Namelessness

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: To go nameless is to accept the will or whim of the viewer, to permit viewers to rampage recklessly, trampling my image with evocations of their own.

The photographer's defense is in images that can counter that recklessness; that can strongly "allude to things or states of being" relying on little more than color, form, and texture. Add a name to this image and it is immediately less than it might otherwise be. Once the wind has stilled, the allusive power of light is subsumed in wood siding.

Concourses of TIme

In Time

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: When did I first become a time traveler? I must have been one at about age 6 when I noticed chips on the door frame of my bedroom. New York City apartments sometimes pass through many tenancies. The landlords' painters who repaint for each new tenant have a certain reputation; the chips were deep, the layers clearly defined. Each chip revealed a multi-colored stratification of paint layers, each a key into to a lost space - forgotten dynasties had thrived in my room, had occupied the places of my parents and family and me. From the number of different colors there might have been 15 or 20 such reincarnations of my space. Who were these people and what had become of them? What had happened where I stood?

At age 6, to my tiny years, the immensity of those 15 or 20 occupancies seemed as beyond reach as the moon and endlessly intriguing. Even then I felt charged by vague tendons through which the past grips the present.

Water Power

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Of course it is water that has taken me to Collinsville. Large snowfalls have been followed by drenching rains, and much of Connecticut has been under flood watches and warnings for the past few days. Route 7 is under water just where route 7 always goes under water. Simsbury is threatened where SImsbury is always threatened, and it all gives the news channels much to yack at. Even the little river across from my house is raging, and the dirt road we live on is all muddy and rutted - four-wheel-drive advised.

The mystery of water that turns the planet with its constant motion. Water built the Collins Co. and then destroyed it, and water continues to flow through the channels between and under the buildings - channels where the water was powerful enough to turn great shafts that transmitted energy up several floors and along banks of machinery. Engines whirred and made the walls rumble. Once it was all water-powered, and even now there is only one large smoke stack. It has become a venerable place of transformations.

Manufractured in the U.S.A.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - One can't get much closer to the roots of the American manufacturing tradition than to spend some time in Collinsville, CT. The Collins Company was founded in 1826 to make axes to carve the future. That was the year Sam Collins purchased a sawmill where the Farmington River bends and passes through a narrow gorge. Soon he was not only manufacturing axes but financing homes for workers and running the bank which financed much else. In 1836 Collins Co. opened the first Congregational Church in town, and over the years Sam Collins bought out a drug store and two hotels to prevent alcohol from being sold in Collinville. The Collins Co. offered more than a job; it offered a way of life.

Collins axes were known for high quality and were exported around the world and are still sought today. Eventually the the Collins Company made a variety of other hardware products. It reached its peak in WWII but never transitioned for peacetime. When the great floods of 1955 washed through town there was considerable damage from which the company never recovered. It ceased operations in 1966. The factories as they existed after 1955 are still intact. However, after the floods of 1955 the town was sliced by a new state road that speeds traffic through town right where the bend in the river was prettiest and the old road had shyly hugged the cliff. The old rail line that once hustled hardware to the corners of the globe is now a bike trail.

Shadow and Light

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: After living with this image since last fall, my strongest impulse is to want to go back to Straight Farm to find other angles that will solve problems and make better use of what was best there. Alas, the likelihood that such an opportunity will come again is low, nor am I totally displeased with the composition.

Tiffany Autumn

EDWARD STEICHEN: "The photographer establishes a relationship, an intimate relationship between himself and whatever he is photographing whether it's a can of beans, a landscape, or Greta Garbo."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I confess it. My spirit has begun to yearn for different colors. I woke at 6:15 this morning and was surprised by the strength of last night's snow. It was a moderately adhesive snow that clumped on the hemlocks and made fish scales on the windward sides of the oak trunks. Had I secretly hoped for the snow to peter out as it had appeared it would the evening before?

I rolled over and nudged my alarm ahead, but duty pushed me out from the warmth of our bed an hour later. Surely there was much that should have captivated my eye, but I was home by 10. It is the depth of winter, and my spirit is ready for spring, its only refuge, this fin de siécle photo from last autumn.

Yesterday's Spring Challenge wafted a number of zephyrs my way and I return zephyrs to Wendy, Judy, Ed, Rosemary, and Garl. Among their contributions were:
"Hokey Pokey"
The hideously puntischievous, "Dolly Lama Yoga Studio"
"Photography for Dummies" to which was appended, "no reflection on your photo... pun inadvertent."
"Slightly Less Creepy When Headless"
"Invitation to a Beheading"
"Improv"

Spring Challenge 2

Extra zephyrs were sent today to Sam and Frances for naming yesterday's TODAY'S. Here are some of the names received:
"Five O'Clock Shadow"
"Imprisoned Desire"
"Back Up Around"
"Academic Chair Slats through a Wineglass"

Francis also wants to know if this is my "Spring Puzzler."

The shot below was taken in July of 2004 before I got my first digital SLR. Once again, I invite you to win a zephyr by submitting one or more names for the photo. Names are still welcome for the previous photo also.

SPRING CHALLENGE:
After the last post, several readers, among them my brother, requested I shoot warmer weather. Sadly, tonight the weatherman has given us twelve degrees and snow by tomorrow evening. If I could paint, I'd paint you spring. Since I take photos, I offer you this warming "Spring Challenge."

Long ago my friend Bob Fitterman and I sometimes debated issues related to the naming of works of art. To what extent are we bound when a composer names his piece of music "Spring Rhapsody," to hear spring in the music? To what extent are we bound when a painter dabs three brush strokes on his canvas and calls it "Boats at Sea," to try to find boats at sea? Should visual works or musical works come with titles that may limit, focus, or alter the range of responses that may be drawn from solely visual or sound cues?

THE CHALLENGE: Whatever thoughts you may have regarding such naming, I invite you to submit names for this photo that will alter how it is viewed. Names received from Florida residents will be granted double warmth as they seem most in need. This is a progressive blog.

Hilside Farm Blizzard

Hillside Farm: Study in White

NOTE: There is a second row of hills visible in this image. If you only see a single row of hills you may find it helpful to lower lights adjacent to your monitor.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: At any other time of year the ground would have been gold or green, the roofs black, and the sky would have been the brightest thing in the scene. Snow is the friend of those who would photograph landscapes; it is the equalizer that rebalances tonalities allowing ground and sky to be more easily bound into a single composition. No more sport jackets with contrasting pants.

Once again a cluster of birches catches the eye. I liked the way the stream, which flows in a cleft of brown brambles and brush, seemed to set apart pillows of white that echo the white roofs of the barns. The axis of the barns leads to a distant path, but the pattern of the pillows draws the eye to the distant fields, especially the one in the center with two large trees.

We are looking at Hillside Farmstead the other way round. Yesterday's image looked up along the southwest facade. TODAY'S looks down on the northeast facade and out. Perhaps the dialogue of the birch cluster and the window forms a kind of musical counterpoint to the underlying structure of the image? They are certainly first-rate secondary characters, and it is the birch, if anyone, that yearns for what might be beyond the second range of hills.

Hillside Gabling

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: None of the buildings of Hillside Farmstead is spectacular in itself, but the main hay barn (at the top in this photo) has been magnificently prolific in sprouting new outbuildings that cataract down the hillside in two main branches. The architect in me revels in the spaces created at every sprouting and in the turning and twisting of the gables, and everything is well-aged. It is a farmstead that asks to be photographed.

Although I have been shooting here since last spring, I've never shot this face of the complex. In spring and summer the sun only reaches here in mid-morning and at a steep angle. Most of my trips here then are to catch the gorgeous evening light that bathes the other side of these buildings (1.) (2.) (3.) (4.)

There is a reason this is called "Hillside Farm," and the natural thing to do is to compose to maximize the buildings' ascent of the slope. As I was interested in the various spaces created, I wanted to stay fairly close in, but I also wanted to include as many of the rich architectural forms and textures as I could. The shorter the lens used, the more distant the buildings, the less likely the eye will be drawn into exploring the yards. Zoom or move in too far and you see fewer buildings. This shot can be planned with complete rationality.

Now that this shot is done, I can figure out how to shoot 50 more original images of this "shade" side of the buildings. I'll keep count.

Hillside Farm with Birches

EDWARD STEICHEN: "The photographer establishes a relationship, an intimate relationship between himself and whatever he is photographing whether it's a can of beans, a landscape, or Greta Garbo."
MINOR WHITE: "Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: There are times when an image seems to grab me from the corner of my eye and I know I have to shoot it. Certainly it shouldn't have happened just at this moment. A few moments earlier I had abandoned a good shot as hopeless. Not only had the snow become merciless, but my car was parked smack at the climax of the image.

It's sometimes difficult to find the space where pictures start to happen, nor can I quite say what happens when I enter that space. Until then the elements of the landscape are parts to a jigsaw puzzle that won't go together. Then suddenly ideas are plentiful; every prospect suggests multiple gestalts. I had climbed the hill with the intention of leaving, but once at the car, the landscape was so suddenly rearranged that new compositions were everywhere. Every shot had to be quick - aimed, focused, and shot in an instant in order to get the lens cap back on before it got wet, but I knew I was already in motion toward moving the car and returning to the bottom of the hill to find the good angle again.

And so there's no good reason why this shot should have grabbed just as I started the trek back down. I was in motion to a new site for one final shot. The snow was at its worst. I'd been shooting for 4 hours with good results. No good reason! I was looking the other way, but suddenly, there at my left ear were these birches and this oddly proportioned barn and so many wonderful textures. It probably shouldn't work at all with the barns just sitting there right in the middle, but it insisted on having its picture taken. I snapped two images and the memory card was filled.

Baldwin Hill Orchard 1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I spoke with the owners of these orchards last spring, and they called me when the trees were in blossom, but no matter what I did, the only shots that seemed to work were close-ups; I wanted to catch the patterns of the rows of trees.

As earlier noted, snow changes everything. The problem I had in the spring was finding enough contrast between the ground and the trunks of the trees so as to make their pattern clear. Finding this spot where the land dipped out of sight was a bonus. Tomorrow new snow is expected. The weatherman said perhaps as much as ten inches. There are some other stops I'd like to make up here on the top of Baldwin Hill as the snow tapers off. Then again, the snow's not supposed to stop until Saturday morning, and the roads up here are steep.

Composition in White

RALPH GIBSON: "A good photograph, like a good painting, speaks with a loud voice and demands time and attention if it is to be fully perceived. An art lover is perfectly willing to hang a painting on a wall for years on end, but ask him to study a single photograph for ten unbroken minutes and he’ll think it’s a waste of time. Staying power is difficult to build into a photograph. Mostly, it takes content. A good photograph can penetrate the subconscious – but only if it is allowed to speak for however much time it needs to get there."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Size matters. Once upon a time I made an image of a thistle plant and a bee, and the detail was so clear and the light catching the bee's wings so beautiful that I wanted to see it printed as large as I could make it. Of course a one foot wide bee is quite a different thing than the furry, little bumble bees my father used to pet on his finger; the effect of my photo was a bit surreal.

In the other direction, an image such as this one fails totally at the scale you are probably viewing it. It needs to be at least 18 inches high and preferably 2 or 3 feet high. Squeezed by the height of most computer monitors, the finest textures disappear entirely and even the obvious textures such as the dried flower stems have no power to touch us viscerally. If your computer is up to the task, zoom in on the area where the limb has broken away. Explore the forest behind it and then pull back to the branches of the tree and the spaces between where the tree reveals its vitality in a fine filigree of tendrils. Part of the pleasure of the image for me is in exploring these details.

More than either of the previous images, this one is about winter's whiteness - how snow changes the relationships of foreground and background, its ability to silhouette reed textures and draw new profiles and sometimes to unite earth and sky in one white tapestry.

Beardsley Farmstead Hay Barn, Cow Barn, and Silo

WALTER PATER: "All art aspires to the condition of music."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Schubert's "Frühlingstraum" is familiar territory to a few who read TODAY'S, and I suspect knowing it, at least made them take a second look at the previous photo (http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2008/02/frhlingstraum.html). Clearly, the photo is a tag-along which asks us while "reading" the photo to recall the emotional power of Schubert's song. Perhaps that attests to how far my photo falls short of Pater's quote (not to mention to Schubert's song).

I'm struck by how much of the power of Schubert's song comes from its embracing "spring" melody. That melody, while embodying the text, goes further; its harmonic structure and rippling line touch us at levels deeper than words; deeper even than pictures, which call on the power of naming and thus become generalized. I look at my photo and think, "flowers," though I also feel their reed texture. But Schubert's spring dream enters my ears unnamed and works in my chest and gut and mind in ways that have no words by which to grasp them. The best I can do is to say they offer warm consolation against the ominous raven-rumblings which counter them in the song. There have been times I've hummed that song quietly all day long.

For me today's TODAY'S does not resonate at all with Schubert's song. I was standing in the exact same spot. Only a few moments had elapsed. I simply dialed my zoom lens back from 130mm to 80mm to compose a more conventional landscape. I did so because I was pulled to the quiet power of the silo and certain other rhythms in the larger shot. However, its three-dimensionality means it need be nothing more than documentation of a particular place at a particular time. I include it in TODAY'S because I still enjoy its rhythms, patterns, and colors and the way they lead my eye. To that degree it still, "aspires to the condition of music."

Frühlingstraum

WALTER PATER: "All art aspires to the condition of music."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY; I had Schubert's amazing song in mind when I titled this posting. I encourage those who don't know it (and those who do) to locate Hans Hotter's recording with Gerald Moore at the piano and listen to it repeatedly. After that, my photo will be insignificant, but you'll have an idea of what I would aspire to if I could.

WALTER PATER: "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end."

Frühlingstraum [NOTE: The link will provide both words and a recorded version of the song. Unfortunately, the performance is pretty awful. Find Hotter/Moore or Husch or Lehmann, or Fssbaender to hear how beautiful this song is.]

Beardsley Farmstead, Light Snow

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The snow began about noon - very fine flakes that stuck to limbs and grasses and coated the sides of trees. I still haven't got this shooting-in-blizzard thing quite figured out - wasted much time fussing with the camera rain gear and then wasn't able to change lenses - finally went back to the car and leaned inside to change lenses - leaning into the car, snow from the brim of my hat channeled a slow drip of water onto my work space. In falling snow the simplest things become difficult. LESSONS: 1. When significant snows are blowing pick a lens and stick with it. 2. Don't try shooting into the wind unless it's really worth it. 3. Carry both paper towel and micro-fibre cloth. Check often. 4. The equipment is durable; it can get a bit wet. If at all possible shoot without the raincoat. 5. Keep your gloves on. Of course, these are the mechanical things that thought and practice make perfect. The real issue for me is that conditions divert my focus and make me careless about everything.

Later in the afternoon the snow turned light and gentle and the thermometer climbed enough for a bit of melting. For all the snow that seemed to be falling, I was surprised at how little had piled up. This photo was the last of the afternoon. I've been shooting this angle of the farmstead for a few months because I like the profiles of the barns. Could it have something to do with my love of counterpoint? I took four prior shots before realizing that I needed to shift right. That shift traded a venerable foreground maple tree on the left edge of the shot for the two thin saplings shown here on the right. That shift made all the difference. I took a single shot and knew it was right. The snow continued a bit longer, and a bit of sun even came out as I drove home. Having been subdued and made to quit early by an old country farmstead, a bit of snow and wind, and temperatures that never got below 30 degrees, I'm impressed all over again with the Nat'l Geographic photographers who tame environments far more challenging and make them almost routine. Still, whatever anyone else thinks, I'm content to have gotten this shot.

Winter White

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Although I got permission to explore this farm last spring, until last week I didn't know what it was called. It was the farm's owner who introduced me to the name, "The Great Hollow," and this is Great Hollow Farm. Now that I've also met the lady who lives in the old farm house, I feel better about exploring and shooting from more angles, and I appreciate their hospitality. There was once much more of Great Hollow Farm: cow barns, backhouses, silos, and property. When they stopped farming after WWII, the farm buildings began to decay, and there's little sign of them now. Only one old barn remains, but it has aged nicely. Nearby, a new barn is home to two beautiful saddle horses.

I believe in walking. I pass by this spot most days when I walk in the Great Hollow. There's no question what made it a shot on this day in December. No, it wasn't the horse. He's always there, and sometimes both are there, and it's not uncommon for them to turn and look at me as I approach. The horse, I suppose, is the subject of the photo, but what caught my eye was the crisp contrast of all the details against the newly fallen snow and the pattern of horizontal bands it reveals. I may also have been drawn to the rich color and texture of the background, but I can't recall; the horse was moving and I had to act quickly before he reached the barn and added an unwanted complication to the image. Although it is not the horse that made it suddenlty eye-grabbing, it is the horse that completes the image, the most important of the starkly contrasted elements.

The Colors of Winter

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The first question I ask when I begin to compose a shot is, "What is it that caught my eye?" One might think the answer should be self-evident, but sometimes the attraction is more specific than my conscious mind knows - the blush of a berry bush beside the wall - the twists and turns of the path ahead - silhouettes suddenly made apparent through a momentary contrast - the dappled light hitting a cluster of leaves. Clearly identifying what catches my eye helps answer much that follows. It helps me decide what to leave in or cut out, where to stand, what lens to choose and how to tilt and focus. It keeps me on target or tells me to move on when favorable conditions change - the light shifts, or the snow melts from the leaf.

Normally, this is a question I ask as I look at a view spread before me, and I shoot a gazillion variations on the composition until I'm happy, and then I move on. What I've just realized about this essential question is that it needs to be asked, not only when I am drawn to a shot, but more broadly, when I find myself haunting a place. Lately, I've been walking two loops in The Hollow regularly. I should have realized that part of my attraction was to the colors: the straw of the fields, the blue of the hills textured by winter's tree skeletons, and the dark accents of nearby tree limbs and rock walls. The effect works best on overcast days when the colors become richest, and in that period after a snow fall when the forested hillsides still have a carpet of snow. A bit of mist, as here, can help too. As I walk my loop the panoramas shift; hillsides of trimmed hay or long grasses roll up behind each other, and new vistas resonate with the same colors: blue, straw, and charcoal brown. The Hollow seems to have just the right creases to hold the magic.

Often there's no shot there, just the spell cast by this blue and tan atmosphere and the quiet of The Hollow. The whole trick is to find in that passing panorama the compositions that hold the eye, make use of the full canvas, and recreate in the viewer something of what I felt there.

Palindromics

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Yes, "A work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them," and I'm not always too particular about knowing where all the implications lead. The Iowa TV add of the Huckabee campaign suggests the limits and uses of subliminal messages and the need to watch closely. People are still arguing over whether it was intentional. However, sometimes a reference forces itself on a picture in a way that excludes other possibilities. One can't see past it. How insistent can the allusion be before one must decide if it is intended, relevant and well deployed? I am the photographer, and I approve this message.

Window Faces

ROBERT FROST:

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
It will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

Upward Glance

NOTE: This image is more satisfactory if viewed in full screen mode. CLick the image.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: If windows are like eyes that see in and see out, their stare responds dynamically to the smallest changes of my camera lens. Yesterday's window was decidedly downcast. Whether one passed through both windows into the golden world beyond, or looked right to the low horizon that isn't really there, the trajectory is downward, a path reinforced by the window mullions. However, today's window is an ascendant glance. Again, the mullions point the way though the motion is slower, but we are buoyed by floating forms that occasionally almost come to life and especially gather and rise along the right edge of the window.

A small movement of the camera changes the relation of the mullions and tilts the gaze, but an even smaller movement sends the distortions and reflections of the glass tumbling. Where windows are doubled, as here, these changes are magnified. Additionally, movement forward and backward changes the relative sizes of the windows. These two photos were taken on two different days under different lighting conditions. How do I balance the fun of finding & shooting images among so many options, with the tedium of reviewing and choosing from the "contacts"? Although I made 91 exposures, four stood out to me. That's a lot. These two seemed like a natural pair.

I must remember: In spring the late setting sun may reach this face of the window directly, and I will be able to shoot from the other side, backward through the two windows, and create a left-handed companion to either of the images posted so far. Or maybe it won't work at all.

Doing Windows

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I'm a bit surprised to have found myself spending major parts of two days, "doing windows," at Waller Farm. The Waller windows were always a blank bunch that rarely made successful pictures.

Although I can talk about the kinds of things that draw my lens to a window, I've never been very good at saying what it is about window pictures that I enjoy. Perhaps that's why I enjoy them. Martin Puryear's thought shared on an earlier post helps explain:

"I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them,"

It's the, "things or states of being," alluded to that elude me. I like windows that reflect and windows that draw one deep inside a mystery. I like windows beyond windows and windows with old glass and knicks and cracks like cataracts. Yes, often, I guess, windows are eyes, though they may be much else too, and I'm never quite sure if I am looking in or looking out.

Behind Inner Space

MICHAEL CROUSER: "I have spent quite a bit of time considering the concept of personal voice in photography and how it is developed. It is difficult to articulate, and many elements contribute to this end, but I believe that the ideal is to make pictures that feel like oneself. These are pictures that are a fair representation of what you're most comfortable looking at and putting out into the world as a representation of yourself - an extension of yourself and your voice. This comes from conscious and unconscious choices you make in lighting, media, equipment, perspective and choice of subject."

SUSAN SONTAG: "And while the tasks of connoisseurship in painting invariably presume the organic relation of a painting to an individual body of work with its own integrity, and to schools and iconographical traditions, in photography a large individual body of work does not necessarily have an inner stylistic coherence, and an individual photographer's relation to schools of photography is a much more superficial affair."

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: "Style is self-plagiarism."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The question addressed in the three quotes above continues to puzzle me as I review photos and prepare them for posting or for exhibit. It plays little part in my thinking as I shoot. However, it's clear that certain places and ways of seeing and of shooting hold an attraction for me which may be personal. You may recall seeing this facade in an earlier photo. One can often tell a Rembrandt portrait from a Hals portrait without help from the signature. The same may be true of certain portrait photographers, but after making the distinction I'm not certain we know as much about the passions of the photographers as we do about the passions of painters?

Waller Farm

EDOUARD BOUBAT: "Every photo is an adventure."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:
I believe in walking. My walks are adventures. On my walk this morning I learned the true name of this farmstead which, up until now, I've called, "Hollow Farm." Henceforth it will be, "Waller Farm."

I also learned that the place now commonly referred to as "The Hollow," was known always by old-timers as, "The Great Hollow." I love names like that - "The Great Hollow." If one were walking or riding a horse from here to there, one would certainly be able to spot, "The Great Hollow." Traveling in that way one must be in a place before being someplace else, sees the far hills to be climbed while on the near ones descending. By the time the valley is crossed one has taken its fit. Traveling by car, before we have a chance to be here, we are somewhere else, and our road is a trip through nowhere.

I started out along the same road last Friday. In my mind was a new four-and-a-half mile loop, but it was merely possibility. One mile out I was stopped. I spent the whole afternoon shooting at what I now know to be Waller Farm. Have I finally learned how to shoot there? Perhaps I simply stopped looking for what I wanted to see and slowed down to be there. Some of the results are already posted. This small yard lies between the great barn casting a shadow from the left and the string of smaller barns and backhouses to the right. A great crossing structure behind me ties them together. I'm drawn to this spot by the warp and color of the wood, by the hardware and by all the many textures here. As often as I've shot here, I've never quite seen it this way. - Every photo is an adventure.

Composition in the Form of a Hemiola

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:
Those who read yesterday's TODAY'S may have suspected a bit of tongue-in-cheekiness in my choice of quote. It was a response to a dear friend. She implies I may be a closeted proponent of this rule in spite of my occasional protests to the contrary. I will continue to lobby for repeal of the Rule of Thirds, as I would for all "rules" of composition. Yet, I find a useful truth in the concept.

A rectangular canvas is a field of force. Any forms placed on that canvas effect the force field and are effected by it. Imagine an invisible tic-tac-toe grid on top of the canvas. The places where the grid lines cross are, "hot spots," or nodes in the force field. Forms placed near those crossings will take on the extra energy of the force field and forms placed on other nodes will begin to interact with them in special, leveraged ways. Look at the last three images posted to see how this works on very flat images. On images showing depth one might begin to imagine a kind of counterpoint between the principle of the force field on the surface of the canvas and the illusion of depth within the canvas.

Of course forms placed in the empty spots between the nodes will also change the force field, and may shift the nodes drastically. In this way the principle of thirds may give way to a binary form or to something else altogether. Furthermore, photographers don't place forms on a grid, they place the grid on an infinite field of vision. It has been widely argued that it was photography in the 19th century that led Degas and others to compose in very different ways. They revealed how creaky some of those old rules of composition were and what power could be achieved through throwing a composition out of balance. However, study of their works both supports the underlying principle of thirds and also demonstrates how powerful it can be to violate it.

As a matter of practice, when I shoot the principle of the nodes is as far from consciousness as yesterday's clouds. Rather, I pass like the bird, waiting for my attention to be drawn by something and then I follow the dictates of the moment. Every composition will define its own rules of being. Only after my intuitions have composed the scene do I sometimes ask myself if the image might be stronger if shifted to validate the principle of the four nodes.

I like this photo for its simple, elevation-like layout. However, it breaks a number of principles of composition. The parts of the composition that fall on the four nodes are probably the least important elements of the composition. As an architectural student I was told that a columned portico ought to have an even number of columns so no single column falls at the center. Photographers are often alarmed when small light areas touch & interrupt the perimeter frame. The two white building faces in this image fall where rules say they should not, dead center, and slipping off the edge. To my eye, however, the five key elements of the composition provide a kind of jazzy interplay, something of a surprise in an image otherwise so linear.

And so, is this composition in triple time or is it binary? Perhaps it is a hemiola.

Composition in Triple Time

1845 reference to J T Smith's illustrated book, published in 1797, defining a compositional "Rule of Thirds":

"Sir Joshua Reynolds has given it as a rule, that the proportion of warm to cold colour in a picture should be as two to one, although he has frequently deviated therefrom; and Smith in his 'Remarks on Rural Scenery,' would extend a like rule to all the proportions of a painting, begging for it the term, "the rule of thirds," according to which a landscape, having one third of land, should have two thirds of water, and these together forming about one third of the picture, the remaining two-thirds to be for air and sky; he applies the same rule to the crossing of line, etc."

Composition in Primary Colors

EDOUARD BOUBAT: "A photographer is like a bird."

Composition with Barnboard & Sheet Metal

FARMSTEAD PHOTOGRAPHY: Barns and backhouses are usually simple structures that lay bare the geometric shapes from which they are composed. One sees the gable side or the long side of a barn. Except when topography dictates differently, the buildings often reach out in rows or perpendicularly. As I move around a farmstead the gable ends pile up and move apart, grow thin like turrets and then spread the broad cheeks of a gable face. Silos and various hoppers add cylinders, cones, and semispheres, but especially they add verticality.

As one circles around these barn-clusters gables, broadsides, vertical thrusts and backgrounds are continuously recomposing themselves. With shorter lenses walls, fences, rooflines, and hillscapes lead the eye deeply into the photo illusion, and a really short "wide angle" lens will send the corners flying as the illusion goes deep. With a long lens at a fair distance the elements flatten like an architect's elevation diagram. The painter's palette is paint; the photographer's palette is objects in space.

Talking with the Sun

Fermenting grapes along the baccate wind,
Earth afloat on purple scent.

The Farm Road

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY
I'm standing in almost the same spot as yesterday's TODAY'S, but this shot was taken two days earlier, before the snowfall. It was one of those cold, gray afternoons when the light was "bad." There are no shadows, and the blue-gray atmosphere adds to the lonely feeling of the silent farm, once the hub of greatest activity in The Hollow. Behind the farm lie idle hay fields and behind those the swamp. It has gown greatly now that farming is no longer a major activity here.

On the other hand, when the farmers are gone, the beavers have free reign. This expansion of wetlands here in spring, summer, and fall makes the hollow thrive with wildlife. There's a special energy here which makes the birds sing and the insects buzz with special gusto. A little way down this farm road the fields and swamps are only sleeping. I grew up in the city and used to think nature only happens in the summer. I greatly fear too many of us have lost all remembrance of the kind of vitalizing force that can be breathed here.

Owl Song

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl:
Tu-whit! Tu-who! -a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit! Tu-who! -a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

from Love's Labours Lost by William Shakespeare

After leaving Hollow Farm, I went a mile up the road to Beardsley Farm. The size of this farmstead makes clear it was once the largest dairy farm in the hollow, but it's been a long time since the breath of a cow steamed the air in the barnyard. The barns are in decay and all is quiet. Far to the right, at the foot of the distant mountain, are the intact remains of Straight Farm. As you can see above, the snow was still falling. There would be a few more hours of good shooting, but by this time I was getting hungry for breakfast and morning coffee.

Tracery

JOHN SZARKOWSKI: "To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft. His central problem is a simple one: what shall he include, what shall he reject? The line of decision between in and out is the picture's edge. While the draughtsman starts with the middle of the sheet, the photographer starts with the frame."

These are the same barns as pictured in yesterday's TODAY'S; they were taken the same morning. I started shooting here at about 7 AM while the snow was still falling. By 9 AM I had circled around the barns and the house hidden behind them. I had reached a spot somewhere off in the field on the right. That's when I snapped the image posted yesterday. Are these polar opposites?

Bad puns aside, how glorious to experience this familiar place suddenly and momently so transformed!

Clarion Call

MARC RIBOUD: "The best photo strikes the eye as the right chord strikes the ear."

Readers of TODAY'S may recall my mentioning how difficult I've found it to get good shots of Hollow Farm. The barns have a stateliness and classic New England beauty that results, in part, from the way they have been able to stretch out in this broad, flat section of The Hollow. It always baffles me why I have not been satisfied by more of the shots I've taken here. However, the few I've thought good enough to put on TODAY'S include some of my favorites. "The Hollow" was the title shot for the second Camera's Eye exhibit, "Vanishing Farmsteads." Another shot, "Barn Dance" shows three of the four west-facing gables above but from a very different angle. Three of my favorite window shots were also taken there:
The Other Side
Peeking In
Inner Space

It's always about choosing. The painter paints; the photographer chooses and forever wonders about the reasons for his/her choices - tries to put words around a principle. Why this one over those dozen variations on the contact sheet? The photographer waits for that perfectly tuned chord to strike the ear.

Homage to Stanley Kubrick

I woke early this morning, the nor'easter was still blowing, and I bundled warmly to shoot blizzard. While those images simmer by the fire, here is another made yesterday at my visit to the Cold Stream time generator, officially known as: The Coldstream, Aerophocus, Kaleidographic, Exspectroscopic, Polyopticon Time Generation Maize Chamber.

The great hull of the maize chamber is made from finely galvinized metal. The precision optics system, a huge compound eye, consists of thousands of lenses, each about the size of a dime, that are mounted on the surround hull. Each lens is made of hand-ground, hand-polished, super-fertilized, country air. It is said that lenses so made can absorb millions of times their own weight in time. The floor is mud and cobb. All photos made in the maize chamber are mostly natural and minimally photoshopped (unless otherwise noted). In other words, this is pretty much what the camera saw. No, we don't see the way cameras see.

As to the nor'easter, it wasn't a bad snowfall, though nothing like what was predicted. However, the snow stuck to the trees thickly and has been long lasting so I could shoot at leisure, alone with the still-falling snow. Sometimes one doesn't need a time generator to expand time.

To better enjoy this image turn down nearby desk lights, and if possible view full-screen against a dark background. Special thanks to Brent, Carol & family for their permission to shoot photos inside the maize chamber and elsewhere on their farm.

Corn Crib Boogie Woogie

We are looking into the core of the Cold Stream Time Generator. It is at the core where time flows most rapidly. You can actually watch as moments of light elongate and then slither into oblivion.

I haven't had a light machine like this to play with since third grade when my friend Marc and I built our own planetarium in his parent's clothes closet. The project involved a lot of brown wrapping paper which we had in infinite quantities. My recollection is pretty much that we infested the closet for about a week. Our planetarium didn't do much since the stars were fixed in place - most any old place, I recall.

This one is solar powered and constantly rotating around the sun. No photoshop tricks have been used to produce this image.

Light Shift

MARTIN PURYEAR: "I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them."

Before you toss this photograph aside thinking I accidentally sent the same image twice, please look again. If you come back thinking the differences are insignificant, that's fine. Redundancy properly resides in the eye of the beholder.

After taking yesterday's shot I turned and shot a totally different subject. The light was so spectacular one could almost shoot anything. Perhaps I have. In any case, I was also still thinking about the fence and wanted to take a shot that framed out everything above the pickets. Four minutes later the sun was four minutes further west, and I turned and composed and took this shot. To my eye those four minutes put a whole new light on things.

Pickets

Good light and bad light - the how-to books of landscape photography almost always advise shooting around sunrise and sunset "to catch the good light," and I confess to having been in the past such a moralist of light. Light - "good," and, "bad"? It's not that I no longer love the sunrise hallelujahs and sunset hosannas. I don't think anything will take away the lift I get at golden hour when the low sun casts deep shadows - lights previously invisible textures - makes all surfaces glow orange. At such times I want to photograph every bark-wrinkled, leaf-dappled tree.

But, woe, my heathen ways lead me beyond orthodoxy!

Today on the internet I read, "There's no such thing as bad light, just misunderstood light." - I wondered, is a tornado just misunderstood wind. In spite of giggles, the profundity of light justifies the internet quote. The connections between feelings and qualities of light are very intimate and resonate deeply. The light of sunrise and sunset provides an emotional spectrum that is too narrow to light a horizon that begins inside us. In fact, when we understand more qualities of light, one can argue, we understand ourselves.

Two days could not be more different than Tuesday, when I took the previous, "gray," photo and Wednesday when this image was made. Midmorning on Wednesday big clouds blew through, and dry, clear air made the sky intensely blue. It was just the light I wanted for another go at the Kallstrom corn crib. I spent most of the afternoon inside it shooting light rays and shadow patterns. Part of me wanted to be outside seeing what could be made of the precious sunlight, but I stayed in the crib. When I finally came out the sun was just reaching that golden hour, and I decided to walk to Johnson farm to see what the sun was doing there. On the way back to my car I spotted this old picket fence catching shadow play from an odd angle.

Pighouse in Gray

Yesterday was a gray day without shadows. The fields of the hollow were restlessly somber, and the thaw was making mud. On such days I have little urge to shoot, and I expected no trouble hiking the full four-and-a-half mile loop that has become this winter's regimen. Since I wasn't expecting to shoot much I meandered, and the more I meandered, the more the gray of the woods and the barns and the houses became one and closed around me like a soft blanket. It made the anxious afternoon strangely comfortable as, with my longest lens, I began exploring the surface of the grayness. My naked eye saw only a hint of the red pighouse way on the other side of the hollow, but through my long lens it was swallowed in hollow.

Previous posts of The Pighouse:
Pighouse in Snow, 2007
Rolling Straight at Sunrise #3

Webbed

JOHN SZARKOWSKI: "Honoré Daumier said that photography described everything and explained nothing. This is often true. In some cases it is perhaps an improvement over the habit of traditional painting, which often explained everything and described nothing."

Whatever the case, two companions of this photo have already been included in TODAY'S. They are, "Plowshares," and "Sunset Ridge Farm at Sunrise."

If you zoom in close you'll better understand the title. The explanation is entirely up to you.

Fallow Crib

Thanks to all those who wrote in to help me resolve my questions regarding the tonality of my new monitor.

Yesterday's photo was finicky in its need for good monitor consistency. Today's photo is much more forgiving. Enjoy! Of course those with well-tuned monitors will see much texture in the dark areas of this photo. For the photo to work as a print, that texture needs to be visible.

Encribbed

I will be most grateful for viewers of TODAY'S who write back and provide a bit of guidance to help me understand how closely the image on your computer screen resembles what I sent from mine. Of course, before you read further, I hope you'll take a moment to look at the image without worrying about my technical needs.

This image is intended to be dark. HOWEVER, the broad dark patch that runs obliquely across the middle of the image from top to bottom should not be murky. It may help to turn down the lights immediately around your screen, and it is best viewed as close to full screen as possible. On my monitor there are gray-blue scrappy areas as the light on either side of this dark band shades to black. There should also be islands of that blue-gray in places through the center top and bottom. Finally, as my eye adjusts I can also make out hints of rust deep in the recesses of some of the blue-grey shadow. Thanks in advance for your help.

Some of you, by now, will be reasonably wondering why anyone should care about such an image. Others will begin to think about how insubstantial photography is as an art form. Where is the real photo? Photos have always looked great on a light box, but when light boxes are everywhere and tethered to the internet, where's the original. One can possess a painting, but photographs keep slipping from our grasp.

In any case, I find it curious that as I was working Encribbed tonight I kept thinking of this image.

Edge of Winter

I awoke to snow and a commitment clean up after the annual New Year's Eve frolic. Just get the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded, run em-urgency coffee to Jane, gather my kit, and hopefully the snow would still be luxuriating. This was one of those snows that hugged the edge between snow and rain, and heading south I saw more rain. Turning and heading north I saw more ice. Some things are not meant to be. Later in the afternoon I walked down the road across from my house and shot for a few hours as the fog began to settle into the valley.

CLICK - it was there, and 141 others - disposable, like all photos - not, as a painting would be, toiled and fussed over until the painters sweat was in the mix. Do any photographers have a style, really, or do they just have preferred subject matter?

On Light

...and another distinction between photography and painting:

No matter how much painters tell us their painting is about light, it is first and last about brush strokes.

No matter how much I look for textures to give my photographs a painterly feel, they are first and last about light.

Does this distinction mean that painters can't play on photographers' turf and photographers can't shoot on painters' courts, or does it help define a line of tension across which photographers and painters play their sport? Just wondering.

Time & Matter

The march of days, the spin of the earth - no matter how I may try to deny it, photographs are always about bits of stuff transfixed in intervals of time. This is true for photographs in a way that is not true for paintings. Every photograph is of a specific place over a given span of time and is unalterably connected to that moment. A painter may paint Adam and Eve and we accept it. When a photographer tries, the resulting picture is likely to look like two naked actors in the park? And this fixation in time means that history treats photographs differently than it treats paintings. What does all this suggest about how differently these two media communicate something universal?

Earth Roll

The deep roll of the earth bristles under a light blanket of snow as if restless even in sleep and silently tumbles onward. What will the new year bring?

Pighouse in Snow, 2007

I never seem to get tired of shooting this tiny building which my daughter and I know as, "The Pighouse." If you were checking or receiving TODAY'S last May 15, you saw one of my earliest shots of it. Then, the first patina of green was appearing on the hillside. At that moment in the seasonal shift I could distinguish the lower forest from that farther up by a sudden shift in color and texture where the slope changed. That line part way up the hillside becomes a compositional element in the May photo. The line disappeared a few days later when all the leaves were fully open.

In contrast,, this December 14th photo is from the first snowfall of the season. For any photographers in the group, I've got my lens out to 400mm which in digital conversion is more like 600mm. That means I'm not quite snug, but sheltered in the doorway of one of the barns, and there's a good deal of snowfall between me and Pighouse. I did a bit of experimenting with shutter speed. Here at a tenth of a second the snow is silky; at a fiftieth of a second it looks more mealy. Jane always says, "Snow like meal, snow a gret deal." but neither of us know what that means. As I recall, there was a bit of wind. Overall it was a disappointing first show as nothing ever accumulated on the branches.

I'm looking forward to the next blizzard and have picked my perch. Unfortunately, there is no barn in which to take cover, and I need to work on strategies for dodging the inevitable snow flakes that take aim at my lens.

Have a good holiday and hope the new year brings new peace.

Dry Dock

The first photo-friendly snow of the season fell on December 14th. At 2 PM I was huddled just inside one of the barns of Straight Farm shooting out into the blizzard. I took some shots that may yet appear here. There are reasons why I often resist posting from my latest shoot. Sometimes I think a good image can be bettered, and the first take should be held back. Or in the process of shooting, I'll take a good shot but think, "A half an hour earlier would have been perfect." or "If only it weren't hazy." or "Two days ago and the snow would have been fresh." So it was with this shot taken on December 18th.

A book I once read advised, "When you see a shot, always stop and take it. It won't be there when you come back." I shot nine images here even though I knew that I'd have better opportunities. Of the nine, I only shot one that included this much sky and thus caught the dance of the trees. I passed up a second opportunity on Thursday when the light was better and the snow was worse. I passed again today and a large, boat had been dry-docked right beneath the windows. I don't think it will be sailing on before spring.

Styx 3