkward in ascribing the word art to anything I've produced. Rather, I only claim that my interests are aesthetic rather than documentary.

The issue for me isn't what one might or might not hang on one's walls - one should hang what one likes - but what is the proper domain of artistic discourse whether in photography or any other art form. Was it Edvard Munch, painter of "The Scream," who wrote that the camera would never be an instrument of art so long as one couldn't use it in heaven or in hell? I once had a friend who lost his balance and swerved sharply right. He began collecting reproductions of great works of art in order to scrapbook the angelic penthouse portions. At one point, knowing my interest in art, he offered me his nether leavings. In fact, Munch is right in suggesting it is essential for art to plumb the vast personal and collective abysses which underlie all human experience. It is only in touching both pleasure and pain that art transcends the decorative and touches the sublime. The field of photographic discourse, whether it lands on Jonathan's desktop or Jane's wall needs to touch ALL those things inside us that matter. As to my car photo? It matters not at all. It was about Hollywood.

Moving Pictures

Ah well, another one Jonathon won't wall paper! But it does bring me to the matter of matter, subject matter that is. The thing is, I'm not sure it matters (subject matter, that is).

I'm not a journalist. Of course, whatever you shoot you need to know how to shoot it. After that, forget it, or you'll never see the moving pictures.

Family Farm

Inside, the fittings are still in place for milking a small herd of dairy cows though all about the ceiling is giving way to slow-motion implosion. When the wind blows you can sometimes hear echoes of the fallen bucket and cows standing, waiting to be milked.

Autumn Unhung

It's hard not to feel it on days like this when the sky is gray and the thatched meadow has lost its green shimmer, and all the pods have burst. Richard has just collected another bowl of eggs from somewhere inside these barns, the fields are empty, and few cars pass along the road.

This was taken on my first morning at Cold Spring Farm. What can I say? The weather man had predicted sun and clouds. He was half right.

Farm of a Thousand Faces

Cold Spring Farmstead is a compact structure made up of three connected barns and two silos. It's odd geometries are compounded by the general decay. One section is beyond use and all three are bending and twisting as members give way to age. From what I've been told this hasn't been a working farm for at least 15 years, though several times a day Richard, who has lived here most of his life, disappears somewhere inside the structures and emerges later with fresh eggs. To me this remains a mystery as I have yet to see a chicken.

I'd like to call Cold Spring. "The Farm of a Thousand Faces," as I sense that potential in it. I first saw it last Monday. The day was overcast and a gloomy, diffused light touched it everywhere. I quickly fell under its moody spell which influenced every shot I took. In three or four hours I worked my way systematically around the farm and up onto the steep hill to the west. The best shot I got was from the back of the barns where the field descends northward; setting my camera low to the ground, the barns look like they are rising from behind the grasses.

I returned on Tuesday afternoon when the sky was bright and crisp, and I shot until the sun had vanished behind the hills. I had come to shoot that back face again, but it was quickly clear that at this time of day it was all in shadows. I again climbed the hill to the west and found I could cross a stone wall and get even higher on the hill. From this angle it is hard to avoid shooting the old farmhouse. Unlike the barns, the house is in immaculate condition. It's bright white siding presents a serious photographic obstacle in late afternoon; it invades shots taken from the west and makes proper exposure settings impossible. If the two structures have any message together, it must be their contrast. By the time the sun was low in the sky I had worked my way back to the front which was catching intense orange light. I will have to repeat that, but I was still eager to reshoot the back.

I returned shortly after sunrise the next morning and shot until midmorning. I had thought the early light would catch that back face, but I quickly saw that the back won't catch sunlight until next spring. As I adjusted my shooting plan for the morning I came on the frost-covered grasses of the previous posts. Then I again climbed the hill and worked my way to the south-facing front where this shot was taken.

While I've been a bit disappointed in the results of these three shoots, twelve or more hours of shooting under such varied light has taught me much about how light effects these structure and left me more intrigued than ever to unlock those hidden faces.

I went to Cold Spring Farm on a tip from Frances for which I'm very appreciative. Cold Spring Farm is a 45 minute drive from my home. That's the farthest I've traveled for repeat shoots of the same farm. I expect to be back often, and there's much else to be shot in the neighborhood, but we are increasingly in the dull time after the excitement of seasonal changes. All the best things occur in times of change, and I'm already wondering if I'll be able to get here when the snows start..

Mome Raths

My mission yesterday morning was to make my third trip back to Cold Spring Farm in New York State (not to be confused with Cold Stream Farm in Connecticut) to catch the rear face of the barns in early sunlight. For that I had gotten up early - not early enough to be there at sunrise, but early enough for early light. The farm is 27 miles by country roads from my home. I figure it takes two gallons of gas each time I shoot there.

I had been there at sunset the night before when I climbed the steep hill west of the farmstead and shot down at the barns' fronts and east side bathed in orange light. Such is my ignorance of late season sunlight that when I arrived the next morning I discovered that at this season the rising sun also hits the fronts of the barns; the rear won't be sunlit until next spring.

What I found behind the barns, however, was a world of frost preserved in the shadows. Somewhere in this thicket I perceived Borogoves, and I was determined to catch them while avoiding the dreaded Bandersnatch. Three shots show the results of my hunt. The others are below.

Your expert opinion is sought to see if I have identified all three species correctly. I'm also interested in your preferences among the three shots.

I went on to shoot more of the Cold Spring farmstead which is sharpening my understanding of the workings of the sun on complex architectural shapes. I'm far from done here, but it is odd that I drove all this distance for a bit of frost I might as easily have found at home. Then again, this line of old fence continues to intrigue me.

Slithy Toves

Mimsy Borogoves

Among Blackbirds

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
-Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens aside (not easily done), there are few sights I know as magical as blackbirds after harvest. On Rabbit Hill they gather, sometimes perhaps a thousand, as if I could count, and they fly, weaving and looping as one body then divide to several, settling in trees to watch or among the corn rows to gorge on "nature's" bounty. I marvel at the precision of their movements and wonder, is there a leader? ...or does the flock think as a single brain? It does seem so. With such thoughts I watch the birds, one-by-one, leave the trees, each bird choosing its own moment to rejoin the crowd among the cornrows.

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
-Wallace Stevens

Equipotential Surfaces or The UberTrump

Across the Hudson

The Gantry

One of the highlights of the New York trip was, "The Gantry." I knew what it was, but Bob was ready with the name that wasn't at my tongue's tip. In any case, yesterday Bob published a beautiful photo of me shooting the gantry. You can see it on his blog at: Walking the Boroughs .

This is a shot of the gantry that Bob shot me shooting. It is a bit north of where the great steamships landed, an area that I recall being hard to reach, where the railroad tracks came out from hiding between the end of Riverside Drive and the great piers. There's little left of whatever was there - no waterfront, at least in the sense it once had. They were adding new walkways to the new park, newly planted with new marsh grass. We looked over the construction fence to where concrete paths and benches were being poured. The present had not quite arrived, and we had to go back to the new bicycle path to get out onto 56th street.

The Undertrump

Today Bob LeJeune and I went shooting (pictures!) in NYC. We are both native, "city boys," but we managed to find places in midtown we'd never visited before.

Where late the sweet birds sang

Taken yesterday - an odd sky, an uneven shoot, but I liked the way the filtered light swept Maples Farmstead as I headed slowly toward my car. It was a moment, and then it was gone. No time to go back and shoot it differently nor will it ever be quite the same.

Cowtopia Reconsidered

As it turns out, the dream of Cowtopia was nothing but a dream. Mary-Del Farm is next door to Maples Farm. The pastures lie side by side. The farm road on which I descended led through the Maples pastures. The cows there are not dairy cows but beef cows. It may well be they all followed me in hope that I might be their pied piper. I met Bessie here on the way back. Perhaps that is an expression of disappointment if not utter cynicism.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Cowtopia

This is a cow's-eye view of Mary-Del. I've recently been walking among the cows (one steps cautiously), and from their perspective, life is sweet. Most of the time they wander from field to field, nibbling grass and looking at the scenery. When the urges move them, they wander to the barn where a kind man milks them or feeds them. When their done, they go back outside.

Walking among them, their attention can be unnerving. Yesterday my path took me across a bridge into the end of a pasture where they were then grazing. As I approached and then passed through the middle of the herd, their eyes followed me, 30 or 40 pairs, and as I passed through their midst the bodies turned, one by one, so they could watch me leave without looking back over their shoulders. Nor did it stop there, but they followed me up the dirt road a bit toward the next field, and I suppose I did look a bit odd with my camera dangling at the end of an extended tripod which was slung over my shoulder; backpack, straw hat and turkey feather. It certainly felt odd being at the head of this lumbering, bovine parade.

Ultimate Autumn

Which of us, camera in hand, can resist the tug toward that ultimate Hallmark moment, the autumn photo? It is as if there is some shared ideal, some vortex of warm hues from white-hot to fire and smoke, a sugar maple distillation of light that lures us like moths, and the hills are alive with the sound of digital cameras. A friend of mine, a casual photographer, only takes his camera out once a year when he goes to shoot, "colors." He's an autumn photographer; It's his hunting season, and he's bagged some nice game. Of course such quests are hopeless and can be a distraction, but who can resist taking a Hallmark stab at it.

What? You thought more fog?

Pocket Full of Posey

Who is it who, "the foul fiend hath led through through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge"?

*********
I hereby certify that this image was made with only 100% pure, natural, extra-virgin fog. No artificial flavors or preservatives have been used. No trans-fats.

Fen-Suck'd Fogs

Well, Lear's incestuous fogs left the fen and met me in the cemetery yesterday morning, and so halloween photography needs to go on a bit longer. This silent, old tree holds the very center of the burying ground, and it coaxed more than a few shots from my camera. Choosing has been, as always, difficult.

In this case, choosing provided a small photographic epiphany with regard to lenses and fog. This image was made with a lens zoomed out to 180mm. That's a pretty telescopic lens, so I was standing well back from the tree. I was surprised when in the shot immediately afterward the fog appeared to have lifted in the space between me and the tree. However the fog behind the tree was only slightly changed. I'm sure I would have noted so sudden a departure of the fog's sucking (the second image was taken just 1 min and 3 seconds after the first.). A check of the image data reveals the secret. Although I seem to be the same distance from the tree, the second image was taken with a 95mm lens. I had moved much closer and used a less powerful lens to keep the tree the same size; the fog was as thick, but there was less of it between me and the tree.

This relates to a discussion I was having with a friend and fellow-photographer yesterday on what some call, "photographic cheating," or less pejoratively as, "manipulating the image." In fact, I can go into photoshop and manipulate this image to minimize or maximize the fog as I wish. Actually, I can't even open a RAW image without making some kind of judgement about this. So, if this photo is to be judged by its faithfulness to some objective truth, which is the better truth, the one at 180mm with fog everywhere? Or the one at 95mm with only background fog? Both? None? (continued below)

Fen-suck'd Alternate

Of course, if you've looked at both photos, you notice that while the tree stays almost the same size, something is very different in the placement of the headstones. I haven't moved around the tree, only closer. Perhaps the, "authentic" photo is one to be taken at about 35 or 45mm where the foreground tree and background headstones both seem as large in front of me as they are in the image? Then, true photography must be limited to such lenses for photographic manipulation is already seriously underway the minute we make our camera.

As it turns out, I had much difficulty choosing between the fog-swept eeriness of the first image and the jewel-like, leaf colors and intimacy of this where the fogs are moving on. I'd be curious to know what others think. In any case, understanding how it happened will effect how I choose lenses in future situations.

Cold Stone

This morning was the third time this week I have been up and out to catch the dawn. What I really wanted, however, was the dawn fog that is endemic to the valley just east of the Housatonic Valley. This morning I got it, a cool fog that tasted of the cellar steps and sent chilled damp through my nostrils.

I delayed my visit to new farms in Amenia Union to visit with spirits here. I have tried in past visits to work the fence into an image, This is the first to please me.

I had chosen a different shot to end this halloween series. I like that one quite well, but I'm sending this today if for no other reason than it really was taken today, Halloween.

The Wall

Witch's Oils

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

-Coleridge

This Ol' House

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

-Longfellow

Bone Garden

Eye of newt and toe of frog,
What is moving through this fog?

Silence at the Top

A few days back you saw this field from a different angle and at dusk, and I wrote about the naming of hills, but this view calls for deep silence and sometimes geese.

Dry Bottom

Having missed the summer haying, I hadn't walked down through the hayfields since spring. In the Southwest drought means terrible fires; in Atlanta it means thirst. So far it has not been so serious here, but when I got down to the edge of the swamp, the ground around the ferns was too dry, and there were parts of the bog where I walked on dry, cracked mud. Could we be losing this precious swampland?

In fact, I've learned that once much of the area I've come to know as Hollow Swamp was farmland. Probably beavers started the conversion when the farmers stopped planting the fields, but the real change came when they raised the road across the bottom of the bottomlands. The land on both sides of the road is legally wetland, but downstream it is forest, upstream it is teeming bog - except now.

Rectangles

This may be a lesson in patience:

The sounds of the outside world rarely penetrate to the hills above and below Straight Farm, and usually the only evident inhabitants are the birds and deer. It's joy just to be here, but for me it continues to seem an apparently endless source of new photographic ideas. In spite of this, I've found the large forms of the main barns difficult to shoot. Instead, my camera picks at the details or shoots the fields, trees, and outbuildings. Of photos published on TODAY'S, only two show anything of the silo.

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-i-never-shoot-sky.html
http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2007/05/freuhlingslied.html

On Sunday we spent part of our Colors Marathon here, and I saw that the fields were freshly mowed. I decided then that I would get back at first opportunity to walk down through the field east of the farmstead to the southern edge of the property where it meets Hollow Swamp. More on that in a subsequent post.

On my way back I climbed up along the eastern edge of the field, not crossing back to the farmstead until I could see the barns end view, and I approached it dead on. What a surprise to come on this old friend from such a new angle!

Here finally was a whole face of the barn that would yield itself up to my lens without asking for compromises. At last a true place for the vines and the one, mute window whose expressive ring had always appealed to me! And the silo's patina, not yet weather-scrubbed on the northeastern side! I'd used the bank on which the farmstead sits as a platform to get angle above the fields; I'd never seen it as a carpeted apron textured in fallen leaves to anchor the image. Even the orange tree which had turned a brilliant orange but only in isolated patches that made it more weird than photographically useful... even that tree turns in a bravura performance doing exactly what is needed.

It's not that I haven't tried. Perhaps the picture isn't ready to happen until the picture is ready to happen, and the gift is being there at the right time and place to find it. Or perhaps others would have spotted it early on and had a hundred good shots by now.

Cornrows on Rabbit Hill

Walking farmlands and meadows one sees how the land lies and chooses a path freely and fully knowing the roll of the earth between here and there. Doing so I have become more convinced than ever that I'm walking the back of a vast beast. This knowledge is less evident to forest goers who follow the beaten trail or the river. From this cornfield I can see vast distances to my left and right. Once, when travel was slower and more toplands were cultivated, such long views were easier to find, and travelers and farmers who looked daily across the hills knew their names.

Those arcane names can still be found on old the maps and Nat'l Geologic Survey topos. There's a name for almost every moderate sized hump around here. Most are forgotten. It was years before I realized I lived in the valley between Mt. Tom and Mt. Rat, but a hundred years ago such names were the way one knew where one was. I know of Rabbit Hill because Rabbit Hill Road leads to this hilltop. It must be Rabbit Hill. Back when, they named the road so everyone would understand, "Go here, and you'll get to the top of that Rabbit Hill you saw from the last hillock. Trails are insidious, and I'm certain our ancestors were quickly seduced, but I wonder how their more spatial understanding of the great beast we ride affected how they felt about her?


Abutment
Small steps, like the march of the corn stalks make a matrix of earth's roundness
from her sunny fullness to her boggy hollows.
In the forest one follows the old trail or the river's path.
In the meadow, one walks free and contiguous.


After my photofriends from Maine went their separate ways, Jane and I went to the goose pond above Lake Waramaug where the sun sets. On the way back the recently cut hay and corn were catching irresistable sunset light. This and several other shots were a fine conclusion to a lovely day of shooting. Other shots taken Sunday can be seen at:

http://flickr.com/photos/rothphotos/

Sitting Pumpkin

Sunday was billed as a marathon, fall, colors shoot . Friends who met at a summer photo workshop in Maine were to arrive through the morning. Car trouble made for a rough start and an early finish, but from 10:30 to 4 PM we explored sites in The Hollow and Spring HIll Vineyard. One member has already published a bunch of his images, and I'm impressed by his speed in and wit in seeinbg and setting up images, ...and his color. It's both inspiring and humbling to see what others find in places I've been shooting for months. Although I've shot this spot since last winter, until recently I stayed away from the front porch, mostly out of a feeling of not wanting to intrude, but now I've gone and done it.

Late-breaking news, a few of Rebecca's shots can be seen at: http://camerajourneys.blogspot.com/

Southwest Elbows

It's reassuring to know that contact sheets (and virtual contact sheets) have posed problems for the greatest of photographers. There are times, of course, when photographers know what they want, and the contact sheet provides a record of the refining of the idea. There are times also when the image is not there until a serendipitous event clinches it. For me, however, it is more often the case that at the end of a series of shots, all I have is options that seem to offer different advantages.

On August 23rd of this year I posted on my blog and sent to subscribers a different image from this series under the title, "Staying Rooted." In the note I grumbled about the difficulty of choosing. Above is the image I chose not to post. This link leads to what I did post:

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2007/08/staying-rooted.html

As I posted the other image, I quietly filed this image in a folder titled, "Reflection," in preparation for the exhibition just completed with The Camera's Eye. Unfortunately, I followed a different path in assembling my exhibit photos, and it was only in final review of images that this one elbowed its way into the show just outside the door where the rest of my pictures hung. It is now similarly elbowing its way onto TODAY'S.

The sun rose early on July 8th. My first shot was at 5:03 AM. By my second shot, 20 seconds later the sun was peaking over the hillside. By 5:10 the bay was covered by a broad blanket of clouds and by 5:18 the sun had almost entirely disappeared behind those clouds. Even so I continued shooting until 5:29. Throughout , my decision-making was rushed by my late arrival, rapidly changing conditions and a mood just short of panic. A vision of what I wanted? All I had was a knowledge of the site from previous shoots. I exploited that knowledge as best I could and scampered around within 30 feet of my car framing what I could as best I could. The 59 shots that resulted testify to how small changes in position and zoom can create vastly different meanings. This shot, perhaps, emphasizes the security of the harbor and the lure of the open sea and the unknown. Some shots emphasize rapid change and others calm. A few suggest the precariousness of civilization hugging the shore. It only takes a small tilt of the lens to make such vast changes, and I would be lying if I said I was aware of all of these differences as I shot through the tiny viewfinder. I'd also be lying if I said many of the shots were fully committed to the meanings just identified. I've come to believe this one, at least, is. Ah, choosing!

Autumn Brew

The time of fall colors is so short that in other years I often rushed to catch as many stunning pictures as possible. This is a destructive impulse, a mad dash to snag butterflies out of the air. It has taken me this long to learn to take this season as just a swelling of the color palette, a chance to find in old landscapes new blushes and highlights. At the least, these blushes and highlights allow one to recompose the familiar. However, with the low autumn sun beaming an incendiary sunset blaze, fireworks can erupt out of nowhere.

I've long enjoyed the old silo at Kallstrom Farm , and I've included it in many photos. As the leaves behind the farm color up, work has begun to restore it. They were pouring new concrete floor supports as I took this shot. Tomorrow is supposed to be nasty, so by the time the sun returns to light these trees, the leaves will have changed and the silo may have a new roof.

This silo is unusual. Basically a silo is a big barrel made relatively airtight in which the stalks and greens of the corn are packed and in which they ferment into what must be an intoxicating gruel to keep Elsie contented through the long, winter months. Many silos made of either wood or concrete are wrapped with great steel bars like the hoops that make a barrel hold its shape. Unlike most wooden silos, this one is built more like the frame construction of a house - a structure of members covered inside and out with a wooden "skin." Brent Kallstrom pointed out the obvious defect of using stud instead of barrel construction: the cavity inside the wall provides a series of passages away from winter's cold where rodents can access any part of the silage and enjoy a long winter celebration at Elsie's expense.

Autumn Tractor

I'm told this tractor is from the 1920s or 30s. Restoring it is one future plan among many at Cold Stream Farm. Right now they are at work saving the old wooden silo, so I'm shooting there every chance I get and hoping the silo's forest backdrop is in full autumn dress before they cap the silo with a new roof.

But this shot was taken behind the silo. It was taken after most of the light was gone, and I had given up shooting.

I looked at the tractor again this afternoon when the sky was crisp and bright and dappled sunlight filtered through the leaves. After a few moments of almost shooting, I decided I preferred the flat light I'd already captured here and moved on without a click.

Amber Waves

The hills and valleys of Connecticut's northwest hill towns don't look like this. Descend into the valley east of Sharon and one is quickly in spaces more vast. Things rock and roll here to a different beat, more spread out. more expansive. As I walk the land, composing it in my mind, the hills often rearrange themselves more slowly, and I get fewer shots per gallon. After a long day of exploring the route 22 corridor between Amenia and the Massachusetts border, I had little to show.

The haze did not quite kill the strong sidelight of the late afternoon sun, and my eye was grabbed by the edgy texture of the foreground soy crop and its contrast with the tassels of the drying corn in the next field. I had gotten permission to shoot on this farm just south of Copake, NY, and the farmer told me his land stretched to the foot of the tall mountain that formed the valley's eastern wall. Soon he had sent me out along a farm road. It was on the way back that I came upon this fine filigree which one might imagine stretching endlessly in either direction, left or right, or mitered into a pretty picture frame. Can you tell we're getting closer to the mighty Hudson?

Mr. Barn

I've tried repeatedly for two months to shoot this barn on Perotti Farm. Unfortunately it sits close up against a hillside and next to busy rt. 22. It is an outbuilding across from a major dairy operation that lies awkwardly in a "flatiron" plot of land where a county road forks off into the hills. I've walked both roads in both directions looking for angles that capture the barn and make it read. It's hard to move back from it and not put unrelated and distracting stuff into the image, nor does it ever quite command the frame. I think I'd almost given up, yet the detailing on the cupola, and the pleasing proportions, and the gaping mouth kept calling.

In any case, I was shooting at a farm I thought to be 5 or 10 miles off. I'd just shot the power line photos from which the previous image was taken, and I'd decided to cross into a new area of hayfield for some new angles. My path led down to what I thought must be a stream bed and then up to a point higher than I'd been, but I thought I might be unable to cross the stream bed. As it turned out, there was none, and I began my climb. Only when I reached the half-way point up the hill was I sure the line of brush and trees at the field's perimeter was unbroken; no link to further fields! I decided to climb to the back edge anyhow, It was the high point and just maybe it was penetrable.

In fact, there was neither wall nor fence and I found a spot where the brush was less thick. Popping through to the other side, I found myself in a newly harvested corn field. The power lines continued marching across to the next hillside on my left across a deep valley, and a lovely farm lay in the valley floor off to the right. What a quiet cozy spot! But something about the farm looked familiar. ... and then two trucks sped through and I realized I was standing atop a hill over route 22 looking down on Perotti Farm that was supposed to be so many miles away.

I guess it would always have been possible to climb the corn field from the 22 side. I've climbed many others. Perhaps eventually I would have gotten permission and tried it. In fact, it's a much longer climb than it appears here. The picture has a soft fuzzy quality because I have my long zoom opened all the way out to 400mm which functions on a digital camera as if it were more than 650mm. That's a vary powerful magnifier and I'm a long way away. And remember, it was foggy, so part of the fuzziness is haze. I'm considering working it further. I want to soften it even more, perhaps by making it more grainy. I'd be interested in others' thoughts.

It is sheer luck that Mr. Tractor was parked in the exact right spot

Wired

One of the challenges I took for myself almost two years ago was to capture the noble roll of the Northwest hills, and I'm always on the lookout for good sites or supporting characters to help tell that story. A month or so ago I got access to the Collins Farm and discovered these giants striding across the hilltops. When the sky is clear you can follow them with your eye over all the intermediate hills and right across the top of the big hill in the background. I've been trying since then to compose them into an effective image.

This morning I set out 45 minutes before dawn in hope of again finding fog again in Sharon Cemetery. In the previous post Dick called me, "a fog specialist." In truth, I'm just learning how this fall, fog thing works, and I'm even beginning to learn to adapt and roll with the billows. When I came over the hill east of Sharon and found myself rising into the fog, I suspected I would be disappointed. To shoot the cemetery I need a fog that settles into the valleys, not one that brushes over the hilltops. As I came out the west side of Sharon and passed the cemetery there was no fog, but just a mile further I quickly rose into a fog that made me strain to see the road ahead.

Adaptation: Collins Farm lies low in the hills and has broad prospects across the valley that I might be able to shoot. In fact, light fog separated the barns of the farmstead, and I spent some time shooting there. By the time I had hiked up here the fog had thinned a bit, but the hill behind me, like the hill in front, was still blanketed in. Somewhere in the fog in front of us is Sunset Ridge Farm, perhaps just two or three towers on.

After many tries, at last a shot of the striding giants that satisfies me! I'm hoping that when I print this there will be enough differentiation to suggest the intermediate hills. It's going to be close.

Detour

My initial destination at 6 AM was too smothered in fog for driving, much less shooting images. I groped my way back through the murk to this ancient cemetery. It was awhile before I noticed the house. However, after shooting a half dozen images here, the house vanished. I was looking through my viewfinder, and all of a sudden it wasn't there.

It is October 1. The stores have declared it Halloween month. At WalMart they will charge you for good fog like this and a styro tomb stone to spread it over. Happy Halloween. I'm going back to the cemetery tomorrow, but I'm bringing my plastic rat.

Above the Bog before the Storm

You've seen this building in fog (Scroll down to "In Fog at Sunrise"). This shot, captured as a thunder storm rolled in, was taken the night before, but I published another photo from the storm set instead (just below "In Fog at Sunrise"). This one had to be set aside incomplete as much work was required to get it the way I wanted it, and I worried then as now that it was too dark. The resulting photoshop file completed tonight has 10 layers. Not all atmospherics are made for the camera.

I have a folder of such partially complete shots that I think are worth returning to. This one has repeatedly snagged my attention. I haven't seen it printed yet, but there is plenty of detail in the dark forest areas so I don't expect it will clot up.

At one point I also worried that two shots of this building from the same side might be redundant. I suppose they would be if what I cared about was the building.

I've begun calling this apparently nameless farm, "Above the Bog Farm" since it stands high at the New York end of Bog Hollow Road, a country highway that threads the narrow, bog-filled valley cross the mountain chain that edges these two states. However, the photo may have more to do with the vulnerability I felt as lightening began to crack nearby just behind that dark forest. Whoever propped that stick in the barn door must have known I was coming with a camera.

Plowshares

Sunset Ridge Farm is a working dairy farm. The quantity of milk a cow can produce is astounding. One really good Holstein milked twice daily can produce 50,000 to over 60,000 lbs of milk in a year. Of course milk is not all these great animals produce, and farms have many cows. As you can imagine, the farmyard around a dairy barn has, to say the least, a "lived-in" look and smell and feel, and it must be "managed" daily. It is quaint, only at a distance. Up close amid the muck, the beauty of these dairy barns tells of the joyful engagement in long, hard labor. Please don't snicker.

For the past weeks the owner of Sunset Ridge Farm and his laborer have been harvesting the corn crop. From what I've seen it's just the two of them. They are cutting, hauling, and processing for the silos the many, many fields of corn surrounding the farmstead. They have a lot of cows to feed. Unlike so many silos in the area, these silos are used. I watched a few days ago as the ground-up greens from the corn harvest were fed from the harvesting wagon into a large funnel attached to a motor that sucked them in and blew them up the tube or duct that hangs by the side of the silo and into the belly of the beast where the silage will ferment.

Out in the field the owner loads the corn greens into wagons which grind them into fine salad. At the other end is the silo swallowing everything fed to it. Throughout the morning and afternoon the laborer goes between, picking up wagons and setting them to empty into the silos, and the owner cuts corn and loads wagons. I've been there to shoot at both dawn and dusk; they're up with the rooster, and they're still processing silage until the sun sets. Meanwhile cows must be moved between pastures and milked and the muck must be mucked. Sometimes the owner and his hand switch to other tasks and our paths cross. The owner always stops to talk. He'll offer shooting suggestions or stories about the farm's history or expound on the beauty of the day and the land.

I've only taken a few photos that give any real sense of the size of some of the silos. This photo isn't one. The largest silos quickly dwarf any farmer's house should he have built it nearby. Of course, as suggested in yesterday's TODAY'S, for me this picture isn't really about silos.