Sunrise over Bass Harbor, 2008

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I didn't think this dewy morning would be photogenic. A sky unaccommodating, too hazy for photos and sun in the wrong place! I'd started photographing from across the harbor hoping the sun, still low, would add definition and color to the docks where I now stand, but all lay mute in a soupy, gray glare. I crossed to the Bernard side of the harbor expecting less. The best thing going was the surface of the water but the colors were bland. For lack of a better subject I shot at cloud forms mirrored in the harbor waters until the sun poked through. Blinding sun reflected in the windows of fishing boats - like a snagged line, a catch to the eye, that wouldn't let go.

Shooting the sun is much harder than shooting fog. Light like this is too much for the human eye. How do we shoot what's too bright to see? Turner knew the secret in Mortlake Terrace (1) (2), where the parapet wall disappears in the sun's bright glare. In fact, when it came to light, he always knew the secrets.

The photographer must violate the first commandment of photography, "Thou shalt not overexpose," but Turner gives us permission to overexpose. In a photo like this if I don't overexpose at all the shadow areas will be all murk. In fact, it is both over and under exposed. But how much of each is right? Where does one set the balance? Every case is different, and it's best to check results and bracket. One can also reduce the dynamic range with graduated ND filters, but if I'd done that I'd have missed the shot.

In the case of this image I thought the forms were too diffuse to unify into a composition and that the shadowed areas were bound to be too murky. As a result, I shot without full conviction and did not bracket. My interest was much more in composition which changed quickly as the sun rose and its reflection on the water moved past stationary objects. Well, almost stationary objects, the boats shifted ever so slightly around their moorings. It was an experiment.

I had shot this spot on the dock before, and I knew how to use the traps and decking. I positioned my tripod and left the ball head loose so I could recompose as sun, clouds, water, and boats all shifted within the stationary frame of traps and dock. From this position I would be able to catch the sun's arch as its reflection caught on various surfaces, grew and shrank in the harbor, while the frame anchored whatever was painted there. I could shoot both horizontals and verticals this way; the frame was adaptable.

At the time I remember thinking this shot was one too many, that if the shot worked at all, it would be in the previous exposure where the sun snagged on the windshield. I shot a few more anyway and in the next the sun is back on the water. Then all of a sudden the clouds were gone, the sun was up and the opportunity vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Much later I chose this one where the side of the boat and the water explode with light. There would have been no time for bracketing, no time for readjusting graduated ND filters.

So how did I adjust the exposure? AT ISO 400, f14, 1/320th sec, I was also hunting for gulls. Well, one can always get lucky, but I believed I'd confined the overexposed areas to the hard core of brightness. A couple of test shots showed I was able to increase exposure a fair ways before the edges of the core began to bleed outward. My real worry was the underexposed area around the traps. I backed off from the bleeding core and entrusted the rest to Photoshop.

The photo is toned a good deal darker in the midrange than the scene appeared when I took it. This serves to give substance to sky and water and brings out the colors. I pushed the high end a little higher; it's the turner effect. Some will object, but it is the scene as I knew it might be.

My short lens is zoomed to 31mm.

Sandburg Fog

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: In response to yesterday's post Artie wondered if fog photos were harder to take than other photos. Those who read this regularly, know that I have a special love of fog images. My immediate response to the question was that fog pictures similar to yesterday's and today's were, at least technically, comparatively easy to take because the dynamic range from black to white was fairly compressed and could be encompassed easily within the limits of digital and film technologies. Of course that same limited dynamic range makes them harder to process and very hard to print well. Then I got to thinking...

I've always thought exposure for such pictures was not critical. Neal Parent advised slightly under exposing in the fog, and that may be right for shooting film. As it turns out, I made two exposures of yesterday's 44mm image, both at ISO 800. I'm not sure why I chose 800, perhaps it was windy, or perhaps I just forgot to turn it back after a previous shot. In any case, the two identical shots were two thirds of a stop apart, both f22, the first at 1/20th sec and the second at 1/30th sec. I made the finished image from the second, darker, of the two exposures because it was closer to the tones I imagined for the finished picture, because the first was almost glaringly bright, and because only the darker one had the headlights which I knew I didn't want to lose. ...and yet Artie has gotten me thinking...

I've read two distinct theories of shooting. Most experts simply advise getting the exposure right, by which they mean so the finished exposure is as close to the original as possible, at least for the critical areas of the shot; middle gray in the subject should be middle gray in the image. This is what I usually aim for. Another school of thought suggests bumping the exposure to the max, exposing as brightly as possible so long as no portion of the image exceeds the ability of the medium to record it, and adjust it back down later in Photoshop.

(Yesterday's TODAY'S)

Tonight I reprocessed both RAW exposures of yesterday's TODAY'S so as to maximize the dynamic range of each image. Spreading out of the black-to-white spectrum (the dynamic range) should make differences easy to see. What I found, surprised me. The darker image, though not taxing the range of the media, had less visual information. It was grainier and very slightly less detailed. The difference was especially noticeable along the left side of the image where the dock almost disappears into gray. Members could be recovered in the brighter image that were lost in the darker. In the darker areas on the extreme right, the darker image clotted up more, dock members were less fully formed.

But revealing detail was not my goal for the image. Indeed, I shoot in fog to lose detail. Though in this case it was true that I had worried: Would I have enough? It did seem to be a bit more crispness would not be to the detriment of the image, if not necessarily to its gain. However, color, not detail is what is critical to the success of yesterday's image. The color of the two boats must catch the eye and lead to the discovery of soft yellow and red in some of the lobster traps. If your monitor is well calibrated you will even be able to distinguish the slight green of the trees, the reddish tone of the sand and the blue of the water. The image is most beautiful to me when this is visible, even as the image approaches monochrome.

To test the validity of pushing the exposure as high as possible, I tried to process the lighter image to the darker tones I had chosen for the finished image. To my surprise, I learned this took much more reduction of contrast than I expected. In the process I noticed that the reducing contrast was taking a bit of bluish sheen from the water that was quite contrary to the flat, fog-bound image I saw in the harbor and wanted recorded in my picture. The brighter shot, brighter than the actual scene, exaggerated tonal range and in so doing upset color balances. Reducing contrast reduces detail both of edges and of gradients. By the time they looked alike, the unwanted sheen was off the water, but most of the advantage of the brighter image had been sacrificed. Only a few details showed definition missing in the chosen version. It was not enough to risk throwing out color balances especially in an image hard to process and very hard to print.

On the other hand, had I wanted a different finished effect, I had the ability to reveal detail missing in the darker version. My conclusion is bump the exposure up as a backup, but expose to the mark for safety.

Well, I've said precious little about today's image. Perhaps you can tell me what the gull is thinking about the scene in front of him.

The Silence of Fog

Still at the Underdocks

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:

The underdocks, 
boater's crawl space, 
resting place of algae covered lures, 
snagged beyond reach.

The underdocks,
sea-green perch 
where gulls stalk the glossy rocks
and grumble and caw.

The underdocks,
where ropes grouse and whine
droop and coil
round creosote and slime.

The underdocks
crustacean garden of snails & starfish, 
wood lice & barnacles, 
shipworms & gribbles.

The underdocks,
mirror world of
of raftered halls where dead men call,
and ladders plunge to the abyss.

The underdocks,
Stygian green and glossy black
where waters slide
and slip and glide and leap and fall away.

© Emery Roth II, 2008

[150mm, f22, 1/30th sec, 400]
Underdocks, 2007

Wish You Were Here

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I debated a long time before posting this. Why is that? To me it is too easy and comfortable. It is the postcard view - Bass Harbor as seen from the Port of Bernard. It says, we had a good time visiting Bass Harbor and maybe ate lobster there, but not much more.

What continues to interest me about it, and the reason I'm posting it, is its power to draw the eye deep and the various "scapes" traversed in getting there. At first glance, three pink blossoms in the foreground are balanced by a corner of Bass Harbor where two boats lie at rest and reflect on the nearly still water. However much greater interest lies around the shore of Bernard with its odd complement of fishing piers - perhaps your eye has already jumped to the last of these as it basks in the light of sunset and reflects more tremulously. This must be seen at screen size or near. Something about this pier's simplicity and the neat row of traps with their red & white buoys kept drawing my camera every time I shot in Bernard. I would have liked to try it from the water.

Eventually, one moves across the jetty and the harbor inlet to the ferry terminal on the Bass Harbor side and the green, steel trusswork that supports the ferry boarding apparatus. The intricacy of its structure adds delicacy and helps make the small scale convincing. Beyond is an outer harbor where sailboats are moored, removed from the commercial fishing boats of the back harbor. The outer harbor is still bathed in sunlight and capped by the last of what were especially pretty clouds. A few of those earlier clouds would have been nice. Even in jpg and reduced resolution, however, the masts catching full sun invite the eye, and lead one to scan the opposite shore. An island? An arm of the mainland? I'm not sure. I had a great time; the lobster was fresh. Wish you were here.

I spent some time determining the right height at which to set the camera and where to place the horizon. As I recall, I pulled back a bit to assure that there would be clear gaps delineating each level of the harborscape.

In many ways this is the opposite of yesterday's posting. This was taken with a 22mm, (moderate wide angle) lens. It draws the eye deep instead of compressing toward a plane. In the end I confess to preferring yesterday's shot of the inner harbor with its risky cropping and weighted composition, and its traditional uprightness. Whatever else that one may have or lack, it has a bit of attitude.

[22mm, f14, 160th, ISO 400] For what it's worth, had I not reduced the aperture to f14, I would not have caught the gull. If I were not hoping for a bird, it would likely have been at f22 or f25.

Family Tradition

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The telephoto lens is a powerful tool for snatching bird images out of the sky and deer images out of the brush. Its optical effect is only to narrow the cone of vision and bring distant things close, but those who have spotted telephoto use in film, recognize how it also compresses space. A person running toward the zoomed video lens appears to run and run but to get nowhere. The runner's form does not increase in size as we have learned to expect.

In still pictures the telephoto can be used to present a similar paradox; something is apparently wrong with the perspective, but what exactly? We sense distortion. In fact, telephotos are much less prone to distortion than wide angle lenses. The exaggerated curve of the wide angle lens must distort to pull the very broad cone of vision onto the flat, narrow plane of the film. Tip the camera up or down and the distortion of the resulting video can almost produce nausea as from motion sickness. Directors have used this to suggest the surreal. In contrast, the telephoto lens provides a very accurate, perspective arrangement of the objects in front of us but makes us think we are closer to them than we are. If we shot with a wide angle lens and then cropped to the center section (where distortion is minimized) it would look much like what the telephoto lens sees. Is it true that as a wide angle lens can make us queasy, a telephoto reassures with its orderliness?

The essential fact here is that we don't see the way a telephoto lens sees. We are used to the particular cone of vision of the human eye. How different the world must look to the compound eye of an insect or to animals whose eyes are positioned on the sides of their head! However, their brains, like ours, have learned to resolve such vision into some continuous, distortion-free reality. The "compressed effect" of the photo above depends on how it differs from the reality our brain assembles from the data transmitted by the the eyes' lenses and recorded by the eyes' photoceptors. We look at the compressed image of the telephoto which our brain processes as if it was our normal field of vision and seen close up. Why, it wonder, is perspective not diminishing size and arranging space in the customary manner. The effect seems more like an architect's elevation than reality. Of course, one needn't understand what's happening to recognize (and if you're like me, to enjoy & try to exploit) its capacity for composition and expression.

I call these images, "compressions." I began shooting them when I started photographing barns. This image of the port of Bass Harbor might be a companion to "Wharves at Dusk," taken three miles down the road at Southwest Harbor. I like the sense of artifice they give to photo reality and the emphasis they place on the flat, rectangular surface. Deep perspectives draw us into picture space - lead or focus the eye toward the vanishing points. In so doing, they naturally make some things more important than others. In compressions, as in Medieval art, importance is size-based, and the effect is more of simultaneity. The transactions occurring inside the little, red country store are no more important than the dramas that might be unfolding behind any of the windows in the homes or warehouses; life inside the boats is more important because larger, but life goes on everywhere across the image, though hidden from view. Such images ask me to wonder about the lives lived behind these facades. Do they also add a sense of universality to the image? Do they place extra emphasis on color and form? Is it their suggestion of folk art? I'm still trying to understand why they have a special appeal for me.

Similar view - 2007.

[110mm, f14, 1/500 sec, ISO 400] The only reason for the high shudder speed was wind and floor thump as people crossed the small deck from which I shot. It could easily been cut in half and either the f-stop or ISO adjusted accordingly.]

Bass Harbor Boogie-Woogie

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: No cry of, "Eureka!," as a modern day Archimedes slides the green boat from its Platonic universe and zooms me into the present, but the spirit of Leger still rules over the boogie man's reflection in the water below.


PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: ...and I like the way he stirs my paint.


PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: As boogie-woogies go, Bass Harbor's is clearly fog-bound. It's probably at its most active when a seagull finds a bit of food that needs cracking and "throws" it repeatedly against rock.

The shutter speed should have been doubled to freeze the seagull, but the pose is so good, the reflection off the port side wing so strong, that I much prefer it to a stilled gull in a less revealing pose. Besides, I was delighted to catch the gull right where I needed him.

I think I need to do a trip just for gulls. Many times gulls glided frustratingly through images when I wasn't ready for them. The alternative is get set and be prepared to wait 30 minutes by which time the light may have changed. Yes, there's always Photoshop.

As always, vertical images come out too small for computer screens. However, if you can zoom in on the pilings, I think even the reduced resolution jpg image of this post reveals clearly a menagerie of sea life temporarily marooned until the tide comes in. Had I known this texture would be revealed so sharply, I would have tried for closer images.

At ISO 400, f10, and 1/125 sec. this probably should have been also shot at ISO 800, 1/250th sec. Yeah, right! Shoot it twice! ...and I can bet the community on the piling would not have been as sharp.

#2 Bass Harbor Blues

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Taken four minutes earlier, the Platonic melody anchors this shot, and low tide elongates the lobster dock into a blues riff. Behind the fog, the port of Bernard, across Bass Harbor, is barely visible.

ISO 400, f10, 1/80th, 34mm

#1 Bass Harbor Melody

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Sometimes it seems almost like a set-up, pure color and form in the process of abandoning their material selves and finding some sort of Platonic identity. Almost a miracle to find it midst the chaos of Bass Harbor.

Special thanks to Sandy & Esther at the Inn at Southwest Harbor for a year ago pointing me this way.

Wharves at Dusk

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Eleven minutes after yesterday's TODAY'S I turned 90 degree left, extended my long lens out to 230mm, and took this photograph. I had earlier decided that the evening was done for photography, and I was engaged in conversation with another photographer. Small world! She and her husband live almost next door in Watertown, Connecticut. When we stopped talking, I made four more exposures. I'm not sure why.

The time was 8:21, the exact time of sunset although the sun had disappeared behind hills some time earlier. I'd tried shooting these wharves a number of times before. Those shots were in the clarifying, low, sidelight of sunset. Golden light! I had had high hopes for those shots, but none of them had pleased me much, and I wasn't expecting much from these.

Sometimes it is the even light of an overcast sky or just after sunset that allows the forms to speak for themselves through an evenness of tonality. Here the soothing blues and greens set the tone, and the evenly spaced accents of red give it life. The other shots... a little too far left and a little too far right... don't end properly. They might have been cropped into a satisfying whole, but somehow this one is already self-contained. A few harbor lights have come on as the last of the sail boats return to port. It is a quiet, Saturday evening on the wharves in Southwest Harbor. [ISO 400, f14, 1/6th second. 230mm]

Southwest Harbor, Gunmetal & Silk

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Why am I back here? The story of the shot I missed two summers ago is hinted at through the series of TODAY'S that concludes with a photo taken from this same spot almost a year ago.

Well, I'm here to "debrief," and process whatever energies or ideas have been generated by the workshop I just took - to use it as a springboard and a guide to new photographs. In this case it includes the intimidating example in Neal Parent's photos - his determination to push the edges of his art, to grab at experiences almost beyond photography.

I'm here also for the ever-changing water and sky and the fishing villages and this magical bay that catches light like no other. I'm here because it has always felt right to immediately take the experience of a workshop into a setting very different from my usual shoots, and because last summer I only began to explore what is here; I'm here with keen anticipation and eager to begin. I'm also here because these annual jaunts set a marker for reexamining my photography and seeing what a year has wrought.

The bay has not yet produced that frothy whipped cream head that I saw & failed to capture on my first serendipitous visit. This year the bay did not quiet until after the sun was nearly set, so no masts gleam against the water, nor is the bay so pink as I've seen it. I should be disappointed - another summer without catching the shot I'm after. However, the slight agitation still simmering on the surface of the bay is all gunmetal and silk. Lights on the dock are coming on, and this is the last of the evening's light. What a palette of colors! I'm certain I would have passed it by a year ago. As I processed the image I tried a dozen different ways to make a more conventionally "pretty" image, to unmuddy it, but no matter what I did, some vital quality in the light as caught by the camera was lost. If you can blow this up to full screen size, turn down your lights and spend a moment looking at the colors... That's what brings me here.

ISO 400, f14, 1/60th, 102mm

Sea Breeze

HERBERT KAUFMAN: "Dreamers are the architects of greatness, hearing the voice of destiny calling from the unknown they peer beyond the mists of doubt and pierce the walls of unborn time."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I never expected it. I knew shooting aboard the Wanderbird would be refreshing, even revitalizing, but not that shooting from the boat would be so totally different than shooting on land. At sea, especially, I am a total novice with much to learn.

A few hours out of Belfast, Maine, we found ourselves in a large bay or basin encircled by small islands. Through the mists on the far horizon the sails of a tall ship appeared, and I mounted my long lens to have a better look. It was a schooner, two masts with large orange sails. Just then Captain Rick announced a change in plans; we would drop anchor and spend the night here. Seven windjammers were heading into the bay that would tie up together and also spend the night. We scrambled for good spots to shoot as the show began.

I set up on the aft deck and started framing images. This was the wrong moment for my tripod to malfunction. Every time I got my image framed, my heavy, long lens would dip, and I'd have to reframe the shot. My expensive ball head was never subject to such slippage, and nothing I could do would make it right.

First lesson: The longer the lens, the more useless a tripod is aboard a boat. I tossed the tripod almost overboard and reconsidered camera settings. Shooting hand held, in spite of bright sea and sky, required compromises. The shot above was taken with my short lens zoomed out to 70mm. To hand hold, the rule of thumb would indicate I needed a shutter speed of at least 1/70th of a second, but if I planned any sort of enlargement later I wanted to get as close to 1/250th as possible. I dialed my camera up to ISO 800 (after that graininess gets excessive) and settled on f16 at 1/200th. How nice to discover my hands as a forgiving counterbalance to the roll of the boat!

Lesson two: It's not just the mechanics of shooting that are different; the nature of composition changes as well. On land I can wander where I choose and position myself to catch the best light. I am captain. When I see a shot, I know to look around for supporting characters for my composition, and to shift forward, backward, right, left to get light and relationships right. Aboard a boat my movement is constrained and most of the supporting characters must be found among the rails, ropes, masts and sails of my own vessel. Even after the shot is set up, the tossing of the boat makes every shot an action shot, and I often snapped five or six times in the hope that one exposure would get the margins right and the horizon level.

Lesson three: At sea the horizon dominates, seascapes can be sparse. It's not that on land one is never faced with large areas of empty sky or a deep foreground with little of interest, but at sea as soon as the lens is pointed away from one's own ship such situations are common, and one must contend with long low stretches of shoreline or a limitless horizon. On land I like to fill the frame of my camera, and I avoid cropping later if possible; at sea I often need to see in cinemascope.

Lesson four: Even when cropping to a panorama, sea and sky can become flat, unvaried slabs. On land, unless an event marked the moment, I'd return when the weather offered more to work with. There was no way I would be back aboard the Wanderbird or similar craft any time soon, and so what the weather didn't provide must be invented in Photoshop. While I have no philosophical objection to such manipulations, I like to keep my shots as natural looking as possible.

Lesson five: The jokes they make everywhere about the weather are true in Maine. Inland, I time my shoots to weather events. Along the coast I've learned to stand and wait, and this is even truer at sea. When the boat is moving the weather can be even more fleeting. As ocean weather hits land, clouds form and clouds melt, and one must watch closely to see what they're doing. Later in the week while shooting at Seawall, I waited for a line of wispy cloud to pass only to realize twenty minutes later that the moisture was condensing as it hit cooler shoreline temperatures and new clouds were piling up at the shore line like fresh taffy. Everything was changing, but the view was staying the same. I've learned to watch closely to see what is really happening.

Lesson six: The expressive beauty of the Maine coast viewed from a small boat fits my lens... How could it not? ...and I plan to go back.

Maine Lobstermen

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Upon Returning from a Week in Maine

Thanks to those who inquired about my absence. I remain alive and well. My annual summer jaunt to the coast of Maine has proven to be more than refreshing. A workshop aboard a converted fishing boat, "The Wanderbird," with photographer, Neal Parent, is a privilege and an adventure. His maritime photography is the finest I've seen. I especially love his ability to catch the ocean's fury, but his photos have many moods. My regret is that I didn't have longer to spend with the beautiful prints in his gallery in Belfast, Maine. I'll be back.

That Neal was also my roommate might have been privilege had it been possible for both of us to be physically present in the room at the same time without one of us either bunked or in the tiny privy. However, on this tiny boat, 11 workshop participants total, there was plenty of time outside the privy to work and talk with Neal and his daughter Lee, a Photoshop pro. A computer projector is planned for the next outing, I'm told, but we managed okay passing laptops and in demos from Lee and Neal once black trash bags were taped over the coach house windows. Even the boat was an adventure, and looking back I should probably have spent more time photographing it. Lee gathered a wonderful collection of texture shots while I sat watching the horizon, but I'm a novice at sea.

As you may guess, this was not a luxury cruise though we were fed and cared for luxuriously. The Wanderbird is the project and passion of mariners Rick and Karen Miles. It is a 1963 North Sea fishing trawler converted according to Rick and Karen's specifications for its current use. Our cabins lie approximately where the fresh fish were once tossed. A twisting ladder of Karen's design (by winter she is a furniture maker) leads to the coach house where we met for workshops and meals. Rick, Karen and a crew of three sleep in a salon, aft. Details, photos, and more are on their web site. The Wanderbird also carries two aging black labs (one blind from birth), an aging and affectionate cat named Hector and, of course, a parrot. The parrot assists Captain Rick in the wheel house above the galley, while the dogs and cat patrol the deck but are trained never to enter the coach house.

We had spent the night anchored off an uninhabited island, just rock and brush, where the Audubon Society is protecting reintroduced puffins. We had sailed three hours the previous day to get there. I hadn't yet had coffee at 7AM when I came out on deck just as these lobstermen had arrived to tend their traps. The pattern of their work and the gulls' dives were observable before the lobster fisherman reached the trap beside our boat, but I had just enough time to get my settings right (f10, 1/800th, ISO 400). Well, I probably could have halved the shutter speed for a bit more depth of field or an ISO of 200, but it would have made little difference. I got off twelve shots, but in only one did everything come together so perfectly. You can almost count the scales in the tail of the lobster, and I much prefer mist to soft focus. I receive such photos as gifts of the gods. Someone recently tried to convince me that good photos must always pass the B&W test. Nonsense! Were the lobsterman's hip waders any color but orange, the photo would be that much weaker.

You've undoubtedly noted that the photo above carries a new copyrighting watermark that proudly announces a new father-daughter venture. Melissa and I have entered into a business partnership, Lenscapes, LLC. You can preview the web site and learn about Melissa's portrait work and our digital field trips at the url below. Is it a coincidence that I met Neal and his daughter Lee co-teaching just as my daughter and I begin a similar venture?

Lenscapes Photography: http://www.lenscapes-photo.com/

Milltown

ARISTOTLE: “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”


PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Like the previous photo, this one also tries to embrace a significant portion of the Collinsville mill site. However, this one does so from a bit of a distance and through a long lens. In that way it brings together a variety of forms that most people passing would not see as related and heaps them on top of each other. The resulting image is, for me, less about Collinsville and more about industrial New England. For that, I prefer it.

The spot from which this was shot is very particular. It was taken just where the old railroad came down off the bridge over the Farmington River. I made a number of experiments moving right, left, up, and down. There were some interesting options that included the railing of the old bridge, but the balances and echoing forms clicked just here. Similarly, it is only late in the day that the sun penetrates the buildings to make the windows come alive. Now the leaves are on the trees, they are no longer scarecrows, and the force of the industrial forms is softened. Photos can be quite specific in these ways. I'll continue to visit this spot through the seasons ahead, and maybe I'll see something new or something better. It's sometimes hard for me to know when a shot will be superseded, but for now this one seems to have achieved my goals. The wanderings of the sun and it's effect on the land are hard to predict until they have been seen.

Statistics: ISO 400, 1/30 at f25, lens zoomed to 165mm

Collinsville

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I think it may have been photographer John Shaw who wrote that the best shooting often happens at the transitions: night to day. summer to fall, fair to foul. Spring has been fully unfurled for at least a week now; the transition is over here in Connecticut. The fragile textures of first budding are gone, red leaves have reached their full green, and I have lost the urge to catch every moment of the unfurling. It is an excellent time to revisit past photos.

In mid March I posted five shots of the factories at Collinsville. My preference then was for shots that abstracted elements rather than shots which sought to embrace some significant portion of the whole. I confess that I prefer the open-endedness and suggestiveness of those shots to the directness of this. That doesn't lessen the difficulty in this of positioning my lens to properly overlay foreground on background. I remember the odd way I was compelled to position my tripod and subsequently my head to get it all composed. Never-the-less, I was pleased to give this commonly photographed face of the factories a bit of a twist by shooting through the structure that protects the old engines that used to power some of the locks, and I was delighted when the wind calmed enough to let the water reflect the facades crisply. In retrospect, I've decided to post this one too. I'm happy to think some of you will even prefer it.

You can view the earlier shots at the following links:
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Water Power
In Time
Concourses of Time
Namelessness

Photo blog: http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/

Water Music

GARL RIZBUTH: "Nature is always repainting. The photographer must find the canvas. Even more so than painting, photography is an art of edges"

Colorfield #2

JOHN B. WELLER: "Somewhere stored in my memory is a physical description of most objects I could encounter in the outdoors. When I photograph, I consciously try to wipe that slate clean. I don't see sand; I see abstract patterns of light. The best photographs are said to have a design. Essentially this means if you were to forget the identities of the subjects, the patterns of light and shadow, color, texture and form - [the design] would still communicate the spirit of the piece."

Be sure to click the picture to see it enlarged.

Have you visited, "Dandelion's Revenge"?

Cornfield in Dandelions

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: This field of dandelions by Angevine Farm was so dazzling I stopped my car and went back to catch these shots before continuing to my destination. By the time I passed this way in the afternoon, the farmer was on his tractor, turning the soil to prepare the way for the new corn crop.

COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD: The dandelion: a wild and feral plant with a long, fleshy root; an apomictic home wrecker that flaunts its shameless yellow flowers then spews its seed to sully every honest lawn. The teeth of the lion also make their way under the pseudonyms, "monk's head," "priest's crown," and "blowball."

The following is quoted from the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticide web page:

"Dandelions can be beneficial to a garden ecosystem as well as to human health. Dandelions attract beneficial ladybugs and provide early spring pollen for their food. In a study done at the University of Wisconsin, experimental plots with dandelions had more ladybugs than dandelion free plots, and fewer pest aphids, a favorite food of the ladybugs. Dandelions long roots aerate the soil and enable the plant to accumulate minerals, which are added to the soil when the plant dies. Not only are dandelions good for your soil, they are good for your health. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a serving of uncooked dandelion leaves contains 280 percent of an adult's daily requirement of beta carotene as well as more than half the requirement of vitamin C. Dandelions are also rich in vitamin A. Dandelions are also used as herbal remedies. The white sap from the stem and root is used as a topical remedy for warts. The whole plant is used as a diuretic and liver stimulant."

Colorfield

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: From east to west the year flows out, a wave upon the shore. On May 9th the dandelions roared, even before the grass was emerald. "Weeds!" they're called because of their crabbed doggedness. Despised by golfers and greenskeepers. To me they are a color field of bliss, a visual hosanna tossed by spring winds against the abyss of the unconscious.

Hiddenhurst from the Top of Hiddenhurst Hill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: This photo reverses the view shown in the last photo. Behind these barns the land slopes down to a stream and then back up across the fields of Sunset Ridge that Kevin was plowing in the last photograph. We are looking north toward Massachusetts where the foothills of the Berkshires become the Berkshire Mountains. While I was eager to show a reverse view, my goal is never to document the landscape, but to create images that capture my own feelings about a place. Sometimes I'm so sure of myself that others' opinions, while interesting, probably won't sway me. However, I wondered if this shot was up to the level I have strived for in past shots, and I'm interested in the honest thoughts of all who view this.

HIddenhurst from Sunset Ridge

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The previous image was of Hiddenhurst from Wheeler-Collins Farm to the northwest. That's at least one or two hills, depending on where you count hills, to the right of this image. I never pass Sunset Ridge Farm when Kevin isn't busy around the barns or at work in the fields. On this evening he was in the middle of raking hay.

As he reached us he stopped his tractor for moment of talk. I made the mistake of admiring the stripes painted on the hillside by the newly cut grass, and he observed we must be waiting for the light to shift. There were distant beams that might pass our way. As Kevin drove off, the first bit of the pattern was gone. A few minutes later we heard his tractor power down at the end of the row to wait with us as two darts of light slowly moved across the hills, lest he disturb another blade of grass in the great design.

The beams were in no hurry. The silence around the bird chatter grew deafening as we waited for the clouds to carry the sun into position. Kevin's pause was a gesture of friendship that I will treasure, and the shot I got with the sunlight on Hiddenhurst with a secondary beam on the remaining unraked grass rows in the foreground was good. However, waiting there, Kevin parked at the end of the hay row and us standing, ready to shoot, at the beginning, I knew we would miss the best shot. I wanted to tell him to start his tractor and drive it down the grass row and through the beam of light as it reaches the hill. Sadly, by the time the tractor snatched the next stripe of cut hay, the spotlight had moved on to another hill.

The hills in the background of this shot mark the southern edge of a historic farming district that probably supplied the Sheffield Company with the milk I drank as a child growing up in New York City. Sheffield is long gone and most of the dairy industry with it. Also gone is the train line that carried the milk to Sheffield's New York City plant near Columbia University.

However, most of the large tracts of land in the historic district remain intact with the original 18th and 19th century farm houses and various barns. Most of the land still serves some sort of farming. There's an organic farm with a market on the main highway. I've photographed the Highland Cattle at Wheeler-Collins Farm. Across the highway is a farm raising sheep, and everywhere they're growing corn. Unfortunately, Sunset Ridge is the only farm with a large dairy herd.

The area is easily 4 or 5 times the size of the Great Hollow with that feeling of vast space already mentioned. Hiddenhurst falls as close to dead center as one can imagine. What must it have been like back when the Hidden brothers raced their stallions on the hill over there? Did the bovine herds on neighboring hills stroll to the pasture fence to watch the thoroughbreds?

Hiddenhurst from Wheeler-Collins Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Standing amid the tall grasses of the Wheeler-Collins Farm I watched as the clouds rolled over the valley from the north-west, past Wheeler-Collins and then to the south-east where Hiddenhurst stood. Wheeler-Collins is the farm where the previously posted photo on "Threesomeness," was shot.

The cloud cover was solid and the broad valley looked flat and unappealing, so I did what I've learned to do in such situations; I waited. When a first beam of light came into view I crossed my fingers that it would eventually move toward Hiddenhurst. Then a second beam followed it at a short distance. What would be the chances that both would slide into position to clarify my shot? They moved toward me at the speed of a passing car, and then the light was on me for less than a minute, and then I was back in shadow again, but the trajectory looked good. I watched the first beam pick out a foreground tree from a row of trees behind it, and then the second beam came my way. Yes, everything was aligned, and I watched as the two beams subsequently revealed and concealed each level of the scene. I snapped many shots, but I knew that I had found the right moment when that second beam caught the foreground tree again at the very same moment the first beam was shining on Hiddenhurst.

So, what is the story of Hiddenhurst? Well, the truth is it was built by millionaire paint manufacturers from New York, Edwin and Thomas Hidden in 1903 for the breeding and training of their race horses. Here is how Amenia Historian Arlene Pettersson explained it to me:

They did build this place specifically to raise and train their driving and harness racing horses. There was a 1/4 mile track which encircled a magnificent stable which housed the horses and an indoor arena which was very unusual at the time. The price for the barn was $100,000 (or that may have been the price for the entire construction but I don't know for sure-I kind of lean toward it being the cost for the whole place because the house itself sold for $45,000 in the 1940's. ) Anyway when Thomas Hidden died he left no will, and the estate went to his three nieces (this was in 1918), Frances Hidden, Maria Watson Hidden and Sarah Hidden. I didn't do a detailed search, but the house and estate changed hands a few times after that. It went at one point to the Sheffield Dairy which was a big milk operation around the corner and then to the Fitzgeralds. They changed the name to FITZLAND FARM when they got it in 1945. It was shortly after that the great stable described above and two silos caught fire and burned to the ground.

So it is not entirely clear to me what the barns in the picture are. They have the form of dairy barns. The current owner tells me that he, "renovated the old barn." Arlene thinks they were all destroyed. One doesn't install three giant harvester silos like those unless one has a major cattle operation, and three clay tile silos suggest cattle farming must have spanned a considerable period of time. Nothing on the barns looks especially old, but they do play well to theater lights. While their history may be a bit atypical for this dairy region, it is only their flamboyant setting atop their hurst that sets them apart from the many dairy farms still standing in the region.

The silo in the previous TODAY'S is the one on the far left of the barns, partly hidden by the tree in the center of the picture.

Hiddenhurst

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: They called it "Hiddenhurst." Until yesterday I had no idea why. A "hurst," I found out, is a hillock. This is a land of hillocks, hillocks and dairy farms, but few of them claim to be hursts. No self-respecting Holstein would graze a hurst, nor did I know why this one claimed to be hidden. It's plainly visible from every hillock and hurst for miles up and down the Harlem Valley.

When one stands on almost any hillock around here one can look across to at least one or two other farms, but, although they are oriented to maximize sunshine, they all shyly hug their backs to a hillockside to block the winds. Only Hiddenhurst struts atop its hurst, hardly hidden. Until yesterday I had no idea why they called it Hiddenhurst.

Threesomeness

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: It takes a bit more gas to get across the border into New York, but that's where the skies are biggest; during spring showers, it's the place to be to shoot the sky or to catch the hillsides transform under theater lights beaming between the clouds. Cool weather and alternating periods of sun and rain have sent the grass soaring by inches per day. The roll and the sway of the sweetgrass hills is intoxicating. Saturday, when I walked here, it was waist high, and I was inside the roll and sway of these sweetgrass hills. On Sunday the farmer had begun mowing. Elsewhere tiny buttons of corn had begun popping up in long rows, and I was here again, having driven a few extra miles to catch, maybe, a small miracle. Everything moves to the turning of the great wheels.

WILLIAM BLAKE:

Ah! Sun-Flower

Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done:

Where the Youth pined away with desire
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Theater Lights #3: Waiting for the Grass to Grow

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I'm coming to believe that theater lights must be tended and harvested like a precious crop. They come in many moods. When the clouds are dense, and there are few holes for the sun to poke through, I stand and wait, uncertain and guessing where the stage will next be set and what my composition might be; waiting for the shafts of sunlight that will add a transitory note to the harmony, a moment of expectation or hesitation, that sense that I have caught the leaf falling.

Theater Lights #2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - The Bearded Barn holds the stage beside a full cast of supporting characters. Here they are, arranged as if ready to take a bow. This is a prime stage for future "theater lights" shoots which raises the issue of potential redundancy. I like to think of the photos that make it to TODAY'S as likely "keepers." Is this shot merely an opening bow for a more spectacular performance yet to come, or will it hold its own when set beside future acts?

Theater Lights

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: And so in this season of, "dark brown gardens and peeping flowers," this week I returned to Strait Farm. It has been a bit over a year since I first visited Strait and photographed the building which The New Milford Times dubbed, "The Bearded Barn," when they published my image. All that has changed at Strait Farmstead in a year is my eye and my understanding of light. [Two additional imges of The Bearded Barn: (1), (2)]

Without doubt, my favorite kind of sky has become what I call "theater lights."  Theater lights usually occur after or between storms when all sorts of breaks let sunlight play over the hillsides. At such times clouds of many colors may make beautiful patterns above, while a tropospheric lighting designer moves the cloud-banks to spotlight the sun's energy onto specific hills, trees or other features below. His experiments can make contours fade and reappear while constantly reshaping composition and transforming mood. The photographer tries to make sense of it all. I realize I need to work on my routines and skills to better exploit such rare and treasured light.

The weather forecast for the past three days has been rain, rain, rain. In fact, it took me most of two days finishing indoor chores to realize that outside the best photo weather was going by unexposed. Why is it that I rush to stand freezing in a blizzard, but a little drizzle shuts me in? I suppose it's the unpredictability of it all - not wanting to get caught in a downpour. It is clear to me from the past two days that I need to formulate a strategy much as I have done for shooting in snow.  

Notes to myself:
1.  "Theater lights," enrich a panorama.  A high position with views of rows of hills and features in several directions multiplies options.
2.  Foreground - middle ground - background.  Collect "drive-to" locations with panorama plus interesting foreground feature(s).
3.  When no panorama is available, intimate effects may be possible.
4.  "Theater lights" can happen at any time of day. Which sites are best at which times of day for sidelight and/or frontlight?
5.  Graduated ND filters required. 
6.  ALWAYS PRE-VISUALIZE - There's usually no shot when no beams light the landscape, so don't shoot. Similarly, the "theater lights" effect doesn't happen when all the lights are on. The purpose of "theater lights" is to set things apart and lead the eye.
7.  Pick a site. Don't chase rainbows. Be prepared to wait.  
8.  It is in the nature of this kind of sky that changes can happen quickly. Stop and watch the movement of the light until you're at its rhythm and can anticipate how it will light fore-middle-background and when the best compositional balances will occur.
9.  Realize that sometimes it's just not meant to happen.
10.  Don't take chances with thunder.

There is a more difficult problem for which I must find temperament to manage.  Because (1) "theater lights" happen at all times of day, because (2) they can pass as quickly as they come, and because (3) they are so spectacular, I sometimes jump the gun and wind up tired and hungry and heading for home just as the sky promises a sunset finale.  Alternately, I think the event will pass so quickly it is not worth even gearing up and heading out to shoot. When there's reason to hope, it may be worth holding out to time things so I have stamina to reach the sunset finale.

The photo above catches The Bearded Barn at a moment when the sun illuminates brightly the vines on its front while playing soft light over the hillside behind. It leaves no question over who is the star of the show.

Point of View #2

JOHN B. WELLER: "Once I've composed a photograph, I look at all of the elements inside the frame and ask myself, 'What function should this element ideally play?' and, 'How is it functioning in the current light?' Sometimes moving the camera a couple of inches allows it to play a different role."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: This photo was taken about ten minutes later than yesterday's TODAY'S. I'd like to think the slant is the same, but the point of view has been shifted. Yesterday's image told the story from the farmstead's staid point of view. The format is now horizontal, and the lens has zoomed out (from digital 52mm to digital 28mm, a bit of a wide-angle). Any slight shift of the camera left, right, up, or down realigns porch and yardscape, significantly rejiggers the composition.

I step back to put one column right and set my level so the column is vertical, a weak anchor for the image. From this anchor everything else seems to be in motion and expanding with the first leafing and flowering. I refine the composition putting the decorative bracket, with its finial and miniature column, tightly into the upper corner. This gives it moment. I've never seen one quite like it. What is its story? All I can say is it makes a gracious entry into a composition that spins. Would it bother anyone if I made it spin clockwise? What obligation does the photographer have to the actual?

Point of View #1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The first questions are always about light. The qualities of light are infinite, and there are no reliable rules about how they will react with the forms and textures of the farmscape, so composing is always spontaneous.

What happens to ancient barn boards as they age is mysterious to me; I've seen old barns change color with the time of day. I've also seen a row of tree trunks that is a dark silhouette at dawn disappear at noon and become a high-kicking chorus line at dusk. Light defines shapes one moment and later turns them into negative space or makes them vanish. Compositions don't appear until the light frees them from the material world.

Even more mysterious than the reflective quality of old painted barn boards and high-kicking tree trunks is the relation of light to emotion. Naturally, the barns and fields I photograph have a general intellectual and emotional appeal to me. By endowing these subjects with specific emotion, light makes their appeal of the moment. It gives them, "the immediacy of the falling leaf." Every successful shoot is a process of discovery during which the scene becomes charged with emotion.

The first questions are about light; they tell me where to shoot and how to compose, but the essential questions are about purpose. Purpose begins to be clarified as I shoot but must become clear in processing. My slant must determine the camera's angle and the image's gradients if the final picture is to be fully charged with meaning.

Two contrasting reactions have dominated my feelings about True Mountain Farm: First is the silence and venerable decay of the buildings. Second is the slow, inexorable explosion of spring that is enveloping those buildings. At True Mountain Farm the present is devouring the past. I've tried to present and develop this clear slant through all of the True Mountain images that have become part of TODAY'S.

In this image of the blacksmith's shop I've aligned the photo canvas with the architectural elements. This rectilinearity emphasizes the stillness of the buildings. I like also how the shadowed porch commands the view of and contrasts with the stolid blaze of the shop. The crisp rhythm of Victorian balusters, one edge catching a bit of diffused light, has a primness about it that suggests to me the righteousness of it all; the porch almost refuses to acknowledge the disrepair. Do the small, irreverent advances of spring creeping into the corners of the shot quietly mock the old edifices? How many more such assaults can they withstand?

Spring Springing

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - A book I read a few years ago advised, "When you see a good shot, grab it. It won't be there when you come back."

Most of the time I shoot places, not people. It might seem I should have much leisure to catch the images I like. Those who shoot people must be quick to catch the telling gesture, but the landscape, in most people's eyes, just sits there. However, there may be a thousand tiny factors that lead to distinguishing a "composition," from the infinity of random "snapshots," that lie about wherever one points the camera. Most of the time the "compositions," only emerge in the course of my scouting and scoping walks. I was reminded this past week of just how transient some of those compositions may be. Even when the shot lies beneath a totally clear sky, and one can return at the same time of day, the shot of yesterday may be gone tomorrow.

It's not that the bicycle is likely to move any time soon. It's probably been sitting and rusting there for a dozen years. I shot this image early yesterday morning, but my reason for rising at 5:15 to catch the morning sun was to re-shoot two other images I had taken a few days earlier at the same time in the morning. Both were striking compositions, well worth the effort of re-tracking them. I'd even spent time the afternoon before trying to locate and mark the exact spots from which they had been taken. I didn't expect to be able to shoot in the afternoon what had been successful at sunrise, but I wanted to be able to find the location quickly the next morning as morning light is always fleeting. I re-scouted the locations with some difficulty, but I was reasonably certain I had found them.

These were long shots through my telephoto lens that compressed elements separated by as much as 800 or 900 feet. The shots would have been beautiful had they not been technically flawed. Whether wind or carelessness caused the blurriness, I couldn't use them that way, and they struck me as sufficiently unusual sightings that they were worth stalking a second time. What I had not expected was that in the few intervening days the thin spring leafing would change everything.

The chief culprits were two background trees. They shouldn't really have mattered; they blocked little. One had just leafed. The other that had frail green leaves before, now was covered with white flowers. However, suddenly the two trees claimed undo focus and a few details they blocked turned out to be small but necessary points of interest. Had I not seen them previously there would have been nothing to grab my eye; the compositions, so stunning a few days earlier, were completely gone. I snapped as best I could being certain there was no shake, but back at my computer the new shots were failures. This is why it is so essential to blank the mind of expectations and always shoot at the edge of the moment.

Lesson relearned: When you see a good shot, grab it. It won't be there when you come back. That's why I spent 30 minutes of my precious sunrise shoot refining this shot of the great silos atop True Mountain.

A Starry Night

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The two silos are side by side and to casual glance, snug against the end wall of the barn. In fact, I found there was a narrow passage between them. It was strewn with debris and will probably be overgrown in a month. Once through this channel I found myself in a musty, triangular space between silos and the barn. To my left and right were narrow passages that hugged the barn wall and led back out. In front was access to the barn. When I turned and looked, I saw the silos had been outfitted on this side with iron levers and handles that worked wooden gates, the patented hardware of the Unadilla Silo Company. I had entered the inner sanctum.

I couldn't help but think of the back-breaking task of shoveling the silage from here to the cows inside the barn. At least the whole process had been designed to let gravity do a bit of the work. I have much to learn about how this really did work - a note for my next visit.

The appliances that operated the gates were rusted and decayed and too fragile to fool with. I could just about find space to poke my head in, and it took an awkward twist to look up and take in the space. This was the belly of the beast or at least one of them. I gazed in dank & awe and then quickly but carefully unscrewed myself. Definite possibilities! ...and impossibilities. I thought about the impossibility of doing "the silo twist," with a camera. Worse yet, it was dark and there was no way I could use a tripod. The camera would have to be rock steady. I reached deep inside, guessed at the trajectory, and braced myself against something smelly. Instant digital feedback at least allowed me to check that I got the shots I wanted eventually. I find, however, a few of the "rejects," seem to me now like great serendipities.

As it turns out, the silos are not so old as I had thought, but I would guess wooden silos had a relatively limited life. The Unadilla Silo Company which, by the way, still exists, kindly and amazingly took less than 24 hours to locate sales documents showing three silos shipped in 1950. I'm not sure what the working life of a silo is, but these were undoubtedly replacement silos. In 1950 it cost $45 to ship a large silo such as this from Unadilla, NY, to True Mt., Conn.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Sadly, jpg reduction lacks the great detail of the full-resolution original which clearly reveals the bolts and fasteners in the apex of the silo roof. In this reduction the structure itself is dim. If possible, view this image full screen and against a dark background. Turn down/off nearby lamps.

Watchful Eyes

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: In three visits to the farm atop True Mountain I took almost 900 photographs. That seems like a lot even to me, but it is a big place, and there is much to learn and even more to decide. There are 14 or 15 buildings in the farmstead cluster. The farmstead stands amid fields bounded by stone walls, and there are beautiful hillside vistas on all sides. After three days of scouting, I still haven't "covered all the angles," and many shots were taken when the light was wrong for the purpose of recalling possibilities - angles to revisit or ignore. Most importantly as I scout and shoot I find the wonders and rhythms of the place, and they often invoke feelings. With any luck I've made some images that communicate some of this.

Reviewing so many shots of the same place at once begs certain questions. The same barns, many angles, near or far, three days, varying weather, sunrise and sunset - so many possibilities - after you've shot them all, how do you chose? In fact, one might ignore the barns completely and shoot the avian bacchanalia in the surrounding fields. With many warm, sunny options from which to chose, I beg patience while I capture stop-motion images of the slow-motion passing of these grand, old structures. If they could speak to us now, what would they say? Perhaps these photo images are an offering to the muses that abide here.

The Farm Atop True Mountain

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY

What is it about the great farmstead atop True Mountain that I find so compelling?

Certainly, it is the silence. By that, I don't mean that all is quiet. Especially now, as spring is in full fling, the avian choirs at dawn and dusk are glorious and loud. No, it is the silence inside where the gates and chains in the milking parlor no longer jingle, and the skuffing field mouse along a purlin seems loud. But other farmsteads are similarly still.

It is also the great age of the silence. For a hundred years from 1860 the busi-ness of the farm was handed from father to son: Fields were plowed, cows were milked, horses were shod atop True Mountain, until in 1960 it all stopped. Then the scurrying began. Vines slipped under the brittle, shrunken barn boards. Pigeons nested in the two great silos. Windows slipped and shards of broken glass were found. The rafters belonged to the mudwasps and hornets, the sparrows and bats. The chimneys, through fifty unheated seasons of wet and dry, crumbled without a sound.

It is also the buildings themselves that amplify the silence - so many brittle facades that give form to barn yard and door yard, to the ladies' flower gardens and the men's vegetable gardens. And from the courtyards and gardens old farm roads reach in all directions to the fields and the pastures and the orchards, and water flows in channels and clay pipes carefully designed to fill the cow pond and keep the farm roads dry. The tumble of buildings gives form to the daily routine. I guess at the purpose of each structure and speculate on the activities of the day. On the way from the cow barn to the stable I stop at the blacksmith's shop or peek in at the chicken house. I wonder if more corn is needed up at the farmstand by the road or if the barnyard needs shoveling. When I look again the dooryard has lost all focus, and the barnyard is dry and tidy, the vegetable garden is all weed and the outhouse door is always shut.

Most of all it is the two great wooden silos that hug the farmstead and tower above it. The wind of fifty winters and the sun of fifty summers have dessicated the joists and the planking of the barns since they fell silent. Nails rattle like loose teeth. The great iron belts of the silos fall slack as the boards of the silos contract their girth, yet the great skeletons stand as if almost ready for another day of chores to begin. When I climb inside one of the silos I see stamped onto the frame: "Unadilla Silo Company, Unadilla, NY, Silos & Tanks - Stanchions & Partitions. pat. 228904."

Venerate these old barns, eggshell-thin and brittle,
Even as the season springs its fling, unflings its spring,
and around the crumbling cow stalls green things slither toward light.

Light and Water

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: "The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,for the sun acts on one side first,and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me, had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words)...."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: One who wants to photograph the land follows the seasons. This is the season of water and its cycles and its endless capacity for transformation and metaphor. I've been following its currents since the big rains came in March that rutted my road and finished the work of the thaw: I went to Great Falls on the Housatonic to shoot the water's torrent, and to Collinsville where the Farmington River was, long ago, divided into narrow channels so its energy could be engaged in the building of a nation, and finally, after days of warm sun, the water led me here, and it feels like a beginning. To say more is to say too much.

Bogwatch

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The frogs are not ready yet. Their dwarfed legs have no feel of the land, but much is stirring at the bottom of the bog. I shot photos here most of last week. New leaves and insects unfolded simultaneously, and lurking down under are broad, dim lily leaves silent, waiting until the water thickens.

Soon the green mantle will form on these slow pools, the blazing grasses will turn glaucous, and low brush will block the long, deep views. It's only now, at this season, that one can look into its depths and get a mental foothold on its various corners.

I was about to add that it is only now that it is so photogenic; that it won't be so again for another year. However, I remembered images - (1), (2) - made here last fall. It's hard to know how the wheels will spin.

Wiser to keep all beauty options open, and maybe it's not about bog beauty. Some correspondents reacted to yesterday's TODAY'S, by suggesting it was not about a swamp at all. One close friend sent these delightful words:

"It looks like you went to heaven and sent back a picture. The white things sticking up are the other souls."

The thought is welcome but, I think, not for me to say. I just keep watching the bog.

Greening of Great Hollow Swamp

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY

This sun-cooked stew is first to green
and teem.
Fortunate road, a causeway really,
across Great Hollow Swamp
that lets me invade these otherwise remote nurseries.

The dark eye of a black grackle
meets mine,
Before the brake is even set.
Will he sit along the branch and watch
After I've opened the door and unpacked my camera?

Along the power line swallows,
posted sentries,
silently watch to the culvert.
There, wheeling overhead,
the swallow squadrons buzz me - champions to chicks unhatched.

Across the road where the culvert spills,
another pool,
"b'deee-b'deee."
to my ear, a friendly greeting.
I wish I knew the names of all who live here.

Behind him a long channel
ripples - deep
through skeletal thicket of ash-colored maple.
Floating low above the emerald carpet,
another heron glides to a more private bog.

At midday the redwings watch and cluck
my passing.
But now at sunset from every dry branch,
atop every rotted stump
They arch their awful warpaint and trumpet to the glory of the setting sun.

Where's Waldo

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I need to remember to walk quietly. I crossed the crest of the hay field, and sparrows foraging in the grass made their guilty escape. "Slow down, walk lightly," I told myself. "Meeker Swamp is a quiet spot; it's best to go as a swamp thing. Places removed from our daily rush can be skittish."

Then, rounding the bend of the trail with the swamp now in view the bony, hunched thing inflated like a child's kite, and in two long flaps was over into another part of the swamp, safe from my view. I'm not certain why I want to catch the great blue heron in flight or if the kind of shot I want is possible. Can a still image catch the slow beat of those majestic wings gathering air or the slow stride of the long neck gliding across the water?

Such shots take planning. My lens is habitually set for things that stand still. Everything must change when stalking the great blue. I zoomed my lens to 400mm scanned the trees across the swamp for compositions, and a tree limb turned its head. At first I couldn't believe it. There was my hunch-shouldered friend stationed a very safe distance across the pool like a wizened prophet.

There was no lake, but I wasn't about to be too picky. For twenty minutes he did little more than turn his head or shift his weight. I moved less. Twenty-five minutes later the blackbirds arrived, it seemed like dozens of them, to perch on nearby tree limbs and taunt me. One can only withstand their yattering provocations so long. It was in that moment that I turned to see how close the blackbird at my back had ventured. When I turned back the prophet had gone.