Colorfield

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: From east to west the year flows out, a wave upon the shore. On May 9th the dandelions roared, even before the grass was emerald. "Weeds!" they're called because of their crabbed doggedness. Despised by golfers and greenskeepers. To me they are a color field of bliss, a visual hosanna tossed by spring winds against the abyss of the unconscious.

Hiddenhurst from the Top of Hiddenhurst Hill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: This photo reverses the view shown in the last photo. Behind these barns the land slopes down to a stream and then back up across the fields of Sunset Ridge that Kevin was plowing in the last photograph. We are looking north toward Massachusetts where the foothills of the Berkshires become the Berkshire Mountains. While I was eager to show a reverse view, my goal is never to document the landscape, but to create images that capture my own feelings about a place. Sometimes I'm so sure of myself that others' opinions, while interesting, probably won't sway me. However, I wondered if this shot was up to the level I have strived for in past shots, and I'm interested in the honest thoughts of all who view this.

HIddenhurst from Sunset Ridge

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The previous image was of Hiddenhurst from Wheeler-Collins Farm to the northwest. That's at least one or two hills, depending on where you count hills, to the right of this image. I never pass Sunset Ridge Farm when Kevin isn't busy around the barns or at work in the fields. On this evening he was in the middle of raking hay.

As he reached us he stopped his tractor for moment of talk. I made the mistake of admiring the stripes painted on the hillside by the newly cut grass, and he observed we must be waiting for the light to shift. There were distant beams that might pass our way. As Kevin drove off, the first bit of the pattern was gone. A few minutes later we heard his tractor power down at the end of the row to wait with us as two darts of light slowly moved across the hills, lest he disturb another blade of grass in the great design.

The beams were in no hurry. The silence around the bird chatter grew deafening as we waited for the clouds to carry the sun into position. Kevin's pause was a gesture of friendship that I will treasure, and the shot I got with the sunlight on Hiddenhurst with a secondary beam on the remaining unraked grass rows in the foreground was good. However, waiting there, Kevin parked at the end of the hay row and us standing, ready to shoot, at the beginning, I knew we would miss the best shot. I wanted to tell him to start his tractor and drive it down the grass row and through the beam of light as it reaches the hill. Sadly, by the time the tractor snatched the next stripe of cut hay, the spotlight had moved on to another hill.

The hills in the background of this shot mark the southern edge of a historic farming district that probably supplied the Sheffield Company with the milk I drank as a child growing up in New York City. Sheffield is long gone and most of the dairy industry with it. Also gone is the train line that carried the milk to Sheffield's New York City plant near Columbia University.

However, most of the large tracts of land in the historic district remain intact with the original 18th and 19th century farm houses and various barns. Most of the land still serves some sort of farming. There's an organic farm with a market on the main highway. I've photographed the Highland Cattle at Wheeler-Collins Farm. Across the highway is a farm raising sheep, and everywhere they're growing corn. Unfortunately, Sunset Ridge is the only farm with a large dairy herd.

The area is easily 4 or 5 times the size of the Great Hollow with that feeling of vast space already mentioned. Hiddenhurst falls as close to dead center as one can imagine. What must it have been like back when the Hidden brothers raced their stallions on the hill over there? Did the bovine herds on neighboring hills stroll to the pasture fence to watch the thoroughbreds?

Hiddenhurst from Wheeler-Collins Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Standing amid the tall grasses of the Wheeler-Collins Farm I watched as the clouds rolled over the valley from the north-west, past Wheeler-Collins and then to the south-east where Hiddenhurst stood. Wheeler-Collins is the farm where the previously posted photo on "Threesomeness," was shot.

The cloud cover was solid and the broad valley looked flat and unappealing, so I did what I've learned to do in such situations; I waited. When a first beam of light came into view I crossed my fingers that it would eventually move toward Hiddenhurst. Then a second beam followed it at a short distance. What would be the chances that both would slide into position to clarify my shot? They moved toward me at the speed of a passing car, and then the light was on me for less than a minute, and then I was back in shadow again, but the trajectory looked good. I watched the first beam pick out a foreground tree from a row of trees behind it, and then the second beam came my way. Yes, everything was aligned, and I watched as the two beams subsequently revealed and concealed each level of the scene. I snapped many shots, but I knew that I had found the right moment when that second beam caught the foreground tree again at the very same moment the first beam was shining on Hiddenhurst.

So, what is the story of Hiddenhurst? Well, the truth is it was built by millionaire paint manufacturers from New York, Edwin and Thomas Hidden in 1903 for the breeding and training of their race horses. Here is how Amenia Historian Arlene Pettersson explained it to me:

They did build this place specifically to raise and train their driving and harness racing horses. There was a 1/4 mile track which encircled a magnificent stable which housed the horses and an indoor arena which was very unusual at the time. The price for the barn was $100,000 (or that may have been the price for the entire construction but I don't know for sure-I kind of lean toward it being the cost for the whole place because the house itself sold for $45,000 in the 1940's. ) Anyway when Thomas Hidden died he left no will, and the estate went to his three nieces (this was in 1918), Frances Hidden, Maria Watson Hidden and Sarah Hidden. I didn't do a detailed search, but the house and estate changed hands a few times after that. It went at one point to the Sheffield Dairy which was a big milk operation around the corner and then to the Fitzgeralds. They changed the name to FITZLAND FARM when they got it in 1945. It was shortly after that the great stable described above and two silos caught fire and burned to the ground.

So it is not entirely clear to me what the barns in the picture are. They have the form of dairy barns. The current owner tells me that he, "renovated the old barn." Arlene thinks they were all destroyed. One doesn't install three giant harvester silos like those unless one has a major cattle operation, and three clay tile silos suggest cattle farming must have spanned a considerable period of time. Nothing on the barns looks especially old, but they do play well to theater lights. While their history may be a bit atypical for this dairy region, it is only their flamboyant setting atop their hurst that sets them apart from the many dairy farms still standing in the region.

The silo in the previous TODAY'S is the one on the far left of the barns, partly hidden by the tree in the center of the picture.

Hiddenhurst

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: They called it "Hiddenhurst." Until yesterday I had no idea why. A "hurst," I found out, is a hillock. This is a land of hillocks, hillocks and dairy farms, but few of them claim to be hursts. No self-respecting Holstein would graze a hurst, nor did I know why this one claimed to be hidden. It's plainly visible from every hillock and hurst for miles up and down the Harlem Valley.

When one stands on almost any hillock around here one can look across to at least one or two other farms, but, although they are oriented to maximize sunshine, they all shyly hug their backs to a hillockside to block the winds. Only Hiddenhurst struts atop its hurst, hardly hidden. Until yesterday I had no idea why they called it Hiddenhurst.

Threesomeness

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: It takes a bit more gas to get across the border into New York, but that's where the skies are biggest; during spring showers, it's the place to be to shoot the sky or to catch the hillsides transform under theater lights beaming between the clouds. Cool weather and alternating periods of sun and rain have sent the grass soaring by inches per day. The roll and the sway of the sweetgrass hills is intoxicating. Saturday, when I walked here, it was waist high, and I was inside the roll and sway of these sweetgrass hills. On Sunday the farmer had begun mowing. Elsewhere tiny buttons of corn had begun popping up in long rows, and I was here again, having driven a few extra miles to catch, maybe, a small miracle. Everything moves to the turning of the great wheels.

WILLIAM BLAKE:

Ah! Sun-Flower

Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done:

Where the Youth pined away with desire
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Theater Lights #3: Waiting for the Grass to Grow

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I'm coming to believe that theater lights must be tended and harvested like a precious crop. They come in many moods. When the clouds are dense, and there are few holes for the sun to poke through, I stand and wait, uncertain and guessing where the stage will next be set and what my composition might be; waiting for the shafts of sunlight that will add a transitory note to the harmony, a moment of expectation or hesitation, that sense that I have caught the leaf falling.

Theater Lights #2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - The Bearded Barn holds the stage beside a full cast of supporting characters. Here they are, arranged as if ready to take a bow. This is a prime stage for future "theater lights" shoots which raises the issue of potential redundancy. I like to think of the photos that make it to TODAY'S as likely "keepers." Is this shot merely an opening bow for a more spectacular performance yet to come, or will it hold its own when set beside future acts?

Theater Lights

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: And so in this season of, "dark brown gardens and peeping flowers," this week I returned to Strait Farm. It has been a bit over a year since I first visited Strait and photographed the building which The New Milford Times dubbed, "The Bearded Barn," when they published my image. All that has changed at Strait Farmstead in a year is my eye and my understanding of light. [Two additional imges of The Bearded Barn: (1), (2)]

Without doubt, my favorite kind of sky has become what I call "theater lights."  Theater lights usually occur after or between storms when all sorts of breaks let sunlight play over the hillsides. At such times clouds of many colors may make beautiful patterns above, while a tropospheric lighting designer moves the cloud-banks to spotlight the sun's energy onto specific hills, trees or other features below. His experiments can make contours fade and reappear while constantly reshaping composition and transforming mood. The photographer tries to make sense of it all. I realize I need to work on my routines and skills to better exploit such rare and treasured light.

The weather forecast for the past three days has been rain, rain, rain. In fact, it took me most of two days finishing indoor chores to realize that outside the best photo weather was going by unexposed. Why is it that I rush to stand freezing in a blizzard, but a little drizzle shuts me in? I suppose it's the unpredictability of it all - not wanting to get caught in a downpour. It is clear to me from the past two days that I need to formulate a strategy much as I have done for shooting in snow.  

Notes to myself:
1.  "Theater lights," enrich a panorama.  A high position with views of rows of hills and features in several directions multiplies options.
2.  Foreground - middle ground - background.  Collect "drive-to" locations with panorama plus interesting foreground feature(s).
3.  When no panorama is available, intimate effects may be possible.
4.  "Theater lights" can happen at any time of day. Which sites are best at which times of day for sidelight and/or frontlight?
5.  Graduated ND filters required. 
6.  ALWAYS PRE-VISUALIZE - There's usually no shot when no beams light the landscape, so don't shoot. Similarly, the "theater lights" effect doesn't happen when all the lights are on. The purpose of "theater lights" is to set things apart and lead the eye.
7.  Pick a site. Don't chase rainbows. Be prepared to wait.  
8.  It is in the nature of this kind of sky that changes can happen quickly. Stop and watch the movement of the light until you're at its rhythm and can anticipate how it will light fore-middle-background and when the best compositional balances will occur.
9.  Realize that sometimes it's just not meant to happen.
10.  Don't take chances with thunder.

There is a more difficult problem for which I must find temperament to manage.  Because (1) "theater lights" happen at all times of day, because (2) they can pass as quickly as they come, and because (3) they are so spectacular, I sometimes jump the gun and wind up tired and hungry and heading for home just as the sky promises a sunset finale.  Alternately, I think the event will pass so quickly it is not worth even gearing up and heading out to shoot. When there's reason to hope, it may be worth holding out to time things so I have stamina to reach the sunset finale.

The photo above catches The Bearded Barn at a moment when the sun illuminates brightly the vines on its front while playing soft light over the hillside behind. It leaves no question over who is the star of the show.

Point of View #2

JOHN B. WELLER: "Once I've composed a photograph, I look at all of the elements inside the frame and ask myself, 'What function should this element ideally play?' and, 'How is it functioning in the current light?' Sometimes moving the camera a couple of inches allows it to play a different role."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: This photo was taken about ten minutes later than yesterday's TODAY'S. I'd like to think the slant is the same, but the point of view has been shifted. Yesterday's image told the story from the farmstead's staid point of view. The format is now horizontal, and the lens has zoomed out (from digital 52mm to digital 28mm, a bit of a wide-angle). Any slight shift of the camera left, right, up, or down realigns porch and yardscape, significantly rejiggers the composition.

I step back to put one column right and set my level so the column is vertical, a weak anchor for the image. From this anchor everything else seems to be in motion and expanding with the first leafing and flowering. I refine the composition putting the decorative bracket, with its finial and miniature column, tightly into the upper corner. This gives it moment. I've never seen one quite like it. What is its story? All I can say is it makes a gracious entry into a composition that spins. Would it bother anyone if I made it spin clockwise? What obligation does the photographer have to the actual?

Point of View #1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The first questions are always about light. The qualities of light are infinite, and there are no reliable rules about how they will react with the forms and textures of the farmscape, so composing is always spontaneous.

What happens to ancient barn boards as they age is mysterious to me; I've seen old barns change color with the time of day. I've also seen a row of tree trunks that is a dark silhouette at dawn disappear at noon and become a high-kicking chorus line at dusk. Light defines shapes one moment and later turns them into negative space or makes them vanish. Compositions don't appear until the light frees them from the material world.

Even more mysterious than the reflective quality of old painted barn boards and high-kicking tree trunks is the relation of light to emotion. Naturally, the barns and fields I photograph have a general intellectual and emotional appeal to me. By endowing these subjects with specific emotion, light makes their appeal of the moment. It gives them, "the immediacy of the falling leaf." Every successful shoot is a process of discovery during which the scene becomes charged with emotion.

The first questions are about light; they tell me where to shoot and how to compose, but the essential questions are about purpose. Purpose begins to be clarified as I shoot but must become clear in processing. My slant must determine the camera's angle and the image's gradients if the final picture is to be fully charged with meaning.

Two contrasting reactions have dominated my feelings about True Mountain Farm: First is the silence and venerable decay of the buildings. Second is the slow, inexorable explosion of spring that is enveloping those buildings. At True Mountain Farm the present is devouring the past. I've tried to present and develop this clear slant through all of the True Mountain images that have become part of TODAY'S.

In this image of the blacksmith's shop I've aligned the photo canvas with the architectural elements. This rectilinearity emphasizes the stillness of the buildings. I like also how the shadowed porch commands the view of and contrasts with the stolid blaze of the shop. The crisp rhythm of Victorian balusters, one edge catching a bit of diffused light, has a primness about it that suggests to me the righteousness of it all; the porch almost refuses to acknowledge the disrepair. Do the small, irreverent advances of spring creeping into the corners of the shot quietly mock the old edifices? How many more such assaults can they withstand?

Spring Springing

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - A book I read a few years ago advised, "When you see a good shot, grab it. It won't be there when you come back."

Most of the time I shoot places, not people. It might seem I should have much leisure to catch the images I like. Those who shoot people must be quick to catch the telling gesture, but the landscape, in most people's eyes, just sits there. However, there may be a thousand tiny factors that lead to distinguishing a "composition," from the infinity of random "snapshots," that lie about wherever one points the camera. Most of the time the "compositions," only emerge in the course of my scouting and scoping walks. I was reminded this past week of just how transient some of those compositions may be. Even when the shot lies beneath a totally clear sky, and one can return at the same time of day, the shot of yesterday may be gone tomorrow.

It's not that the bicycle is likely to move any time soon. It's probably been sitting and rusting there for a dozen years. I shot this image early yesterday morning, but my reason for rising at 5:15 to catch the morning sun was to re-shoot two other images I had taken a few days earlier at the same time in the morning. Both were striking compositions, well worth the effort of re-tracking them. I'd even spent time the afternoon before trying to locate and mark the exact spots from which they had been taken. I didn't expect to be able to shoot in the afternoon what had been successful at sunrise, but I wanted to be able to find the location quickly the next morning as morning light is always fleeting. I re-scouted the locations with some difficulty, but I was reasonably certain I had found them.

These were long shots through my telephoto lens that compressed elements separated by as much as 800 or 900 feet. The shots would have been beautiful had they not been technically flawed. Whether wind or carelessness caused the blurriness, I couldn't use them that way, and they struck me as sufficiently unusual sightings that they were worth stalking a second time. What I had not expected was that in the few intervening days the thin spring leafing would change everything.

The chief culprits were two background trees. They shouldn't really have mattered; they blocked little. One had just leafed. The other that had frail green leaves before, now was covered with white flowers. However, suddenly the two trees claimed undo focus and a few details they blocked turned out to be small but necessary points of interest. Had I not seen them previously there would have been nothing to grab my eye; the compositions, so stunning a few days earlier, were completely gone. I snapped as best I could being certain there was no shake, but back at my computer the new shots were failures. This is why it is so essential to blank the mind of expectations and always shoot at the edge of the moment.

Lesson relearned: When you see a good shot, grab it. It won't be there when you come back. That's why I spent 30 minutes of my precious sunrise shoot refining this shot of the great silos atop True Mountain.

A Starry Night

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The two silos are side by side and to casual glance, snug against the end wall of the barn. In fact, I found there was a narrow passage between them. It was strewn with debris and will probably be overgrown in a month. Once through this channel I found myself in a musty, triangular space between silos and the barn. To my left and right were narrow passages that hugged the barn wall and led back out. In front was access to the barn. When I turned and looked, I saw the silos had been outfitted on this side with iron levers and handles that worked wooden gates, the patented hardware of the Unadilla Silo Company. I had entered the inner sanctum.

I couldn't help but think of the back-breaking task of shoveling the silage from here to the cows inside the barn. At least the whole process had been designed to let gravity do a bit of the work. I have much to learn about how this really did work - a note for my next visit.

The appliances that operated the gates were rusted and decayed and too fragile to fool with. I could just about find space to poke my head in, and it took an awkward twist to look up and take in the space. This was the belly of the beast or at least one of them. I gazed in dank & awe and then quickly but carefully unscrewed myself. Definite possibilities! ...and impossibilities. I thought about the impossibility of doing "the silo twist," with a camera. Worse yet, it was dark and there was no way I could use a tripod. The camera would have to be rock steady. I reached deep inside, guessed at the trajectory, and braced myself against something smelly. Instant digital feedback at least allowed me to check that I got the shots I wanted eventually. I find, however, a few of the "rejects," seem to me now like great serendipities.

As it turns out, the silos are not so old as I had thought, but I would guess wooden silos had a relatively limited life. The Unadilla Silo Company which, by the way, still exists, kindly and amazingly took less than 24 hours to locate sales documents showing three silos shipped in 1950. I'm not sure what the working life of a silo is, but these were undoubtedly replacement silos. In 1950 it cost $45 to ship a large silo such as this from Unadilla, NY, to True Mt., Conn.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Sadly, jpg reduction lacks the great detail of the full-resolution original which clearly reveals the bolts and fasteners in the apex of the silo roof. In this reduction the structure itself is dim. If possible, view this image full screen and against a dark background. Turn down/off nearby lamps.

Watchful Eyes

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: In three visits to the farm atop True Mountain I took almost 900 photographs. That seems like a lot even to me, but it is a big place, and there is much to learn and even more to decide. There are 14 or 15 buildings in the farmstead cluster. The farmstead stands amid fields bounded by stone walls, and there are beautiful hillside vistas on all sides. After three days of scouting, I still haven't "covered all the angles," and many shots were taken when the light was wrong for the purpose of recalling possibilities - angles to revisit or ignore. Most importantly as I scout and shoot I find the wonders and rhythms of the place, and they often invoke feelings. With any luck I've made some images that communicate some of this.

Reviewing so many shots of the same place at once begs certain questions. The same barns, many angles, near or far, three days, varying weather, sunrise and sunset - so many possibilities - after you've shot them all, how do you chose? In fact, one might ignore the barns completely and shoot the avian bacchanalia in the surrounding fields. With many warm, sunny options from which to chose, I beg patience while I capture stop-motion images of the slow-motion passing of these grand, old structures. If they could speak to us now, what would they say? Perhaps these photo images are an offering to the muses that abide here.

The Farm Atop True Mountain

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY

What is it about the great farmstead atop True Mountain that I find so compelling?

Certainly, it is the silence. By that, I don't mean that all is quiet. Especially now, as spring is in full fling, the avian choirs at dawn and dusk are glorious and loud. No, it is the silence inside where the gates and chains in the milking parlor no longer jingle, and the skuffing field mouse along a purlin seems loud. But other farmsteads are similarly still.

It is also the great age of the silence. For a hundred years from 1860 the busi-ness of the farm was handed from father to son: Fields were plowed, cows were milked, horses were shod atop True Mountain, until in 1960 it all stopped. Then the scurrying began. Vines slipped under the brittle, shrunken barn boards. Pigeons nested in the two great silos. Windows slipped and shards of broken glass were found. The rafters belonged to the mudwasps and hornets, the sparrows and bats. The chimneys, through fifty unheated seasons of wet and dry, crumbled without a sound.

It is also the buildings themselves that amplify the silence - so many brittle facades that give form to barn yard and door yard, to the ladies' flower gardens and the men's vegetable gardens. And from the courtyards and gardens old farm roads reach in all directions to the fields and the pastures and the orchards, and water flows in channels and clay pipes carefully designed to fill the cow pond and keep the farm roads dry. The tumble of buildings gives form to the daily routine. I guess at the purpose of each structure and speculate on the activities of the day. On the way from the cow barn to the stable I stop at the blacksmith's shop or peek in at the chicken house. I wonder if more corn is needed up at the farmstand by the road or if the barnyard needs shoveling. When I look again the dooryard has lost all focus, and the barnyard is dry and tidy, the vegetable garden is all weed and the outhouse door is always shut.

Most of all it is the two great wooden silos that hug the farmstead and tower above it. The wind of fifty winters and the sun of fifty summers have dessicated the joists and the planking of the barns since they fell silent. Nails rattle like loose teeth. The great iron belts of the silos fall slack as the boards of the silos contract their girth, yet the great skeletons stand as if almost ready for another day of chores to begin. When I climb inside one of the silos I see stamped onto the frame: "Unadilla Silo Company, Unadilla, NY, Silos & Tanks - Stanchions & Partitions. pat. 228904."

Venerate these old barns, eggshell-thin and brittle,
Even as the season springs its fling, unflings its spring,
and around the crumbling cow stalls green things slither toward light.

Light and Water

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: "The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,for the sun acts on one side first,and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me, had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words)...."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: One who wants to photograph the land follows the seasons. This is the season of water and its cycles and its endless capacity for transformation and metaphor. I've been following its currents since the big rains came in March that rutted my road and finished the work of the thaw: I went to Great Falls on the Housatonic to shoot the water's torrent, and to Collinsville where the Farmington River was, long ago, divided into narrow channels so its energy could be engaged in the building of a nation, and finally, after days of warm sun, the water led me here, and it feels like a beginning. To say more is to say too much.

Bogwatch

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The frogs are not ready yet. Their dwarfed legs have no feel of the land, but much is stirring at the bottom of the bog. I shot photos here most of last week. New leaves and insects unfolded simultaneously, and lurking down under are broad, dim lily leaves silent, waiting until the water thickens.

Soon the green mantle will form on these slow pools, the blazing grasses will turn glaucous, and low brush will block the long, deep views. It's only now, at this season, that one can look into its depths and get a mental foothold on its various corners.

I was about to add that it is only now that it is so photogenic; that it won't be so again for another year. However, I remembered images - (1), (2) - made here last fall. It's hard to know how the wheels will spin.

Wiser to keep all beauty options open, and maybe it's not about bog beauty. Some correspondents reacted to yesterday's TODAY'S, by suggesting it was not about a swamp at all. One close friend sent these delightful words:

"It looks like you went to heaven and sent back a picture. The white things sticking up are the other souls."

The thought is welcome but, I think, not for me to say. I just keep watching the bog.

Greening of Great Hollow Swamp

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY

This sun-cooked stew is first to green
and teem.
Fortunate road, a causeway really,
across Great Hollow Swamp
that lets me invade these otherwise remote nurseries.

The dark eye of a black grackle
meets mine,
Before the brake is even set.
Will he sit along the branch and watch
After I've opened the door and unpacked my camera?

Along the power line swallows,
posted sentries,
silently watch to the culvert.
There, wheeling overhead,
the swallow squadrons buzz me - champions to chicks unhatched.

Across the road where the culvert spills,
another pool,
"b'deee-b'deee."
to my ear, a friendly greeting.
I wish I knew the names of all who live here.

Behind him a long channel
ripples - deep
through skeletal thicket of ash-colored maple.
Floating low above the emerald carpet,
another heron glides to a more private bog.

At midday the redwings watch and cluck
my passing.
But now at sunset from every dry branch,
atop every rotted stump
They arch their awful warpaint and trumpet to the glory of the setting sun.

Where's Waldo

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I need to remember to walk quietly. I crossed the crest of the hay field, and sparrows foraging in the grass made their guilty escape. "Slow down, walk lightly," I told myself. "Meeker Swamp is a quiet spot; it's best to go as a swamp thing. Places removed from our daily rush can be skittish."

Then, rounding the bend of the trail with the swamp now in view the bony, hunched thing inflated like a child's kite, and in two long flaps was over into another part of the swamp, safe from my view. I'm not certain why I want to catch the great blue heron in flight or if the kind of shot I want is possible. Can a still image catch the slow beat of those majestic wings gathering air or the slow stride of the long neck gliding across the water?

Such shots take planning. My lens is habitually set for things that stand still. Everything must change when stalking the great blue. I zoomed my lens to 400mm scanned the trees across the swamp for compositions, and a tree limb turned its head. At first I couldn't believe it. There was my hunch-shouldered friend stationed a very safe distance across the pool like a wizened prophet.

There was no lake, but I wasn't about to be too picky. For twenty minutes he did little more than turn his head or shift his weight. I moved less. Twenty-five minutes later the blackbirds arrived, it seemed like dozens of them, to perch on nearby tree limbs and taunt me. One can only withstand their yattering provocations so long. It was in that moment that I turned to see how close the blackbird at my back had ventured. When I turned back the prophet had gone.

At the Edge

HENRY DAVID THOREAU: "In wildness is the preservation of the world."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Every serious swamp is a no man's land. One city-bound correspondent replied to yesterday's TODAY'S with amazement at the abundance of life to be found in a swamp. Those of us drawn to the strange beauty of swamplands usually can do little more than creep around its edges. Occasionally we may find a swamp with a waterway that we can paddle, but we're still just edgefarers by a land of thick vegetation and mucky bottoms. The waters are usually too shallow and choked with vegetation for paddling and just downright unfriendly. Such are the swamps of home.

Although a no-man's land, the swamp is not a wasteland. We walk through pleasant forests and marvel at nature's abundance, but in truth it is the swamps that support the diversity on which we thrive. That's what brings me to these lively edges; when healthy, they buzz and sing and refresh more than spirit. What lives and breeds in the swamp supports life well beyond the swamp. When the swamp dies, lives change in places far distant.

Some argue the swamps around here were once rich farmland. A farmer who once worked the land that is now Meeker Swamp told me about pulling trout from Bee Brook where the swanp now lies. It was farmers who kept the streams clear in order to harvest crops in the rich soils of these bottom lands. In a spot near Meeker Swamp there were once not only fields and livestock but also a brick work. There are probably many chimneys still in use made of clay from near this swamp. The old road to the brick works led through the center of the current swamp. As farming has vanished the beavers, always eager for new territory, have returned. The brick works is long gone and only one field near the swamp is still used to harvest hay.

And so it was that I watched as the beavers of Meeker Swamp ferried tree limbs from the upstream portion of the swamp downstream through a maze of narrow passageways to reinforce the long dam they had built. In winter when the swamp was frozen I walked the line of the dam and marveled at its incredible length. It was built by just one family of beavers, their lodge in the middle about fifteen feet from where I stood. Behind the dam they had created, insects breed and feed a rich fishery which the beavers happily share with birds and other creatures too numerous to list. In another era we could afford to lose wetlands to farming. Today the nibble of subdivisions leaves little place for abundant nature. We are only just now beginning to appreciate the ways our own survival may rest on the health of the swamps of home.

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.