Revival at Meeker Swamp

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: From the viewing platform at Meeker Swamp it is quickly clear that the soup is astir. How different it looks in this shot taken Saturday from this late autumn photo published previously!

I watched the swamp for over two hours, and it wasn't just birds and buds that made the difference. Several times as I stood and waited one of the beavers cut a wake from the far northern section of the swamp, past the beaver lodge about 15 feet from the platform and off to the most southerly section of the swamp. I'm not sure what he was up to, but he was as regular as a ferry. Meanwhile a goose sat patiently on her nest without moving even as the beaver passed just a few feet from her. A pair of mallards also passed, and a great blue heron watched and waited atop a distant stump. Sunset from the Meeker Swamp viewing platform is one of the great sights of the region. I'll be heading back regularly.

This shot lies midway between the texture shot posted yesterday and the grand landscapes I also like to compose. It isn't often in this kind of situation that I can find the right elements to impose a bit of depth on an otherwise flat scene.

Painting Spring

CLAUDE MONET: “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.”

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: On Saturday, when I took this picture, spring became general. Until then there were only shoots from the soil and occasional spots along the hillsides where an occasional tree blushed, but Saturday on every hill I saw the faint unfurling of the painterly season climbing up to the ridge line. No leaf had fully opened, but each tree that had begun to wake dabbed color across the gray skeletal hillsides of winter. It was as if the spirit of Monet had just passed by. The frustrated painter in me is always drawn to such painterly display. No other season can match it.

North Meadow #8

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:

As crouching spiders watched and waited
bees, and butterflies, dragon flies and hummingbird moths
grew cold and dry as dust.
The webs were empty.
Then they were gone.
There is no North Meadow. Perhaps there never was one.

I believe in wandering. This will be the last North Meadow photo that I will post on TODAY'S for awhile, anyhow. Is it effervescence or rigor mortis? I'm feeling out of touch with frost. The last few days have been warm and sunny, and I've repeatedly caught myself trying to photograph the first blushes of spring.

This journey through past work provides a needed point of reference to my current shooting - helps me see the path I've followed from there to here, though I continue without a plan, simply wandering to see what catches my eye. And what catches my eye changes my eye and sometimes changes my direction. I believe in wandering. Today also the song birds were back.

Ministries of Frost

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:
My final shoot at North Meadow before it was
mowed down, was early morning, October 31, 2005.
Shards of glass distilled from dew
touching spiky seedheads to whiteness,
and the ground crunched as I walked.
The air was crystal crisp; it froze my breath
so that I had to keep wiping the camera back to see
the images as I shot, and fingers stinging, numb. It was
my first lesson in the ways of cold-weather shooting.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE:
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

September Trapeze, North Meadow

The Spider's Web

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

-- E. B. White

Color Field

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The more I visited North Meadow, the more I saw and wanted to photograph. Along the path near North Meadow were grasses. With the setting sun behind them, the spiked seedheads became tiny lanterns. In some areas they glowed yellow. Nearby a patch might glow orange (as above) or pink or even purplish. In one spot the seedheads of different colors had integrated the same patch. I angled my shots toward the sun to maximize the iridescence even though all the rules of photography tell you not to shoot into the sun. When my first shots were spoiled by lens flare I went back and chose angles more carefully and waved my hat to shield the lens as best I could.

Along the perimeter where the path wrapped around the meadow the abundance of shapes and colors blossomed into a floral cornucopia, and I repeatedly tried to compose its textures and colors into images. Further off whole patches of similar plants made broad splashes of color as if luminous paint had been spilled there. But it was the dead corn stalks in the midst of all this that kept drawing me back.

They were expressionistic slashes that contrasted with this tapestry of nature's plenty. I thought of Edvard Munch scraping the paint from the portrait of his sick sister, his first important work, that he struggled with for over a year until the rude scrapings of his palette knife scarred it to the brutal roughness that conveyed his raw pain. The feeling I was after in the meadow was of death and life always coexisting, though I would not want to lean too heavily on that as interpretation.

In any case, I was only recently out of the woods and not used to shooting meadows. I tried shooting the corn stalks where they stood in serried rows like headstones in a cemetery. I shot them when dragon flies rested like tiny pennants at the top of each stalk. I shot at dawn when everything became eerie and at dusk when brilliant warm light cast outlining shadows and bathed everything in warm luxuriance. I tried juxtaposing the blackened, dead corn stalks against the green background of the new season's crop. I shot from high up and from low down.

Eventually, the shots I liked best flattened the meadow into something like a color field painting. Then in late fall they harvested the new corn. I was there when they plowed North Meadow under. The new plan called for growing grasses for hay, and they'd decided the soggy bottom of North Meadow was suitable for that purpose; it was integrated back into the agricultural field. When the new season arrived I found myself addicted to shooting meadow textures, but the corn stalks of North Meadow had vanished forever.

The Great Reach

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: If there is a god it is to be found in planetary consciousness, the earth as a giant organism always reaching out, always experimenting to propagate that consciousness more efficiently over an ever-wider territory.

As soon as I retired I expanded my walking regimen, but it was only gradually that photography began to compete. My weekly goal was to walk 20 to 25 miles while the weather was decent; I had to keep moving. A mile from my house I could drop into forest trails and walk all day before remembering that every plot of forest is today encircled by roads and civilization. However, to take pictures I needed to stop and contemplate, and I began to realize that the best pictures were to be found in the open of meadows, pastures, and wetlands where the pulse of life beats even more ferociously.

By the time I discovered North Meadow I had changed my 4 megapixel, pocket, point & shoot 4300 for a digital, D70 SLR, and I was now lugging a backpack of gear, a tripod, and two lenses on every hike, and my hikes were frequently truncated into shoots. The week before I discovered North Meadow I had been shoulder deep in a meadow of milkweed. I was humming along with the bees and photographing butterflies with my long lens. I felt energized by the intensity of that life buzzing all around me and followed the feeding of the butterflies under the hot sun until I had filled my memory cards and grown quite thirsty.

Then I found North Meadow where those dead, dry, blackened corn stalks from the previous season served as the scaffolding for a new summer of reaching and blossoming. They were quite striking, death markers standing in rows and slowly being overtaken by new life. In the absence of a new cultivated crop, a riot of flowering vegetation was thriving. Buds of all shapes and colors opened into flowers, eyes that looked upward and followed the progress of the sun through the day. Vines climbed the brittle corn stalks, then surmounted the top and cast out new shoots reaching for any support to get yet higher and claim a greater advantage in their quest for the sun's energy. And dragon flies, bees, butterflies, moths, humming birds, sparrows all fed on those high-energy nectars and then flew off to sow their own seeds and sometimes also seeds they had digested.

There, in the middle of the meadow I was surrounded by vegetable consciousness. My own consciousness is merely extension of that consciousness, made possible by and nourished on the fruits and seeds of the meadow and the things that feed on the meadow. It is all the result of evolutionary consciousness rising up out of the earth, seeking better ways to scatter the seeds of life beyond the oceans and across the land. The consciousness that flows through me has reached out and evolved over millions of years and is reaching still. There in North Meadow where one season was so visibly rising on the bones of another I found a vivid image of my deepest beliefs about life. It was a discovery and a visual delight that led me back day after day to the end of the season. It was the first of many such sites I would consciously visit, study, and photograph repeatedly.

Jewels of North Meadow

CLAUDE MONET: "To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at."

North Meadow Lights

EDGAR DEGAS: "It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times. Nothing in art must seem accidental, not even movement."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: There are few artists in whose compositions I take more interest than Edgar Degas. It is not that Degas drew inspiration from photographic composition, but that his compositions are so smart - inevitable and telling. I recently came upon his admonition to, "...do the same subject." It is a practice I've followed since the summer of 2005. What else did Degas say on this subject, and what were his reasons for advocating such doggedness?

North Meadow was one of two sites I consciously reworked in the summer of 2005. Before that summer I'd never watched so closely as a single site changed under different lighting and over different seasons. I didn't set out to study and compare in that manner, but the practice made me aware that there are not dozens but hundreds of significant variations (at least!) in the way light interacts with the landscape. Anyone who sets out to photograph, "the grand landscape," must, before all else, watch the light and respond to its many moods. The photographer selects his shots from what the light has made possible.

Some of the "North Meadow," photographs were exhibited in the first exhibition of The Camera's Eye.

More Degas quotes

Sunrise at North Meadow

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:
There is no North Meadow. Perhaps there never was one.
It was a corn field that ripened and never got cut.
The soil was poor, the ears poorly formed or not at all.
When the crop was cleared to the south and the east,
the rows of corn in North Meadow were left standing.
That was in 2004.

I came on that phantom corn field in 2005.
From the defeat of agriculture came a riot of nature.
The grasses and wildflowers that grew in North Meadow that summer
were unlike those in any neighboring field or pasture.
Spiders built giant webs between the blackened corn stalks
just where the flowers were brightest and sweetest,
and vines twirled round in their climb to the sun.

As crouching spiders watched and waited
bees, and butterflies, dragon flies and hummingbird moths,
proboscis erect,
plundered sweet blossoms
for succulent nectars.
Centipedes became millipedes and millipedes metamorphosed to trillipedes.
And swallows and catbirds fed and got fat like crows.
There is no North Meadow. Perhaps there never was one.

Fog Passing over the Hump of Spring Hill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Uses for dawn:

At dawn after new snow the world is on vacation and the roads and driveways have not yet been unpacked.

At sunrise near the water there are sometimes two suns.

The mists of dawn make air visible.

Sometimes it rises, and sometimes it falls, and sometimes it hovers and sometimes it sweeps.

It pulls the eye down the longest valleys or divides the hills into receding tiers.

There are at sunrise, so I'm told, little cat feet and rosy fingers.

And in spring mighty feathered choirs proclaim the aurora,

And marching turkeys halt and fan their desires.

And listless butterflies still pillowed on moist blossoms are too sleepy to fly from my lens.

Nearby spiders' webs are lit like roadside billboards. It is a test, only a test. Once the sun comes up they're dangerously invisible.

And I've seen on frosty mornings, especially in fall, diamonds tossed across the meadow and thistle and alfafa bejeweled,

Tomorrow the moon rises at 5:55 AM and the sun rises 35 minutes later. Is there a use for that?

Except for autumn frost and winter snow, until the temperature flirts with 40° F. there's little at sunrise to tempt me from bed.

The Old Cairn

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I confess it; I do not catch sunrise often. The last time I was out early was the last big snow event - early March. Yesterday's note initially had a sentence to explain that the photo was taken last spring and that I was posting it in anticipation and impatience for the meadows' return.

It takes a special reason to coax me from bed early. Spiders will do it. So will snow or any atmospherics such as the special fogs of September and October. So will the prospect of weeds studded with the ice crystals of an early frost. As soon as a bit of the foliage is back I will be watching for the right weather condition to head for Little Pond where the spring trumpeting of the red-wing blackbirds emerges from the early morning pond mist and rattles my bones. There's nothing quite like it. For now I'm sleeping in.

As to the old cairn, I've asked around, and nobody seems to know when it was built or why just there. It's not the highest point. The farm at my back dates to pre Revolutionary times. Perhaps the cairn marks the site of a bloody battle or at a later date where a favorite bull breathed his last. It's easy to think of such land as primeval and forget that much history has passed over it.

The vineyard in the foreground is new. In these fields dairy farming has given way to vino.

The cairn was also noted in a previous posting.

The Greening of the Spirit

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I believe in walking. Whatever it is that inspires the birds to sing their most remarkable arias in the cool morning air, fills me with similar buoyancy at dawn. I guess some reading this will have a very different opinion of the AM. Except in winter, the damp, cool air just at sunrise and immediately after is sweeter to me than coffee. It's hard at 6 AM (or earlier) to drag myself from a warm bed and bed-mate, but once I am out and marching across a hillside, the birth trauma is well on the way to being forgotten.

"Buoyancy," is exactly the word, even the grass stems stand up taller then --and "exuberance," a force rising out of the earth and animating all things, and it lifts me too. I don't pray and I don't believe in any goodness that makes things right, whatever right might mean. All that matters is here right now, but walking in the early morning I know I am in touch with the prime mover. One can feel it draw all things toward the sun. I'm sure others find it at other times of day or night and in many places. As a child of New York City, I can feel it in the city as well, though it is not as strong; so I think the sensation is more than the joy emanating from the choir of meadow birds. To those who may argue it is purely neural - perhaps everything is neural - I feel, therefore I am. The fact remains that it is a force that counters cynicism, battles pain, and seeks life.

If one is at all reflective, one draws on it to move and direct all important endeavors and wonders how to make it accessible to all, an equal access resource?

The Falling Leaf, the Sprouting Stalk

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: First it was the leg of my "indestructible," Bogen-Manfrotto tripod that fell into pieces. Then my pedometer turned into dashes that looked like DNA, and I thought maybe I'd run out of steps. Then, Monday, my camera blitzed just as the sky filled with clouds painted by Magritte. I remain undaunted. (Yes, Eddie!) So after all that, why should my first outing lead to a cemetery, and why had so many birds, fortunately no crows, come down to perch and watch me shoot? Was I tresspassing? ...enough to make one superstitious, and I wondered: If I wasn't supposed to be here doing this, where was I supposed to be and what was I supposed to do? Perhaps the birds would be good enough to answer.

It is an old family cemetery overlooking a farmstead. Descendants of the first farmers still run the farm today, and all of those who ran it then now lie here. I was hoping to find a picture that might say something like that. I'd tried in the fall before all the leaves were off the trees, but the angles were too tight. They were only a bit better today, still no-go. At least I couldn't see them. Then a small flock of sheep, potentially ideal players for the story I wanted to tell, trotted down to graze in the farthest field. They had to be placed just so or the composition would be cluttered. As soon as I'd moved so, they'd spy a juicier bit of grass and discompose me. Following "so" kept me hopping. The sheep were merciless.

MENTAL NOTE: How can I rig the remote so it hangs where I expect it when I reach to shoot? It was so nice when Nikon built in a wireless trigger. Then I might have had sheep.

I left the cemetery intent on walk, but soon I was stopped by reddish brush I'd never noticed back in the pasture. A horse fence cast a strong shadow; fence and shadow made a good leading line into the composition where a rock outcropping caught good side light. The whole composition set up fine, but I didn't push the shutter. The shot had a great hole in the center; it was about nothing.

As always, I wondered, "Did it matter?" In this case it needed a horse or something. As I looked through the viewfinder at the perfectly framed composition, a large brown leaf dropped through my frame. No reflex would have been fast enough to catch it. The thought occurred to me that all of the images I like best have about them the immediacy of that falling leaf. Rarely is it due to stopped motion. Often it is a quality of light or a silence waiting to be broken. In yesterday's photo it was in the beckoning of an open door and the knowing eye of a watchful window. "The Falling Leaf." -an icon around which I can measure any photo? The name for an enterprise?

Just then a hawk swooped slowly across the passing swamp.  I had my long lens in place, but I knew I'd never catch him. Yes, the immediacy of the hawk's wing too, a falling leaf is only half the story, but I'm not so interested in shooting hawks.

MENTAL NOTE: How can I be more ready for lambs and hawks?

Yes, and there was a blue jay too, posing for me where he could soak in the midday sun. I wondered why the birds seemed so especially lively today. Spring began a week ago, but there beside the wall the sprouts had only just now nudged the ground aside. Of course, "hawk" rhymes with "stalk." By summer they would be stalks. Was that it, "Every photo should have about it the immediacy of a falling leaf or a sprouting stalk"?

Be sure to view this phot against a dark background and turn down the light beside you computer, and zoom in close.

Photo Zen

CLYDE BUTCHER: "The less you have to think, the better photographer you can become."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The scene doesn't exist; there is no tight cluster of trees blocking the way to this farmstead. There is a well-separated row of trees lining the country road where it winds past these ancient barns. Of course it's better not to think. The mind on vacation relishes pleasures that are invisible to the mind at work. That is the precondition to all of the methodology in the last three posts, and none of that methodology can really begin until thought engines are in cool idle, and eyes unprejudiced are open to delights.

I believe in practice; elements of technique that are not practiced into regularity and routine, will intrude. ...and in the right equipment; a new gadget, a broken widget, or a tripod that slips and slides is only overcome at mental cost. And perhaps along the same lines, I have come to value a practiced methodology of strategies that prevents the process of stalking the photo from becoming a distraction to itself.

Of course the most challenging distractions can only be overcome by spirit: appointments or deadlines to keep - threatening dangers of geography or weather - the call of a warm bed at a chilly 6 AM, coffee-less sunrise - the yearning at sunset to be at home having dinner & conversation with Jane. "The world is too much with us.... We lay waste our powers."

And so I attach this thought to one of those odd little compositions that keeps calling me back to it. I know some will find no pleasure in it. No matter. My eye was caught by... but, you see, one really can't meaningfully say what because it is a myriad that serendipped out of nowhere. It was the last shot of the day, and although camera and tripod were still on my shoulder, parts of me were already in the car recovering from the 4 mile trek. All at once the serendipity was just there, elbowing me, a cluster of small trees, a wall dividing a farmstead and blocking the way of my eye. I snapped the frame in spite of myself. Well, I actually snapped five, but none quite like this one. It was the very last shot of the day and automatically I had moved and zoomed through 4 shots and arrived at just this image that still pleases me.

I've been back since looking for the shot, thinking maybe it would be better with the warm glow and added definition right before sunset, but I've so far been unable to find this spot.

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

Stay Away

CONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI: There are no small parts, only small actors."
SCOTT McLEAY: "Each part of the image is equally important."
EDWARD WESTON: "Composition is the strongest way of seeing."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: After scouting and scoping Great Falls on Friday, I had my site and my time for a single falls shoot. I wanted to be as close to the foot of the falls as possible so I could shoot up across it to the dam station at the top of my frame. The spot I chose was a bit off the official trail and at the bottom of a steep embankment. It was at an the elbow where the river turned, creating a small pool. At the back edge of the pool a rock shelf had been left beneath an overhanging cliff. It provided plenty of room to move about and scope the falls in front of me for the best spot.The afternoon sun was sure to light the falls through much of the afternoon, but I wanted to be there still when the shadow began to creep upstream. I needed another clear day which came immediately on Saturday.

My friend, Louie, has written to suggest "serendipiting" as an additional step in my methodology. In fact, like most photographers, I acknowledge the importance of divine gifts. On the other hand, while one needs to be ready when the unexpected miracle appears, one can't consciously serendipit. And yet...

I had previously noted that if there was a decent wind to pick up the spray of the tumbling river, a portion of this site would be in periodic "rain." What I had not seen from my scoping perch above was that down on the ledge, that spray was continually creating rainbows. They'd come and go with the wind and change as the wind shifted. Sometimes it would be all bottom rainbow; sometimes the arch would only appear in spots and often it wouldn't be there at all for a few moments; every once in a while the wind would do something strange and reveal a complete arch of color from my level at the river up over the top of the falls and part way back down - serendipity! Well, not so fast.

I did all my usual shifting and zooming to identify and place the characters; to try to find the, "strongest way of seeing." For each possibility I shot many more images than normal; it was hard to tell if I'd just caught or just missed the rainbow. I also knew that by using the tripod, I'd be able to assemble a complete rainbow if I took enough shots.

But here's the thing: suddenly I was only half shooting falls and half shooting rainbow, and because I couldn't get them into a clear relationship, I wasn't shooting composition at all. In frustration, I positioned myself so the rainbow's brightest segment fell across a skeletal tree and made it fill the center of my frame. Simply plunking the image in the center of the frame risks discrediting the rest of the "canvas"; It's not the things that matter, but how they fit.

The shadow began creeping up the falls at 4:20, for the first time all afternoon, I ignored the rainbow. I took my last shots at 4:30. That evening not a single shot from the day's shoot pleased me. Such days are disappointing, and I easily give in to self-blame. In fact, it was a failure of concentration caused by the distraction of the rainbow and my determination to make this "gift" work.

Although I know I'll eventually return to shoot from the elbow pool, I chose a very different spot on my return on Monday (Amazing, another clear day!) When I arrived, I wasn't sure where I was going to shoot, but I decided to start above the falls. In contrast to the previous day, I was soon seeing many possibilities and my problem at home was how to choose from many options. Even shots that didn't work suggested fixes if conditions permit a similar shoot. Why had I previously avoided shooting here?

Perhaps I chose TODAY's image out of my yearning to be as close as possible to the edge of the danger. Or maybe getting this close provided the strongest contrast between the calm pool above and the menace ahead. In any case, to my eye all parts of this image are equally important.

Great Falls on the Housatonic, March, 2008

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Scouting & Scoping

On Friday I spent most of the day scouting Great Falls on the Housatonic River. I'd been here before, so I knew generally about the site, but I'd never seriously explored what was here. I consciously set my mind on scouting and only scouting the trails and roads around the falls. I went on foot. I'd resolved on scouting only because I didn't want to mix modes and slow myself down too much; it was a big and complicated site. The clearing sky doomed this resolution. Alain Briot recommends scouting with your camera put away. He even suggests making a rectangular viewer for studying composition. I often leave my camera in my backpack, but if I decide to take a shot, it will stay on the end of my tripod as I walk.

I started at the main entrance just above the power station dam and the falls. It is a very exciting place, especially swollen with spring rains. Getting near comes with a sense of danger. That and the thundering roar and motion of all that water rushing by can't help but to fill one with awe. The photographer must put all this aside or at least realize that if the goal of the photo is to convey that thrill of water thundering by, the danger, motion, and sound must be made visual. One changes the mood of movies by changing the sound track; photos are always silent.

I immediately liked the station house and equipment on the other side. I knew a channel was drawn off just by that building, and I could see water splashing from it as it moved toward the power turbines that I knew were in the valley below. I thought about ways to triangulate a composition between the distant station house and other objects near and far. I wondered how or if I could get over there on the catwalks by the station house and what the view might be from there. Yet the broad pool behind the dam that was immediately in front of me seemed so tranquil and flat next to this cacophony of motion. I was being pulled to have the whole experience of the falls in my face; I wanted to see that rushing water coming at me.

As a result, I spent less time here above the dam than I should have, but one can leave parts unexplored for a later visit. The trail begins right where the water spills over the level edge of the dam and snakes through the woods beside the waterfall. I followed it and noted several places where I might catch an unobstructed frontal view of the falls, but I knew that a good observation spot was ahead. I made a mental, scout's note to try these other spots some other time. It was only 10:30 in the morning, and the light was pretty good though it had begun to turn harsh. When I reached the better observation point my resolution failed, and I decided to scope. On my other visit I'd failed here, and I wanted to know if there was anything that worked. To scope it I needed to take out my camera.

The spot had some serious problems. It was a long arm of ledge that projected toward the river. A railing had been installed for safety. Even from the high spot the ugly railing would interfere. The ledge didn't project quite far enough, and scraggly trees blocked the view of the long dam with water spilling over. I moved way to the bottom back corner of the ledge where it projected farthest, but other elements were made worse. Each time I moved I reset my tripod. This is fine on level terrain and where the height of the lens from the ground is not sensitive. Here, scoping with the tripod was foolish!

Scoping requires freedom. In tight, uneven terrain such as this the tripod encumbers imagination. Every little movement left, right, up, down changes the relationship of things. This is the time to take the camera in hand, and try any likely angle. Don't shoot, just scope. With the camera off the tripod I could lean over the railing and see beyond the trees. From there one pine caught the light nicely and I liked the way its scraggly appearance fit the tenuousness of life on the edge of that great falls. I had made a number of exposures already, telling myself I wanted to remember the light, that it would be better later. They were not "real" shots, but the pine nudged me from scoping to shooting.

The light was at least acceptable. The elements of my composition (members of the cast) were clear. The main line of tension was between the tree and the station house with a contrary motion of the water over the dam and down the falls between. I made seventeen exposures once I was seriously shooting. Five were vertical. I experimented with pushing the tree and station up into the corners of my frame by zooming in and thus making the falls larger. I zoomed out letting the station stand clear of the corner and including more of the falls below. In each shot I was careful to catch enough foreground to establish my place. Later, at home, the final choice was between this image and two similar vertical shots. Since this image will be viewed on computer screens, I chose the horizontal. I also liked the way the foreground makes a little hill in the horizontal version.

I let myself move to scoping here because it was early, and I had time for lots of further scouting. By the time I made it back here it was 2 PM and I had scouted the entire opposite bank and made my way to the station house and the power company channel. I'd even stopped a couple of time for prelim "scoping" shots and one other serious shoot. Returning here at 2 PM, I was surprised to find the scraggly little pine that had "made" my earlier shots, no longer looking the same. The branches whose darkness stand out in this shot had become front-lit by 2PM. The shot I'd taken at 10 was the right one. Perhaps the rule should be that when the light is right it's always time to shoot.

My hunch was there would be a gorgeous, golden glow at sunset, but that was three hours away and I'd already been scouting and scoping for 4 hours. Had I been closer to home, I'd have come back later, but the round trip was a bit over an hour. All shoots are driven by weather and light. Pacing and timing are everything.

Spring Water

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Scouting - I've been thinking lately about my shooting methodology.  In the four years since I've returned to shooting, I find I have unconsciously developed patterns - strategies - processes for finding images. These work for me; they may not work for anyone else. Identifying the things I do over and over, putting words around them, and understanding how & why they work allows me to control, evaluate, and improvise on the processes. Maybe I'll also find tiny insights into how my conscious and unconscious mind finds flat images amid space.

To break these processes into three steps is to be too precise. Sometimes two or all three steps occur together, and sometimes a good image is there when I am doing nothing.  However, at least for the moment, I identify three. How nice that they all begin with "S":
1. scouting
2. scoping
3. shooting

Today I was mostly scouting. On such days my camera may not even be out. Today it was, and I shot more than I should have, but really I was following new trails, trying to get the lay of the land, seeing where I wanted to get and trying to get there to see what I could see once I was there. Once I actively stopped, scoped and shot, but mostly I was scouting.

I'm always scouting for new sites, places that make me eager to shoot and sometimes I just drive the back roads within roughly a 60 minute radius of home. I know, it's not the green thing to do, but this drive is essential to the end goal of photographing the place I live. I like the back roads, partly because I can dawdle a bit, but also because I'm often trying to catch glimpses of the vanishing past, or perhaps the truth is I'd rather listen to birds and streams than cars. Of course step 3, shooting, will require me to forget the stream and the bird sounds.

Scouting can also occur on foot along trails or roads, even some I've walked dozens of times. Returning, I look for new stops along the way, places to explore. If I meet people I sometimes get new tips, new access, and even bits of folk lore and history. Often I get no photos. On a four or five mile loop there can be lots of nooks and crannies in the muffin.  Of course, to find new muffins I have to get back in the car.  I don't enjoy being in the car; I'd rather be out in the field being "productive," but I do enjoy the adventure of coming on new surprises.

Like all aspects of my photography, scouting is controlled by the weather, the light, and the seasons. For the past few weeks we've had rains that have finally washed the last bits of snow from the forests. The streams are gushing and everything suggests this is the time to shoot water sites. Except in Collinsville, shooting has been in fits and starts because for all other sites I'm pretty much in scouting mode. While scouting Kent Falls for shots this week I liked the old leaves that had settled into rock pools beside the falls. The leaves have darkened, thinned, begun to dissolve back into earth, a sure sign that spring can not be too far. I shot this photo there, but really I was just scouting. I moved on to other sites to see what things looked like with the rivers and streams gushing. My focus never reached the intensity it does when shooting.

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.