Housatonic Winter Tint

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL (Written while walking early yesterday in the cold beside Lake Waramaug. The picture was made at a different time and place.)

Strange

Passengers:

The first stirred branches, 

lifting a mist of crystal snow 

that sailed due east, 

a spectral galleon over the water.

Another careened 

among the white pines, 

unsure which way to turn and 

trailing a whirling, white mantilla. 

Where do they come from?

Where do they go?

Who is the conjurer?

A third bore down

along the shore

and a sandstorm of snow

skated on ice

through a stillness made immense

by an endless sky of slate 

and the banter of treetop crows 

on a far-off, faded shore.

Footings

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - When is a photograph not a photograph? One photographer says it's no longer a photo when what is depicted no longer connects to a specific, real moment and place. Another questions photos where the finish calls attention to itself; the viewer begins asking, "What's going on here?" I suspect this image fails both tests.

Revolution

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Spotted in an old barn in Cornwall, I was struck by the momentary confluence. That was the orbit of my eye. All my picture thoughts revolved on that axis, and by the time I set up and took this shot, it was time to leave. In the rush, I have no notes on what the machine on the left does, nor a photograph of the mechanism, but my recollection is that it had something to do with separating seed from chaff.

Frosted

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Tunnel of winter and its ecstatic tracery.

NOTE: The Litchfield Hills Film Festival will be the beneficiary at, "Eight by Ten Concealed: A Secret Sale of Images," Saturday, March 5 at the Festival's Pop-up Gallery, 77 Railroad Street, New Milford, CT., unveiling at 5 PM, reception until 7 PM.  

Three of my photos and those of many other photographers will be included in the exhibition and secret sale. 

Tickets to the event are $15 - advance sales at hillsfilmfestival.org or call 860 799-7331 or pay at the door.

Drift

BLAISE PASCAL: "Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Short days, autumn churn.

The Jester

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Be careful what you wish for, you early, chilly birds. Spring is a sweety but summer is a joker who arrives with the solstice and ever-waning days.

Springing

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: They are very early birds, indeed, who write to me when the ground is, not merely frozen, but buried under more than three feet of packed snow and ice in order to ask, might I please start photographing spring. Often they write on Groundhog's Day. It is not the southerners, blood thinned by tropical winters, who write. Some of them welcome reminders of New England winters. Rather, it is northerners, bred and conditioned to a robust tolerance of the cold, who squeal early about the chill. Under normal circumstances they'd have no spring worm from me, but they have my sympathies, and, as I've been drawing images from past seasons for awhile, there's no harm in offering this image of a first lily reaching up from pond bottom in cool spring waters.

...but be careful, you chilly birds, what you wish for...

Classic III

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Three-bay, "English" style barn, set among fields and stone fences - Classic, old New England - In the distance, sleigh bells.

Winter Dance

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Winter Dances

So many ways that snow falls! 

Sifted meal piling in a bowl 

Or cross-blown and cheek-stinging 

'Til every tree trunk is skunk-tailed down the side. 

There's raucus, chattering snow that clings as ice

And snow that clumps and thunders softly 

And weighs branches low. 

But last through yawning space, unhurriedly slow, 

Fall silent, gaping flakes of settling down, 

And the tired earth is quilted and quelled,

And ragged meadows dance a brittle dance.

New England White & Red

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Beyond the homestead 

the dizzy abyss of the forest 

and the falling snow.

Slant

PIERRE BONNARD: The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Diligence

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - My eye was grabbed by the layered, early morning light caught in the windows of the farm truck. As I set up the shot I also enjoyed the rectilinear design elements and the way they could divide the rectangle of the picture space. Later, I experimented with different renderings of the initial image and emerged with two very different finalists.

The one above emphasizes the world out of sight as we stand in the shadow, about to or not quite ready to take on the new day. Is it a tiny bit of theater? Is it of any significance that this is Karl Koerner's barn that Andrew Wyeth loved; the light is like light he saw.

The version below puts the emphasis a little differently. It is more two dimensional, more evenly toned, more textured, all to put emphasis on abstract form. It is a classical sampler nudging us to feel the scratchy twine a bit, or the cool, worn steel of the shovel, the heft of the door handle.

For best effect the images should be viewed as close to full screen as possible.

I'm hoping someone will feel strongly enough about one of these or the other to make a case for it, or maybe it doesn't matter much.

Edge

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This week Connecticut is riding the cusp of winter; Arctic chill is freezing lakes and streams, and record-breaking low temperatures are imminent. Daily, the sun pushes back a few of the edges, melts the high points off of mounded snow along the road's edge and glazes it white. Then every few days it snows, restoring edge; as the temperature stings, the river grows photogenic. Keep back from the edge. Sometimes edge divides what is safe from what is suspect; at other times, edge gives contour to challenges.

It's probably a good idea for photographers to watch edges, the spots where mountains suddenly become valleys, where water meets air or where a storm or a smile breaks. These are the places where magic happens. Keep special watch where day meets night, or motion stops. The image stopped on my computer monitor waits while I tune edges and tones making them silky or making them husk. Where is the edge between me and my photo? I stay by the computer while impatient to open new edges with my lens.

Invasives

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:
  

Moment

Peepers and grippers, 

creepers and crawlers, 

overtakers and undertakers. 

Pond Prelude & Fugue

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL "Adagio": I've come this way often and never failed to admire the skeleton of this old giant, stretched out from the foot of the ice pond. It's leafless arms suggest a rib cage of Mesozoic heft. It is a rigid brace against galling winds. I've carefully walked the plank of its supine trunk as far out into the pond as I dared and clutched its broken limbs to stay my balance. I've jumped tenuously and found it will not dance or bob. I've even listened to the wind and tried to imagine the sound of those leaves that once blew so hard the branches nearly broke before the great tree fell. And afterward I wondered which was more fantastic, the fury of that rage and fall or the long quiet after?

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Like a forgotten continent its still cliffs slip into the surrounding pond. Off shore periscopic frogs keep watch to snatch a hapless midge or bluebottle with their whiplash tongues, and where the trunk rises highest, three turtles sunbathe, alert and ready, despite their long climb, to take a turtle-leap to the bottom of the pond. In a large bay scooped out by skeletal forearms, water bugs dart. They are the last of the season. In a shadowed harbor lurking perch have already begun to feel the water change.

Bog Hollow Farm Prelude, Allegro, & Fugue

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The old farm road descends from high fields which still through spring and summer yield a bit of seedy hay. Below, in incomplete exhaustion Loughlin Farm waits. At intervals I pause, and my camera reaches unsuccessfully for the fury of the still un-distilled reflection in the un-stilled pond and the ragged remnants of the barns.

The Old Barn at Mill Brook Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

Scents of the Past

Three photographs 

tacked to piquant chestnut

recall a party 

long since over. 

In an apple crate,

hand-lettered decorations 

name the forgotten event 

and the date. 

Then It smelled 

of loud music, 

hot casserole, 

sweet sweat dabbed discreetly. 

Before, for two hundred years

no party could dislodge 

the perfume of ripe apples 

and ripe sweat.

And earlier still, a prehistory 

of forgotten tales 

and tails 

and their particular aromas.  

Edgily hollow,

restively quiet, 

a great space eager 

to move beyond apples. 

Timeline at Meadow Brook Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - This timeline of barns parallels the street but hides its Victorian jewelry and tries to avoid being photographed. I struggled to try to guess initial purposes and ages. When I'm led to photograph a barnstead like this it's hard not to be captivated by the thing, but then I will make nothing but photographic documents. The photograph to be made at Meadow Brook Farm in mid August was a composition of pleasing textures and colors, nothing more and nothing less.