Between Wings

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Death Rattle

Like an empty tarmac, 

the work floor lies,

a broken promise.

Windows covered 

in corrugated tin 

rattle like machine gun fire

in a distant bay,

chatter nearby, 

but there are no machines, 

no fire,

only two column lines 

to carry 

the stacked 

load 

under production

and beyond the din.

Factory Stair, Torrington

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The 1845 potato famine in Ireland coincided with the building of the railroad up the Naugatuck Valley, and so it was hungry and mostly illiterate, unskilled men with brogues who leveled the roadbed and laid the track along the river all the way to Winsted. Completed in 1848, it opened the valley to industry and carried the products of those industries to Bridgeport and the world. Trains brought coal, copper, zinc, tin, jobs and cheap labor and took away buttons and kettles, pins and pipes, clips and clocks. Brass was the plastic of its time; uses were burgeoning, and the Naugatuck Valley was competing with Birmingham, England, to be the brass-making center of the world.

How can I touch those struggles in the crumbling brick and rusting ducts that remain of this industrial empire? Where can my camera catch reflections of the imaginations fired by new engineering challenges and devising machines, procedures and new metallurgy to make things faster, better, cheaper? Where do the halls still echo the machinists' practiced craft and confidence? Where does the floor still creak from the daily passage of unskilled, buggy-luggers and grunts working 12-hour days and six day weeks or sometimes not working at all? Can photographs get near any of these?

Output at the mills fluctuated but industry boomed during the Civil War, and after the war the rest of us came and the Valley began to fill up. The trains brought Italians, and Lithuanians and Russians along with the coal and the copper and the tin. Like the Irish, many of us were illiterate and unskilled. In addition, we spoke no English.

Mill owners built villages to house us and systems to provide water and food, to keep the peace, and to manage town affairs. It was a massive undertaking to create civic institutions that would support the growing population. They hired prestigious designers like Cass Gilbert, McKim, Meade and White, Olmstead Bros. to design civic buildings and public spaces that would reflect the confidence of the region and provide a foundation of hallowed permanence. The policemen and firemen and the apprentices on the way up were mostly Irish, but we all formed clubs, gangs, factions and unions, and we were encouraged to back political candidates and vote. Banding in groups of our own kind, we struggled over identity, flexed muscle and sometimes rumbled.

Much of what the trains brought was pumped out into the Naugatuck or up into the air. It settled into everything, made the river smell and the air taste bad, and in Waterbury and Naugatuck people with money lived upwind, west of its stench. In Derby, whenever we passed the Hull Dye Works our children guessed at the river's color that day, but we worked hard and raised families as best we could. Those who worked at the pickle tubs got metal fume fever and called it spelters' shakes, and rollers lost arms, but workers with experience argued over the best cures - whether oatmeal or hot cider and pepper cured Spelters' Shakes better and warned us about how much of our arm we'd lose on each machine.

During the Great War there were plenty of jobs, 24 hours a day, and after the war there were strikes and violence in the Valley and in 1920 the National Guard was called in. There was bloodshed, and some were called subversives, but the mills kept growing, and some of us became foremen.

In the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. are prototype models of many of the machines that operated in these factories. There are thousands of them. They look like sophisticated toys, but they actually run. What's left today in these hollow spaces where the actual machines ran? What memories echo here? One must listen closely to hear the past behind the sound of the river and the wind.

High Iron No.2, On the Bridge at Shelton

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL, "Wolcottville Brass and Battery": 

They claim it was all about buttons, mostly brass ones. I picture retired colonels from the recently won Revolution wanting something a bit spiffier than they wore at Valley Forge and chagrined to realize the best brass buttons came from Birmingham, England.  However, think of what you're wearing and imagine removing every button, clip, or fastener, every bit of elastic, every buckle, zipper or inch of velcro tape. Take off your suspenders. Now think about how you're going to hold your clothing on, and appreciate the importance of victory.

Button making had been a cottage industry in the U.S., a sideline for some farm blacksmiths especially in the Naugatuck Valley. If the a farmer-blacksmith didn't peddle his wares door to door, he paid a peddler who traveled a broader area with a wagon full of goods. Brass smiths concentrated in the Naugatuck Valley formed companies and alliances. Sometimes companies merged. They established trade agreements, controlled prices, fixed market shares, developed sources for copper in the west, but in the 1830s their cottage industries couldn't satisfy the craze for economical, attractive, brass buttons the way English buttonmakers could.

Whatever drove the need for better American buttons, there were rumors of kidnappings and men smuggled out of Birmingham, England - English platers, rollers, die sinkers whisked away in the cover of darkness, sealed into barrels, brought to the Naugatuck Valley in the New World to work their alchemy.

A story passed down from those who were there may say more about the Yankee brassmasters' character. First, it wasn't only buttons for your trousers but kettles for the hearth. In 1834 all kettles were imported from Birmingham, England. That was the year Israel Coe a local farmer, John Hungerford a local merchant, and New York entrepreneur Anson G. Phelps became partners in Wolcottville Brass & Battery to manufacture American buttons and kettles. Phelps had purchased the site high up on the Naugatuck River in Wolcottville (now Torrington) where in 1813 Frederick Wolcott had built a woolen mill, attracted a large work force, and created demand for goods and services.

The process for manufacturing kettles was known as the battery process. Israel Holmes had a share in the business and was in charge of the manufacturing. He needed expertise and equipment for rolling the brass. The story is told in an old history of Waterbury:

Mr. Holmes went to England for the purpose of procuring machinery and workmen. His efforts in this respect were hindered by every possible ingenuity and power of those interested in the same kind of manufacturing in that country, but after a time he sent two battery men to Philadelphia, one of whom died the next day after his arrival. Subsequently he procured others and thirty-eight men, women and children in one vessel  arrived in New York. Considerable trouble was experienced in transporting them without a railroad to Wolcottville. When they were landed here, the mill was not ready for operatives, and thereby the troubles were multiplied.  The men received their pay and, having nothing to do, most of them gave themselves to dissipation and the disquietudes of disposition. In the meantime Mr. Pope [one of the skilled workers] bargained with other parties for a rival concern and took three of the men with him. This was at first thought to be an injury but eventuated an advantage as these men proved to be worthless in the business. However, some of the workmen remained, and the quick eye and ready hand of Wolcottville Yankees soon secured experts in the making of brass.

In any case, the battery process for making kettles was a loser for Wocottville Brass & Battery after Hiram W. Hayden invented a method for making brass kettles by spinning disks of sheet brass through a die. The brass-spinning process revolutionized the kettle-making industry.  What should be made of the observation that Hayden was working for Israel Holmes at Scovilles Mfg. in Waterbury when he made the discovery that disadvantaged Holmes work at Wolcottville Brass & Battery in Torrington?

As I've immersed myself in these old stories of the Valley, the entanglement of individuals and corporate entities seems to be a constantly fluctuating thing like the river itself, and the same Yankee names keep reappearing along the shores as owners and partners in different combinations through expansion & consolidation and new processes and new products and new dams, and as industries like clockmaking and cabinet hardware are spun off by the same brass families, and the Naugatuck Valley begins to fill up, and then the railroads come.

Back Office, Shelton, CT

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL, "Phelpsville": 

Sheldon Smith's Birmingham project was a success. By 1836 he had attracted a range of independently owned, small industries to the site including, a first-hand source tells us, "one factory for making sheet copper and copper wire; one for making augers; one for making carriage springs and axles; one for making nails or tacks; one for flannels and satinets, with some other minor manufacturing establishments." Omitted and most important was the presence of the Birmingham Foundry which manufactured machinery and equipment for using river water to power mills.

Other sources suggest the brass mill was owned by Smith and Phelps and built with their own capital. It was one of several in the valley where Phelps had invested.  Their millwright was Almon Farrel. Bigger dreams lay ahead, so it's unclear what made Sheldon Smith choose this moment to sell his interests and move on.

Phleps went on building. When expansion became difficult on the west side of the Naugatuck, Anson Phelps bought land on the east side to be called Phelpsville. In 1844 with Almon Farrel to engineer the new enterprise, Phelps began a new water project with a dam across the Naugatuck and a new company and in, not Phelpsville (there was already another Phelpsville in the region) but Ansonia.  Anson Phelps and his new company, Ansonia Brass and Battery eventually spun off Ansonia Clock Company. Clocks use lots of brass parts. He was also partners in a kettle factory in Wolcottsville (now Torrington) near the source of the Naugatuck. Phelps was investing widely.

However, Anson G. Phelps is remembered mostly as the the co-founder of Phelps-Dodge which became famous for it's copper and tin mining operations and, after being passed to a new generation, infamous in 1917 for imprisoning 1300, striking, Texas, mine workers in cattle cars and kidnapping them through the desert without food or water 200 miles to New Mexico where they were left and warned never to return.  You can read about the Bisbee Deportation here.

Anson Phelps lived in New York City and contributed heavily to The American Bible Association, overseas missionary organizations and to efforts to establish Liberia. In his will he left $5000 to each of his grandchildren with the injunction:

"I give and bequeath to each of my grand-children, living at my decease, the sum of $5,000, to be paid them as they severally attain the age of 21 years. This latter bequest I direct to be accompanied by my executors with this injunction:-That each of my said grand-children shall consider the said bequest as a sacred deposit, committed to their trust, to be invested by each grand-child, and the income derived therefrom to be devoted to spread the gospel, and to promote the Redeemer's kingdom oil earth, hoping and trusting that the God of Heaven will give to each of that wisdom which is from above, and incline them to be faithful stewards, and transmit the same to their descendants, to be sacredly devoted to the same object.

I know this bequest is absolute and places the amount so given beyond my control; but my earnest hope is that my wish may be regarded as I leave it, an obligation binding simply on their integrity and honor."

I am beginning to see more clearly the life of the early Valley and its emerging industrial shape, but who were these Yankees who mastered brass, and what exactly is their legacy?

Water Secrets

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL, "Smithville"

Sheldon Smith was also born in Derby, but he never got the fancy education at Yale. He never taught school or wrote poetry as did David Humphreys. Instead, after a basic education at the local schoolhouse, he apprenticed himself to a saddle and harness maker in Bridgeport and was eventually taken in as a partner. However, he had other dreams. In New York he met Anson G. Phelps an entrepreneur and former saddle maker who had been investing in copper and other minerals.

Smith went on to Newark, NJ, where he proved doubters wrong by envisioning and building a system bringing clean water to the city. What share he claimed in fostering utopian visions of society is unclear. What is clear is that he had a vision for water.

In the 1830s Sheldon Smith returned to his hometown, Derby, Connecticut, with a plan and a backer. Derby was in decline following the Revolution and in need of revitalization. Smith, who had bought the old grist mill, envisioned, "Smithville," and went to work. He and his New York City friend, Anson Phelps, laid out the streets and built housing to create what is today downtown Derby. They also built the reservoir, and channeled the Naugatuck River through a mile and a half canal system to power a considerable industrial village.

In the end the name that was chosen was not Smithville but Birmingham after the center of England's great copper and brass industry.

You can view an engraving of Birmingham, Connecticut in 1836 here. Sheldon Smith's home is the one at the top of the hill on the left.

Through Glass Darkly

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL, "Humphreysville"  

Previously called Chusetown, in 1804 the legislature designated the area by Rimmon Falls, four miles upstream of Derby on the Naugatuck as "Humphreysville." By then, David Humphreys was raising sheep. Born in Derby and educated at Yale, he had been a trusted aid, friend, and confidant of George Washington during and after the Revolution. He was honored for his bravery at Yorktown and chosen to receive the enemy's colors at the surrender of Cornwallis and convey them to Congress in session in Philadelphia. 

For a hundred years before the revolution the towns had employed local sheepmasters to oversee the breeding of sheep and the duties of the town shepherd, but yield and quality remained low. After the revolution Humphreys served for six years as our first ambassador in Spain and Portugal securing treaties. After Jefferson recalled him, and he finally disembarked at Derby Landing from his travels in Europe, he was accompanied by 91 Merino sheep and had an extensive knowledge of the strengths and evils of English, woolen manufacturing.

In 1803 on the banks of the Naugatuck River beside Rimmon Falls Humphreys began laying out what has been called the first factory village in the United States. There, using the power of the Naugatuck, the wool of his Merino sheep was converted to woolen cloth.  Soon there were houses for workers, a grist mill, a paper mill, a clothier, and surrounded by gardens to produce food to feed a work force. There was also a school to educate the children and a four-story factory producing both woolen cloth and cotton cloth in quantities for export. Humphreys paid the schoolmaster's salary and offered prizes for scholarship and prizes for outstanding job performance by his laborers. He went before the state legislature to lobby for bills to enforce factory safety and cleanliness. When Madison took his oath of office in 1809, he was dressed in a full suit of American woolens from Humphrey's Merino sheep, of which Colonel Humphreys's factory produced the coat.

Humphreys' was a utopian vision put into practice on the Naugatuck River when Chief Joseph still lived along its banks, and it's waters still contained fish. Today, the town is Seymour, and the falls and several blocks of the town lie beside concrete pillars and under the shadow of the Route 8 overpass. In the shadows by the falls are the remains of an old sluiceway, and several times each day you can hear the commuter train pass along the track nearby, but amid the merged din of highway and falls, little else tells of the industrial past of the Naugatuck here, and fish are back in the river again.

DAVID HUMPHREYS:

"Oh, might my guidance from the downs of Spain,
Lead a white flock across the western main;
Fam'd like the bark that bore the Argonaut,
Should be the vessel with the burden fraught!
Clad in the raiment my Merinos yield,
Like Cincinnatus fed from my own field;
Far from ambition, grandeur, care and strife
In sweet fruition of domestic life;
There would I pass with friends, beneath my trees,
What rests from public life, in letter'd ease."

Hopper's Moved On

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The waters of the Housatonic had a different fate than those of the Naugatuck. In 1870 the Ousatonic Water Power Company, organized by Edward Shelton, great grandson of an early settler, built a dam just above the confluence and began generating electricity to power the factories and growing domestic needs. Eventually almost the entire Housatonic River where it flows in Connecticut was to be involved in the generation of electricity, and today the river is a series of dams and lakes as far north as New Milford.

And industry today has little need for any of the things the Naugatuck Valley provided. Local zoning, taxes, and labor most often determine where in the hills a manufacturer settles its presses and switches on its tin or block hanger.


REMINDER: This Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be the last days to see "Silage: Process in Process," at the White Silo Winery and Vineyard, (info above) On Sunday the Winery will also be holding their annual Asparagus Festival.

Naugatuck Spring

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: As happens so often in my wanderings, the tracks up the Naugatuck Valley lead into the past. The Naugatuck River flows into the Housatonic at Paugassett, the town now known as Derby. That was the top of the Housatonic River's tidewater and as far upstream as the old, ocean-going, cargo ships could reach. Early settlers praised the quiet beauty of the rivers' confluence and the richness of the fishing grounds there. They built a landing at the point between the rivers and built a double width road up from the shore and called the area, "Birmingham."

It was sheltered harbor, well upstream, and it became an early center of ship building and trade. Ships from Derby served much of the East Coast and as far away as the West Indies with local fish and produce. By 1730 there were major industrial mills operating not only in Birmingham (Derby) but on the eastern shore in the area that is today Ansonia and on the west in the area that is today Shelton. By the 1830s it was a hotbed of industrial innovation and a bustling manufacturing center producing cotton and woolen goods, paper, sheet metal, wire and anything in shaped metal from augers to pins.

Between the three settlements lay the valuable resources of the rivers' confluence and above them the energy of the Housatonic and Naugatuck headwaters. While the Housatonic River wanders the Naugatuck rises with unusual speed. It is the largest Connecticut river whose waters originate in the state. By 1849 the Naugatuck Railroad had mastered its inclines and narrow passes as far north as Winsted permitting water-powered manufacturing to thrive and providing new access to markets for farm goods produced inland. The building of the railroad brought Irish immigrants, and each successive wave of immigrants made productive lives there in both industry and agriculture.

High Iron

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Railroads, like vines, crawled up river valleys where factories were already planted - a confluence of opportunities. This valley is the Naugatuck, dotted with towns where many immigrants found work in Derby, Shelton, Ansonia, Seymour, Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, Waterbury and up into the hills to Thomaston and Torrington and WInsted and finally rural Norfolk, source of the river and early outpost of Yale University. I've lived near the Naugatuck Valley most of my life, sometimes shop in Torrington, but know far too little of its history and significance.

I know enough to know the history wasn't always pretty especially in the lower valley, that its decline to rustbelt came early and that it was made worse by massive flooding in 1955. I know also that the whole valley is one of the formative places of American industry, a powerhouse from pre-revolutionary times, and carcases of its growth and collapse are still often visible. In the lower valley the tissue of sprawl has had trouble healing over the shards of rusting tin and crumbling brick, even as environmental plans have had notable successes. There is an interesting article on the Naugatuck Valley here. For now, I'm following the tracks to see where they lead.

Break Time

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: What do I think about as I walk hallways in these old mills? What is the flavor of their melancholy? They are wistful only in retrospect, and it's hard to reflect without remembering dark chapters in the struggles of labor in America. However, the political lens is shallow and one-dimensional, and many company towns tell different stories. Drive the streets and look at the number and quality of the houses. They suggest a measure of the lives lived there.

Whether one finds oppression or fair dealing, these brick, mill buildings were built to last, and the companies that built them were invested there. Decisions made there were rooted there; good will or ill will had nowhere else to go, and the bargains struck, ordered relationships and lives and stamped their imprint on every enterprise. Local laws and governments were structured by that imprint, schools were run by the patterns of the mill, and the day was regulated by the factory whistle and the punch clock. Wiki tells us that the first punch clock was invented in 1888, by William Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, NY. Was it a milestone in our relationship with time?

Break time is over, and the hum is long gone. Though we live in a different world today, to what extent do we still live inside these old walls. Or are there new walls as invisible and ubiquitous as the World Wide Web rising up and shimmering faintly across newly formatted terabytes.

Silo Passage

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - The milk bottle, almost as we used to know it, was invented in 1884. Before bottles, farmers dippered milk to customers from a can. First customers got pure cream, the last got skim milk and considerable road grit. Sanitation was unthought of. Even though Louis Pasteur had invented pasteurization 21 years earlier, commercial pasteurization didn't become common until 1895. The first bottles were plugged with glass stoppers wired in place, but the waxed paper seal that I recall soon became common. It was around the same time that railroads began supplying city dwellers with milk from farms hours away.

The bottles from my childhood came in two varieties. Old-fashioned milk came in a double-bubble bottle with a goiter-like swelling in the neck where the heavy cream could collect. Homogenized milk, invented in 1899, came with short, squat necks. Full bottles were delivered to the door by a milkman who took away the jingling empties.

Even in the early fifties a milkman still made the rounds delivering Sealtest homogenized to our apartment on the 16th floor of a building in New York City. I can still recall the sensation of lifting off the paper bonnet, like a shower cap, that wrapped over the mouth of the bottle and kept it clean, then lifting the tab in the center of the waxed, paper seal and popping the top.

The bottles are gone; the waxed cartons that succeeded them are gone; the milkmen are long gone; even the railroads that carried the milk to the city are gone, and milk in plastic jugs travels from large farms and "bottlers" in ever more distant places. The milk in my refrigerator in Connecticut bears codes that indicate it comes from Virginia. Nothing about the production of milk is the same as it was in the twentieth century.

Water Music #2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Invasion of the Skunk Cabbages, Part II

Sometimes there is a short stalk beside the spathe, leaves furled tight and waiting while the golden orb expends heat, is pollinated, turns brown. As each orb cools, the stalks unfurl into a canopy of broad, green, sun-soaking leaves, but growth is all downward. While most things grow up, these aliens send out pulsing roots that pry ever-deeper into the mud, become more tenaciously anchored and impossible to remove. Then the leaves vanish. They don't decay, they dissolve, but beneath the ground and inside each expanding and ever-deepening leaf stalk lies a succession of tiny orbs wrapped in tiny spathes, each one smaller than the one above, spiraling downward into the future.

Water Music #1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Invasion of the Skunk Cabbages, Part I

Alien things, deep in the frozen mud of March, they begin warming, surging, melting the icy earth above them, spathes twisting hotly up through ooze. One day, near where the pond is silted out are a hundred, little, wine-colored hoods poking aside dry, forest detritus; each spathe peeking at the windy world; they are tents encamped amid death in the frozen wetland. Hooded and hidden inside each spathe is a spadix, a golden orb. The air around the spathe is warm and heavy and smells of decay; the scent filters through undergrowth, waking beetles and spiders and flies, calling them to the orb. Inside each purple spathe the warm air is a vortex around the orb, and the whirling smell of cadaverine is intoxicating.

Patent Pending, Unadilla Silo Co.

EXHIBITION 

"Silage: Process in Process"

WHERE: White Silo Farm and Winery, Route 37 E, Sherman, CT

WHEN: April 29 to May 15 (Fri thru Sun, 11-6)

OPENING RECEPTION: April 30 from 1 to 4 PM

Also exhibiting will be painter, Karen Pepper, with an exhibition entitled, "The Lei Collection"

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Perhaps "silage" is a rather unpromising name for an exhibition. Silage is stalks and greens which a farmer ferments in airtight conditions to preserve its nutritional value. Silage provides the necessary, high-energy, diet that will allow his cows to continue giving milk through the winter. It is not especially photogenic, but it reflects a fundamental concept that informs most of my photography and writing: Everything is always in process. Existence is incessant transformation. This is not meant to be especially profound, only that it's there every time I click the shutter, and it will provide an organizing point for the pictures exhibited at the White Silo Farm & Winery, at least one of which will be of a silo.

Hanover Hill Postcard

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: In this shot I've moved southeast of Hanover Hill Farm and can see all four silos. I said I had, "little interest in documenting the appearance of farmsteads." Yet I do it all the time. I have hard drives of images showing dozens of local sites through all seasons of the year and in every light, and most of them do little or nothing more than document what the place looked like at a particular moment.

The best of them do it gracefully like a good postcard that will make the folks back home wish they were there too, but the quest is not for postcards and, "wish you were here," but pictures that transport, evoke, move us to some other place, make us feel the earth curving, breezes cooling, the fog afloat in the hollow.

In any case, this photo makes no pretensions to doing that. What you see is what you get.

Spring Storm over Hanover Hill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: How different Hanover Hill Farm looks from this spot at the edge of the fields by Route 22 instead of, as in the previous two photos, from the top of a hillside pasture a quarter mile north and just beyond Coleman Station! The compass points of all three shots are not too different. From the distant hillside the farmstead seemed in a valley. Here it is clear it is on the top of the hill. You can't tell what things will look like 'til you get there.

I took this photograph of Hanover Hill Farm on May 27, 2008. Until the barns in the photograph burned last month this image sat with the two previous images and other photos of Hanover Hill; all set aside and bypassed. Now that the barns have burned, and I know there will be no more images, I'm moved to post these. I claim to have little interest in documenting the appearance of farmsteads; a "memorial edition" seems out of character. In fact the real reason for selecting these now is that I believe they are finally done.

The caretaker was very clear, "No trespassing!" Without being able to see what happens 10 or 20 or 100 feet out in the field, how the roll of the landscape shifts, what happens as the distant mountains appear, what opportunities the corn rows may offer and a hundred other changes, I had a feeling of unfinished business, and I was reluctant to accept what the convenience of the public roadside offered. Of course, I had come here because it seemed the ideal place from which to catch the passing storm.

P.S. Anyone familiar with the wisdom of Derszu Uzala in the film of the same name may recall his comment that the birds always begin to sing just before the storm ends. Close examination of the above photo will show the birds are active.

Hanover Hill Farm in Decline

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Of course the barns that burned were ruins long before the fire - windows broken, roof tiles slipping, vultures roosting, tin flashing flapping in the wind and skeletal sheds gaping like death. In an area of so many large barns, the immensity and gloom of this farmstead has intrigued me since I first spotted it while driving along Route 22.

Then again, its not really about the barns so much as it's about shapes and forms and flickering rhythms and tones and the way amber rambles into blue as the seasons and the light change.

This image was taken on December 14, 2009 from almost the same location as the previous image.

Poised for Spring

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This broad valley that lies between high ridges along the Connecticut border and a parallel line of New York Hills; and which runs from above Copake south for 20 or 25 miles past Amenia is, throughout its length, a nearly continuous corridor of rolling amber. It's rare in this part of the country to find so many broad, arable fields where a farmer can plow for long stretches without turning - hard to find such expanses of good grazing land. It's worlds away from Connecticut, back across the ridge.

By the middle of the 19th century the New York and Harlem Railroad connected these farmlands to markets in NYC, and different parts of the valley became home to Sheffield and Borden dairies. As one might expect, farmsteads here are unusually large, and their emptiness reverberates the energies that once charged the region with purpose. 

I took this picture on March 8th of 2009.  At the same time this year the valley was still buried under snow, and the crusty ice of the Smithfield ice storm, (2 photos back), just one valley over, was only 4 days old.

Two weeks later, March 26th of this year, the barns in this picture, probably the largest in the valley, burned to the ground, though it will have little effect on the arrival of spring.  I'm sure it's coming.  I heard the peepers.

Below are links to other images and posts from this valley:

Beware Shrub

Threesomeness

Hiddenhurst

Hiddenhurst from Wheeler-Collins Farm

Hiddenhurst from Sunset Ridge Farm

Grand Cowshed (these barns close up)

Forsaken Acres

Idea of Farmhouse #2

Idea of Farmhouse: Of the Land

Watchtowers

Watchtowers 2

Rolling

After the Storm

Hiddenhurst Triumphant

Mute White

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - 

Deliquescence

The slight of white dusting of snow

Eggshell pall above the still pond

Deadpan winter unaware

Of transmutations in the muds below.

How long before this image dissolves

Into the mirage of another day?

The Smithfield Ice Storm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Nobody needs a reminder that this winter won't let go. Another storm is due in today. They've been running almost one a week since the pattern began months ago. Each storm has been different, like a succession of theatrical events, with effects often localized. This picture was taken in Smithfield, NY, on March 8th. In Connecticut the passing storm was of wimpy, wet snow that wouldn't stick and was quickly road slop. Had a friend on the other side of Sharon Mountain not put out the word, I never would have known of the magnificent crisis occurring just over the NY/CT border. My friend had been there in the morning, and several of us joined him for a late afternoon shoot.

Smithfield Road which is set high and has some moderate views was closed. Limbs down everywhere and electric crews were struggling to un-snag wires. Though officially closed, cars were permitted to dodge debris. In one area a row of old, white pines on the hillside all had broken tops and gaping wounds where the weight of the ice had snapped them.

The good news is that though snow is coming, I saw maple sap running into buckets over a week ago, and this week the crimson skunk cabbage knobs were punching through hard, wet mud at White Memorial, and nearby I saw a turtle swimming at the edge of a pond. Winter may not want to let go, but there are things wiggling in the mud that won't be put off. It's all happening.

Hei-a-ho! Hei-a-ho! Hei-a-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: (On Lens Choice, part 4, conclusion) Starting hand-held allowed me to explore possibilities. In addition to finding the best angles and positions, I also determined exposure settings.

What shutter speed would produce the kind of motion blur I wanted? The blacksmith's moving limbs probably shouldn't look like dismemberments. Experimentation suggested shutter speeds between 1/30 and 1/125 might work; 1/60 probably was ideal.

While I focused on the blacksmith, the beauty and importance of the shop grew on me; I realized I needed to keep the background also in focus. How much depth of field would the light permit? Probably not enough.

The solution of last resort is to bump the ISO. I knew that in processing I would be pulling detail from dark corners, and that would make the graininess worse, so I set the limit at ISO 800, two additional stops of light traded for grittiness that would fit the subject, I hoped.

With 2 more stops I was still shooting at f7.1 and 1/20th. Even with VR, that's not reliable hand-held shooting, especially when zoomed out. Once angles were decided I returned to shooting from my tripod but with the ball head free to swivel.

The work of blacksmiths does not usually produce sparks, but when asked, Will obliged. I found coordinating the shower of sparks to the wink of the shutter to be ticklish. The best shower happened on Will's first stroke; because it was the first stroke, it was the hardest to synchronize. The shutter must open as the sparks diverge and stay open long enough for them to cross a significant part of the image. Too short an exposure and the ember won't have a trail; as the exposure gets longer, the ember trail fades. I used the same exposure here as previously. Successes were few, rejects many.

The Blacksmith's Vice

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: (On Lens Choice, part 3)

Even before I saw Will's shop I suspected that at least to start I would be shooting hand-held. I wanted to explore various perspectives and elevations quickly. The space was a bit tight but allowed me to move around Will and the hearth on three sides. Depending on the angle I could get back as much as perhaps ten feet but sometimes just 6. I could get as close as I dared.

As it turned out Will frequently turned from hearth to anvil and back. They stood at ninety degrees to each other, and by shifting positions I could look into his face across either or view him in profile. There was constant tension between the desire to angle up into Will's face or down at his work on anvil or hearth. As I moved, the background changed presenting compositional opportunities and dangers. Shooting with a zoom and hand-held provided rich options.

Most of the time I like shooting from a tripod. When my pack is on my back, my tripod and camera are likely to be on my shoulder. When I see a promising image I enjoy standing and fine-tuning the composition, and I may stop and shoot from a single position for 5 minutes or 20 minutes, and, when the sky was changing, I've often shot for three hours without repositioning more than ten feet.

I've only been shooting from a tripod for the last 5 or 6 years. It keeps me from rushing and makes me look harder. When I saw this wall in Will's shop, I knew I wanted to photograph it. It is a window Vermeer would want to paint. The light was perfect, outlining the edges of the iron scroll and some of the other iron pieces hanging in the window revealing them in high relief. The orderliness and nature of the stuff drew me. On full resolution copies I've spent a long time zooming and enjoying the particulars, like characters in a drama.

Whether I got the composition right or not, I needed the tripod to study how the layers intersected and to provide separation between them at critical places. A slight move up, down, right or left made a huge difference. A tilt sent the perpendiculars diverging. Sometimes the eye is quick in finding a composition, but fine tuning often requires a tripod.

I also needed a tripod as this is an HDR made from 4 distinct exposures ranging from 1/50 sec. to 1.3 seconds. Of course these shutter speeds alone call for a tripod. Whether one shoots most often from a tripod or shoots hand held more of the time will often be dictated by subject, but ones preferences and practices make up one's "camera habit," and that will determine what lenses one should choose.

Once all photography was done from a fixed camera, but even today practice ranges from those who shoot mostly with tripod-bound, medium and large format cameras that must be patiently set up and viewed with the image upside down - to paparazzi who snag photos by the dozens, one-handed, from the top of a no parking sign. There are so many ways to be a photographer. Shooting style leads to lens choice and is entirely personal.

Back at Will's, I spent most of the shoot with the 18-200mm zoom, first without tripod and later on the tripod but with the head free to move. My 18-70mm zoom is a better lens and would have done the job better; almost all shots were under 70mm, but I no longer pack that lens.


to be continued...

At the Anvil

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: (On Lens Choice, part 2) The size of ones toolkit is directly related to ones need for mobility. Consistent with my need to trek backcountry, I question every addition to my pack.

I bought my first 18-200mm zoom as a street lens, not my usual beat, but it's terrific having that much range and vibration reduction (VR) instantly available when shooting in a crowd of people or at an event. Shooting landscape one has more time for lens changes, and I had the 18-200mm range covered by an excellent 18-70mm VR zoom, and an 80-400mm VR zoom. However, it didn't take long before I was leaving the 18-70mm at home and carrying the 18-200mm over the hillsides. I no longer skipped shots that I deemed not worth a lens change.

I don't do a lot of selective focus photography; usually I want as much depth of field as I can get. One lens covering everything from mild wide angle to deep telephoto is almost an all-purpose lens. Almost! I've now owned three different 18-200mm zooms and each one has been a love-hate relationship. The three previous images were taken with my latest 18-200mm lens.

A super-wide 10-20mm zoom is my newest lens. Even when I shot film I never had a lens so wide. It's not a fish-eye but it has lots of tricks, pushes the walls away, bends the horizon, and sees around corners. However, when all you want is a bigger bite, that dizzying magic has to be tamed. I used the superwide zoom here only because I wanted the shop, floor to ceiling. Once I had it, however, I cropped it a bit. Wide angle lenses don't simply capture more, they see differently.

I still carry the big, heavy 80-400mm, and enjoy using it. I love standing back and zooming for compositions in the tangled planes of a cluster of buildings or the patterns on a hillside, or among blossoms rising from the mud of a pond bottom. The lens has withstood abuse and is clear and sharp, and I see nothing affordable to persuade me to switch.

I carry a 105mm macro lens for when I really want to get close or create a smooth bokeh. Having a good macro was essential for me. Many needs all pointed to 105mm rather than 85mm or 200mm. Cost was a big factor, but I also knew that a bit of telephoto would let me keep my distance when stalking insects and similar wildlife. As a lens for wildlife it complements the 80-400mm zoom.


to be continued...

Blacksmith's Attentions

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: (On Lens Choice) Yesterday at the Kent Historical Society there were several questions about lens choice, and I made the kind of answer the time permitted. The full answer starts at subject choice and shooting style and is intensely idiosyncratic. The lenses I carry are a result of some statistical average of the kinds of shooting I do leveraged (literally) against the strength of my backbone and the depth of my wallet.

My kit starts with a good backpack because the shooting I like best is in what can be called, for good reason, backcountry even if it is sometimes in fields along a road or down old railroad tracks or even in NYC. I much prefer finding a good place to explore than shopping by car for picture ops. Four miles is a normal day's trek in hill country.

to be continued...