Clouds Skimming the Hilltop

NOTE: Follow this link to an excellent article on my upcoming opening and exhibition at the Gunn Library in Washington, Connecticut.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This image could only be resolved through post-processing. It is made from two shots taken shortly before I abandoned Rabbit Hill for the light I thought I would find at the lake overlook nearby, While ambient light made the cornfield and barns plain to see, the bright sky meant an exposure too short to record the cornfield, hillside and barns cleanly. The sky is the result of HDR. However, the cornfield is a single exposure. I'd rather catch theater lights than resort to such processing.

3. PROPORTIONALITY: It only occurred to me this week that in choosing a location to shoot theater lights one must consider the relationship between the scale of the landscape and the scale of the potential light beams that travel across it. Of course we notice such issues when we see them, but my imagination missed this issue as I considered relocating.

I had been shooting from a location I'd never tried on Rabbit Hill (a spot down behind one of those wood piles). The location allowed me to frame two receding paths in my barn composition. To the left I wanted to lead the viewer down the small town road as it passed through the farmstead between opposing barns. The arrangement of buildings left a weak visible cleft where the road jogged oddly and disappeared, but well targeted beam of light might lead the eye and make the slot read. If it spilled softly into the foreground but left my lens in shadow, it would be perfect.

On the right side of the image one looked beyond the farmstead, across a valley at a narrow slice of ranged hills. Almost any beam that came through would give definition between the receding ridges on the other side of the valley.

When I took my position, this was not an especially unlikely alignment to occur, and almost occurred once, but the longer I waited, the more I became convinced that I had slid into one of those never-ending troughs of darkness mentioned previously, and that it might be that the good light was a minute's drive west where the road overlooked the lake. The overlook is quite dramatic and a famous spot for photos. Once there I suddenly understood the issue of proportionality. The openings through which the beams were shining were just as large as they had been earlier on the hilltop, but my panorama was so deep that when they fell on the hills on the far side of the lake they just looked like tiny, weird details, maybe stains. When choosing a location, the sky must fit the scape.

Mt. Bushnell

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Looking southwest the light glared, but to the east were clouds of character ready to assume a cloudscape. If only there was a point of focus! The particular subject wouldn't matter; it was a McGuffin. However the logical place to go would be to find an east-facing hill and shoot from there. Instead, we went due east and climbed the west-facing slope looking down on Tanner Hollow and straight into the glaring sun. Photographically it was exactly the wrong way to go, but we'd never been there, and we could see a clearing, high up behind the last corn field, and perhaps a clearing even higher behind that, and the clouds above them looked beautiful, and of course, we'd never been there.

The last cornfield was plowed across a steep hillside already high above Tanner Farm. Climbing, we stumbled over cut stalks like stubble on a giant's chin, Each time I looked back the clouds glared from behind a muddy, gray mass of stuff: fields, forest, farms, and hills - until I reached the top of the cornfield and turned around again. That was when I began to see the familiar shape of Mt. Bushnell at the back of Lake Waramaug and recognized the land I somehow knew, but from a new angle, the world tipped up for me to see.

Just as when shooting a bust portrait, one wants the oval of the face in the upper two thirds of the frame, greater height was needed to give Mt. Bushnell sufficient neck.

We finished climbing the field behind the field and the field behind that; and when we got there the trees that divided the fields were a scrim, and Mt. Bushnell stood hazy and clear in the first blush of what I thought would be a lazy, hazy sunset that would burn itself out pointlessly, and that was when my companion thought of a better place to shoot if we just hurried down the hill again to our cars.

It took strong incantations to pull this image from the murky light, but this is much as it appeared through my medium long lens, which is to say it is definitely a photograph and not some other species of graphic manipulation.

Cornfield in Dandelions

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

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

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

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

Cornrows on Rabbit Hill

Walking farmlands and meadows one sees how the land lies and chooses a path freely and fully knowing the roll of the earth between here and there. Doing so I have become more convinced than ever that I'm walking the back of a vast beast. This knowledge is less evident to forest goers who follow the beaten trail or the river. From this cornfield I can see vast distances to my left and right. Once, when travel was slower and more toplands were cultivated, such long views were easier to find, and travelers and farmers who looked daily across the hills knew their names.

Those arcane names can still be found on old the maps and Nat'l Geologic Survey topos. There's a name for almost every moderate sized hump around here. Most are forgotten. It was years before I realized I lived in the valley between Mt. Tom and Mt. Rat, but a hundred years ago such names were the way one knew where one was. I know of Rabbit Hill because Rabbit Hill Road leads to this hilltop. It must be Rabbit Hill. Back when, they named the road so everyone would understand, "Go here, and you'll get to the top of that Rabbit Hill you saw from the last hillock. Trails are insidious, and I'm certain our ancestors were quickly seduced, but I wonder how their more spatial understanding of the great beast we ride affected how they felt about her?


Abutment
Small steps, like the march of the corn stalks make a matrix of earth's roundness
from her sunny fullness to her boggy hollows.
In the forest one follows the old trail or the river's path.
In the meadow, one walks free and contiguous.


After my photofriends from Maine went their separate ways, Jane and I went to the goose pond above Lake Waramaug where the sun sets. On the way back the recently cut hay and corn were catching irresistable sunset light. This and several other shots were a fine conclusion to a lovely day of shooting. Other shots taken Sunday can be seen at:

http://flickr.com/photos/rothphotos/