Sundown

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Are the only differences between smallscape and grandscape a matter of which muscles are challenged? I wonder. Whether looking into gears or across hillsides, I really don't know what it looks like until I get there. Therefore, I must go everywhere.

Climb or crawl, the best views always seem to be the most taxing, and a first visit rarely produces the best shots. I have to go back and go back again. Some of the best sluice shots were produced on my 4th visit. It took a full year until I even got to this hillside. Whatever is taxed is repeatedly taxed.

I had this pegged as a great sunrise view and finally made it out of bed at 6 AM on a clear morning to catch it. The sun was bright and the fall leaves were glowing, but the shot had no feeling. With the fall leaves hidden in shadow, this sundown shot poses the moment like a question. I'm pretty sure I still don't know all that can be done at the sluice or all that the sun can do to it. The sun will be entirely different at both sites by mid summer. One must go everywhere at all times.

Well, at many times; without fresh snow or spring color, lately most hillsides have been inhospitable to photography. Perhaps the season favors smallscapes. Like the possum who may be wintering under my wood pile, I'm enjoying the shelter of the sluice while the cold wind blows across the hills. I need a good reason to freeze and I'm persuaded to stop chasing the possum from the cat food bowl.

In any case, it has been a while since TODAY'S stepped back for a longer view, and I know a few readers will find this broad view refreshing.

Explorations of Form No.16, Syncopation 1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Thursday, Feb 5 - They say that to photograph well one must be part of the thing photographed. I, a cog in the sluice? I began shooting tight in order to feel the steel's heft and age. Slowly I pulled back, trying to encompass its complexity, but as the sun declined toward three o'clock my lens was drawn down inside the gears - left, right, backward, forward - each small movement turning the wheels around me until I could see and feel all of the parts moving together with the gliding infiltrations of light and shadow, as the sun followed its arc. I was free of gravity, a fulcrum clicking the shutter, syncopating the machinery's dance and the sliding sun. Then the sun fell behind the mill, the wheels were dark, and I noticed my knees ached and my fingers were frozen and numb.

Explorations of Form No.15, Perspective

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Thursday, Jan 29 - Photography is an art of the possible. I had more sluice to shoot, but I needed bright sunshine and the road toward Collinsville led into clouds. There would be good theater lights from an open hilltop, but shooting the sluice in the river valley left me waiting. I set up my tripod and tried to figure out how things worked.

The Farmington River bends sharply as it leaves Collinsville. The old mills are situated on the flat rocky land at the river bend, where the water level drops abruptly. I'm drawn to the Collins Factory site in part by the labyrinth of channels into which the Farmington River was divided in order to power the ancient machinery. The channels run between, around, and under the old mill buildings. They are a labyrinth of moats that move water independently of the way people move through the site. Is it my childhood love of old forts and castles at work again? I'm still trying to figure out how to photograph the mysteries of these moats.

I was shooting where the uppermost water is drawn off to supply the main canal. At the front of the oldest mill buildings a picturesque reflecting pool holds water from above the falls. This is the view most people see. When the wind is calm the pool mirrors the factory facade before the water tumbles over a grand cascade back to the river, but there is a secret channel that leads water beneath the buildings (Previous photos of pool and cascade: 1, 2, 3, 4). I was shooting at the back where the channel emerges.

The gears I was shooting serve sluice gates there. Six identical sets of gears and gates control the flow of water here. On the downstream side of the gates the channel divides. To the right two more gates control a stream that quickly plunges 15 feet to a deep moat. The moat bobs beneath various downstream shops. To the left the water flows freely to supply the main canal and its offshoots which turn the wheels of many more downstream shops. The gates I was shooting control the water that powered most of the old plant.

However other channels might have been rumbling further off beneath the mill. I've been in the basement and photographed where the last and greatest of the turbines catches the flow. Only a small leak hints that there is water that passes there, but I know which channel carries that water back to the river. As there is a maze of moats below, there is similarly a maze of bridges and access roads above. However, mapping canals and figuring out sluice mechanisms is not photography.

The sun emerged fully from behind the clouds just as the great stack that towers over all of the factory cast its shadow over my chosen subject, a colossal sundial. I waited another 15 minutes for the shadow to advance past my subject. Photography is an art of the possible; often I wait more than I shoot.

Explorations of Form No.12, Fugue

GUEST DIARIST: What is it about gear driven mechanics that fascinates and transcends the obvious? The delicate 19th century winding mechanism of a music box is as equally hypnotizing as the massive lifting device of a sluice gate. We stare, we listen, we challenge, and we stare again, each of us looking with different eyes, but transfixed and obsessed.

The pragmatist sees the engineering, the precise mathematics, the movement, and the practical application. He hears the repetitive beat and is excited by the end result.

The artist sees the delicate balance, the intertwining of shapes, the depth and perspective. He hears the fugues of Bach, and becomes alert with the anticipation of the next measure.

The poet sees the metaphor of a well set gear to marital bliss: a tightly run household, the meshing of intellect, emotions, and personality, and of course spooning. He hears the joy of laughter, and the sigh of satisfaction.

The challenger, while transfixed, cannot resist tossing debris into the sluice, and watching as it turns into dust. Likewise, in a good marriage, when challenged, the debris is churned into insignificance and tossed into the dustbin. -Jane Roth

Explorations of Form No.11, Context

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:  Just as a photo is a cross section of time, it is also a cross section of context. There is the context one sees, the given universe shown within the bounds of the image and disappearing off its edges.  Then there is something else perhaps akin to negative space and negative capability;  For that reason I like the term "negative context," presences to be guessed at and often more colorful in imagination than any reality?

Explorations of Form No.10, Shadow & Substance

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:

Thursday, Jan. 22 - Back at Collinville factories to shoot a row of wheels and gears that control the flow of canal water. On my previous visit (1/14), a week earlier, in the mid-afternoon, I had noticed that the low, winter sun articulated the forms and surfaces of this equipment clearly.  I noted also that the good light ended when the sun moved behind a mill building at about 3 PM. This time I was on the spot by 1:15, and the skies were clear. 

The equipment might have been 50 or even 150 years old. It had been painted, stripped, and repainted many times.  In between paintings it had sometimes rusted, and it was now mostly ignored. As a result, the ancient steel castings were taking on the look of organic things. 

Up close, I thought, they seemed a mystery of the stone age. I had brought a set of close-up lenses (sometimes called "diopters") as I wanted to get in closer than my macro lens permitted. At some point I need to compare the results through these lenses with results through extension tubes. Close-up lenses are far easier to manipulate.

A number of experiments suggested a single +4 diopter lens would get me in to where I thought I should be to make the most of the textures. I took a number of shots around the pin that attaches a crank handle to a heavy rod. I moved on to gears nearby but quickly concluded I wasn't feeling it and moved on.

The sluice gates were hidden out of site, but there must be 6 of them, each operated by a nearly identical set of wheels and gears. The sets were lined up, and, in addition to close-ups, I was interested in creating compositions that played on the repetitions. The framing possibilities seemed infinite, and I explored a number of angles, heights, and distances through my 103mm macro lens.  In some of the deeper shots I explored leading the eye to indistinctness by limiting depth of field. The more I shot, the more I became aware of the shadows and opportunities to lead the eye to silhouettes.  The use of these shadows in compositions is worthy of further exploration.

Exploration of Form No.6, Volume

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: 1/27 - My camera is a lever with which I move or halt, create or dissolve, rotate or skew, close down or pry open space. Yesterday inside a cathedral a fellow photographer confessed to me what I feel all the time, that there are too many angles, too many choices. The camera is a very powerful lever.

Exploration of Form No.5, Pattern

EDWARD B. LINDAMAN: "What seems mundane and trivial is the very stuff that discovery is made of. The only difference is our perspective, our readiness to put the pieces together in an entirely different way and to see patterns where only shadows appeared just a moment before."

Exploration of Form No.2, Implication

SHAKESPEARE: 
O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days.
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?

An Aria

SHAKESPEARE: 

Since brass nor stone nor earth nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality oe'rsways their power.

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

Staccato

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: After shooting in the icy orchard for two days, snow arrived Saturday and temperatures dropped. It was not the kind of snow that sticks which was all the excuse I needed not to go out and shoot. 

On Sunday I wanted to see what the storm had wrought and hiked up to the orchard. In spite of a full day of snow, there were relatively few limbs trimmed white, but everywhere the wind had shaken and the white flakes had mottled the icy forms. That which had sparkled when the sun hit, now shimmered and when the sun went behind clouds turned pasty grey. More of the apples had been snapped free leaving these strange orbs hanging on as if they grew there. This is a tight shot, deep under the canopy of the tree, impossible to get all in focus, and there was no time to expose additional images. The sun was gone as soon as I had finished this HDR set.

In any case, I'm intrigued by the suggestion that the ice has not only born fruit and set blossoms like the living tree, but is also breaking apart like an old skeleton, and I like the cool whiteness of this shot when set beside the previous image and the one to come.

Golden Delicious

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I note in sadness the passing of Andrew Wyeth whose work I've come to love. Tillman Crane's, week-long, photo workshop at Christina's house, and the challenge of tracing Wyeth's footsteps and of interacting with his iconic vision deepened my understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of my art and his. I have a hunch that all the friends I met there feel similarly.

As I look toward inauguration eve I also want to celebrate the hope I share with people around the world regarding the new administration coming into office.  If they are as wise, honest, and diligent as they have so far presented themselves, and if they fulfill a quarter of the expectations they have raised, they will have done well. They have already done good.

The Dreamer Merlin and his Prophesies

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:

Tell William

An apple for the teacher,
an apple a day,
the forbidden apple,
never bobbed for,
Apple Computer,
Apple Records,
love apples,
sleep apples,
Newton's apple,
and Waldorf salads
(a favorite of mine) 
and the apple of your eye,
mom's apple pie.

It seems life,
like the mouth of the boar's head,
is full of big apples.  

A friend recently asked to what extent the symbolism of apples enters my thinking as I photograph in apple orchards. 

On one level I have to answer. "Not at all."  For the most part, such thinking is harmful to photography, at least to mine, as it causes intellectual considerations to supersede visual. When I start thinking about such meaning the image usually winds up looking contrived.  However, the life of a symbol often begins in expressive qualities of the physical thing. Additionally, I was trained in literature and art, and have lived life with myths and tales. The mind combines things most mysteriously. It is impossible for my consciousness and whatever might be moving below consciousness not to vibrate in sympathy to symbolic reverberations. While conscious manipulation of this is a pitfall for me, a viewer who remains open to such meaning may distill an interesting brew to swirl around a favorite image. 

It is, therefore, with a bit of trepidation that I have attached names to some of these images which may constrain imagination, and I ask viewers not to take the names too seriously. I'm interested in hearing opinions on this if anyone has them.

'The Joker,' setting by Cartier

ROBERT FROST: "Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Taking Stock of Ice Storm Lessons, part III - "It's Easy to Get Lazy"

8. Habituate technique. Always remove a filter right after use. Turn VR off when the camera is put on the tripod. Frequently check and recheck exposure settings especially at the start of a shoot and after shifting subject or location. It seems every few weeks this lesson is driven home again, so I guess I haven't learned it sufficiently. Good habits must be cultivated. There's no problem if I'm setting up for a particular effect as I did for the shot above. It is after I've moved on when I carelessly assume the camera to be as I "always" have it.

9. When moving in for close-ups, it's always worth switching to my 105mm macro lens or my 50mm prime. Over the past few months I've gotten too comfortable with my new, all-purpose, 18mm-200mm, zoom, VR, street lens. It has barely been off the camera. While it provides pretty sharp images in its mid range, when I need to get closer it's a very tempting shortcut to zoom out to 200mm and thereby avoid awkward setups. The frozen branches of the apple trees need not fence with my long tripod legs. It's not just that the 50mm and 105mm primes are a bit sharper; it's that they force me to get physically closer. This image, shot with the 105mm macro lens, is actually made up of two shots focused at different places. I made an exposure bringing the third stalactite and tail into focus, but I like the f9 softness of the receding background shown here.

10. Even when presented with a cornucopia of photographic options, it's better to make one good image than reach for dozens and find later that none was brought to completion. I must write that over 100 times and make 100 fewer images.

Pop

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:

Now is the unloosening,
The chill grip
That snaps the chord,
Silent ministry of ice.

From the cadence of the clutch,
Shoulder to shoulder and swelling to full blush,
Unstrung at that trice.
Bitter ministry of ice.

Through scolding sun,
The mushroomy smell of rain,
Even wind's terrifying embrace.
Oh, mysterious ministries of ice!

Time Suspended

ANON.: "To stop the flow of the river, float with its current."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Taking Stock of Ice Storm Lessons, continued:

5. (Lesson 5 is worth restating in another way.) I can only be in one place at one time. If I start thinking about a place further down the trail while I'm shooting here, I'm really not any place at all. So, if time is limited, and nothing suggests the place down the trail will be better, I try be totally here.

6. Sometimes fragile conditions DO last. The air stayed frigid, and Friday the sky was nearly cloudless and cerulean; the iced orchard seemed alive. By good fortune, there had been just enough direct sun on Thursday that in reviewing the photos I was reminded of lesson 7.

7. Ah, specular highlights! Sometimes, no matter how into the shoot my head may be, I may not fully appreciate that the camera sees differently. Specular highlights are bright spots of light reflected off shiny objects. The camera records them differently than the eye sees them. The word specular is to indicate that the light is perfectly reflected (or refracted) from the light source to the viewer. If the reflecting lens is small and perfectly reflective, and the light source is distant, the specular highlight will be very bright and concentrated. A background of trees full of ice crystals and water drops provided billions of tiny, perfect lenses focusing the bright, distant light of the sun at my lens. To my eyes, these were a texture of tiny dots. However, inside the camera's eye such small, bright light rays take on the shape of the shutter. Furthermore, there size balloons larger, the further they fall outside the optimum focal range, and passing by edges or through lenses diffraction may break down the spectrum making them different colors. Reviewing Thursday's shoot reminded me of all this, so I was ready to make use of the effects on Friday. The picture above and some others use these specular highlights to provide a background to the subject, but there are many other ways to use specular highlights. I've been reading further since and looking at photographs that feature them. Here is a subject to master.

Glacial Chill

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "I — this thought which is called I, — is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The last three days have been a scramble, a possibly photo-worthy bit of weather. It is the kind of scramble from which lessons should be learned. Time to take stock of things I've learned and learned again - part 1:

1.  What looks like a weak dusting of sleet down in my valley can be a whole other thing across the hilltops. Valley sleet coated the ground while the hilltops became a crystal wonderland. Because I didn't see it out my window, I almost missed it.
2.  I'd never shot an ice storm.  I didn't know that I'd never shot an ice storm, and I hadn't thought much about how to shoot an ice storm, but there I was in an ice storm. The entire orchard was encrusted. Most of Thursday the light was even and diffused, and there were often lovely skyscapes if I could only get the trees into the right position or the sky into the right position. And then occasionally the sun would break through and the crystalized trees would glisten. Sometimes the glistening lasted as long as 30 seconds, but where does one stand? At such moments every step changed the landscape, so completely was it refracted through the ice, ...and then the sun was back in hiding.  Making it worse was my mounting panic that the ice would melt before I had a chance to discover this new world. The only way to begin is to begin.
3. One of my first thoughts was, "At what scale does the event make visual impact?"  Everything from grass blades to finger-size limbs was encased in ice. Larger limbs were saddled in ice. It was a medium-size ice storm, not a limb-breaker. Observed up close the ice made lenses like snakes slithering along branches and tendrils. It encased seed pods, and dolloped growth nodes. The lenses changed as the light changed.  Observed far off the strongest effect was in places where closely packed limbs, delicately etched with ice, appeared as glistening textures.  Light was even more transformational here.  In the middle were orchard-scapes of various scopes where ice-encrusted boughs reflected light as if they were on freshly painted canvas, still wet and glistening.  I find it very difficult to scope at three scales simultaneously. The only way to begin is to choose.
4.  I also tried to assess how quickly the weather was changing? It wasn't only that it might get warm and melt the ice, but that the clouds were moving quickly. Shooting from a tripod requires set-up time. Shooting at the clouds requires 3 or 4 photographs at different exposure settings for HDR. Once I set my tripod, how long do I sit and wait for the sun to peek back through, and when do I turn to what's looking good right now?  Were sun-producing breaks becoming more frequent or were they disappearing? I tried to do it all; I shot hand-held; By leaving the tripod ballasted and in place I preserved a second angle, a likely composition should the sun return.  Alas, there were so many settings to undo when I rushed back to the tripod, that I missed the shot.
5. The first plan isn't always the best. However a bird in hand is worth two across the orchard. In the end, it's always a crap shoot.

Collinsville Company 1826-1966

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of those that are independent of your will. Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well."

Cathedral of Mt. Tom

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "The materialist, secure in the certainty of sensation, mocks at fine-spun theories, at star-gazers and dreamers, and believes that his life is solid, that he at least takes nothing for granted, but knows where he stands, and what he does. Yet how easy it is to show him, that he also is a phantom walking and working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily questions, to find his solid universe growing dim and impalpable before his sense."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I've caught myself more than once in the past few years. While visiting a museum for quite different purposes, I sneak off to look over the local collection of Hudson River School paintings. I sympathize with their plight. When is a hill more than hill and when is a picture more than a picture post card? I look at the collection for the broad landscapes. How are they set up? How do they lead the eye? How do they handle tonalities?

Only a very few possess a transcendental vision that strikes me with any force. On the other hand, most of the landscapes of the German painter Casper David Friedrich have grabbed me immediately and become instantly memorable. Their surreal quality makes clear that they are never about a particular place or time. Rather, each is a mindscape for a state of emotion or contemplation.

Friedrich advised: "Close your bodily eye so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards."

Of course Friedrich was a genius and ended life insane.

Beyond Memories

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: NOT MEMORIES

Perhaps not actual childhood
memories, though many of us had
bicycles like that one.

I frequently pedaled mine up
the road to where Mr. Chisholm had his cows,
to where we'd found amid a pasture,

in a hurst and thicket of brambles,
the monument to Major Thomas Thomas,

to where the road turned
to dirt and the fragrance
of horse sweat

and by then the sun warmed the air,
and I smelled the sweet grass,
and pedaled home to breakfast.

But it's not the memories,
but their confluence.

Porch & Blacksmith's Shop in Fog

WILLIAM BLAKE: "We see through, not with, the eye."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The escape back to autumn must be brief. The fog wasn't. It lasted all day Dec. 27th, and I visited and shot five distinct sites. Because I knew four of the sites well, I didn't waste time exploring unlikely locations. Because I make a practice of repeatedly returning to sites, I'm learning that the important things are the ones that change, and I must always look with open eyes.

I shot this with a grainy ISO of 640 to add a bit of coarseness. Processing required numerous localized contrast and gamma adjustments to give various objects the required visual weight. For me, part of the pleasure is in being able to zoom in and explore the way the vines tumble over the railings. Click on the image to get a bit closer look.

SPECIAL THANKS to Louie Middleman for suggesting the quotation from a poet we both studied when we lived in the same student digs back in Squirrel Hill, PA. Also thanks to all of you who write in periodically with a thought or a comment. These are always welcome. Happy New Year. We deserve it.

Composition in Barn Board & Autumn Leaves

BROOKS JENSEN: "For years I've noticed that I see some of my best photographs when I'm really tired. I believe this has something to do with the natural quieting of my thoughts and the cessation of the tendency to intellectualize about my images. Thinking non-thinking is the key. When I quiet my mind, it's as though I hear and see better. When I insist on thinking, my pictures look contrived."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - Old barns are a palette upon which the season's paint themselves. I've been wanting to post this particular shot since I took it several months ago. It pairs nicely with the last blog entry, not only because the literal subject is the blacksmith's shop, but because it seeks to minimize depth cues and put a bit more emphasis on the flat rectangular surface. How different the effect of this surface of very 3D leaf textures from the softened flatness cast by the fog! What do I think it's about? Lines and colors and textures and time.

(60mm, ISO 400, f22, 1/100th)

Upon Brume

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: So why do I keep returning to old barns? I suppose the most honest answer is, because they're there. I believe in shooting close to home. Or better yet, because they're still there, and I sense about them, husks that they are, deep and venerable roots. Spirits inhabit these yet, and sometimes they can be caught lurking.

This is the blacksmith's shop at Skarf Mt. I've described it before. As it turns out, smithing was a specialty of the great grandfather of the current generation. This was his shop first, and his children learned forging from him. I'm struck by how the arc of a life continues to shape the present and how it may be transformed over time.

There's that, but there's also the purely visual, the look of old wood as the paint wears and the wood ages, how it catches light or hums softly when there's little light. In photographs it can appear especially painterly. In all likelihood, some of this is wood cut around these fields and hewn on these grounds. The patterns on it's surface tell the story of seasons, of drought and flood, before there was a farm or a blacksmith.

On this particular afternoon there was also the steady patter of the rain gutters. If only I could, I'd paint all that.

Barnyard Thaw

RIED CALLANAN: "As you progress through your photographic career and experience, you learn that oftentimes you photograph from your dreams and your memories and your intuition and your background. It's not just the perception through your eyes."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Three years of wandering and regular photographing has bred practices and habits worth reflecting on. Why do I regularly return to the same sites?

The snow before the holiday was accompanied by bitter cold, but by Wednesday (Christmas Eve) temperatures had moderated. It was in the bitter cold that I took yesterday's photograph. Although I have shot Skarf Mountain Farm many times, I never saw that angle until I saw it then. What first drew me was the foreground splash of berry brambles against the cracked, aged barn-wood. The big gash in the wall was a feature to be carefully placed. The low sun caught every bit of detail in the wood and the brambles. However, in spite of frequent visits here, I'd never before seen the intriguingly twisted passageway through the barnyard just behind the brambles. How simply and elegantly it let me balance the composition. I'd never seen it that way. Under recent snow and the cold sunlight of the solstice, it was obvious. How had I missed it?

Well, for one thing, I'd never seen it under snow. There are close to two stops of difference between the ground covered by snow and the ground with its usual covering of grass and hardened soil. Under snow, earth and sky unite. I'm reminded of the first thing Freeman Patterson said in his first workshop three summers ago. "It's all about composing tonalities. Learn to see tonalities." Had snow suddenly made it a composition? I spent a long time adjusting placement, height, angle, and zoom to include or exclude various details and to shift the viewer's path through the composition. In fact, there seemed too many good options.

Then this weekend temperatures climbed as high as sixty and the world turned spongy. Naturally, having found the angle in winter's deep freeze, when I was back there Saturday I wanted to see it in thaw. Thick, even fog muffled almost everything as snow condensed to vapor. The density of the fog changed often, but visibility was rarely above 100 feet, often far less. The white snow was off the dark roof of the barns, but snow still led the eye along the ground. The scene composed itself differently. It did so instantly as I looked through the viewfinder. The barns, smothered in fog, loomed somewhat massively, and the snarl of berry brambles were no longer outlined by the setting sun, but made quiet and hung with drops of melting snow.

Looking at the two photographs side by side reminds me of a series of quick decisions I made in standing, zooming, and framing this photograph that were quite different than those I made in the freeze photo, I didn't study this one intently as I had the first, and I made just five quick shots. I was especially aware of wanting to spread out the opposing face of the heifer barn on the right where earlier I had kept trying to pinch it. It was not merely to make more background to the water droplets, but to enhance the broad shape. Shooting it this way was a bit like suddenly hearing the right chord struck on the piano. Very curious, my certainty about this shot and the urge to improvise infinite variations to the earlier one!

Barnyard Freeze

ALBERT CAMUS: "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY - The wanderer never knows where his path will lead. Yes, I believe in wandering.

I've been thinking a good deal about, among other things, how my shooting process has evolved over the past three years. Many friends who shoot "art landscapes," troll by automobile in search of good shots. From time to time I've done that as well. They drive until something photogenic appears, stop for a few minutes to shoot, and then move on. The more I shoot, the less satisfactory I find this method. The issue for me is less about finding good things to shoot. I believe good photographs can be made anywhere, though I certainly have my preferences for subject matter. The more fundamental issue is attaining the concentration to shoot well.

I return to the same places often, though I also try to expand the kinds of places I shoot. The process of returning is consistent with the notion of wandering, since the same place is different every time, and I often find new things that delight me in places I know well. It may be that in becoming familiar with the unchanging forms of a place I become more sensitive to the nuances of the moment. However, the essential trick, wherever I am, is in putting aside expectation - becoming a true wanderer - developing a wanderer's concentration to see and feel what truly engages me.

I've watched the pianist Alfred Brendel in concert. He walks onto the stage without acknowledging the audience, sits quickly, hangs his head as if continuing a meditation begun backstage. I sense this as the gathering of his focus and energy around the sounds he is about to make so that when he releases that first note he is the sound guiding the shape, flow, and accent of every detail of the music. The thought of maintaining that concentration through the bubbling and rushing river of a Schubert sonata for 30 or 40 minutes is beyond my comprehension. Fortunately, for my quite human limitations, the photographer must only seize the stream's energy once in the process of honing the composition. On the other hand, more than the turns of a physical path or road, it may be the twisting course of this stream of engagement that guides the wanderer on his journey.

I've found it's essential to leave the car. I've driven roads repeatedly and seen nothing to shoot until I finally went back and walked there. The car seals me off from all but the visual, and even the visual is greatly circumscribed. All of my senses need to dance if my pictures are to reach beyond the visual. As I begin my walk, I usually leave the camera in my backpack and shoulder my tripod like a rifle. If I have a destination and route in mind it will give way to fancy, but even as I wander from the preset trail, I won't take out my camera until something of the moment overpowers the natural wish to continue. Sometimes I never take my camera out, and I end the day with nothing more than a healthy walk. On the other hand, if the impulse to stop takes over, I may shoot at the same spot for ten minutes or an hour or more. If I stay put it means I'm wandering. Then, one shot leads to another. The more familiar I am with the site, the better I will be able to judge when to move on or where to move next to "follow the stream."

Occasionally my concentration is suddenly broken. It is a feeling akin to descending the stairs to find suddenly one step fewer than expected, and no chance to turn and climb back. However, unlike walking, where destination is the usual goal, wandering is its own reward.

New England Farmhouse

Roads go ever ever on,

Over rock and under tree,

By caves where never sun has shone,

By streams that never find the sea:

Over snow by winter sown,

And through the merry flowers of June,

Over grass and over stone,

And under mountains in the moon.



Roads go ever ever on

Under cloud and under star,

Yet feet that wandering have gone

Turn at last to home afar,

Eyes that fire and sword have seen

And horror in the halls of stone

Look at last on meadows green

And trees and hills they long have known.

-Tolkien

Orchard Solstice

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Strangely familiar yet incongruent, this dance in the orchard at the solstice. A little sugarplum fairy music please, but grotesque and arthritic. I have been enveloped in gray since Friday - this dance in the orchard taken Saturday morning - and today not feeling quite in sync with the storm - worries about bad roads and icy sliding.

I posted Thursday's TODAY'S and went to bed. Despite doubts I had about the weather forecast, I was back on the same, high hill overlooking Twin Elm Farm by 11:15 on Friday, but the lighting guy had put the big diffuser on everything and gone home.

It's decent exercise reaching the top, and I lost track of time shooting my way up. The weatherman said the storm would arrive at noon on Friday. I was bored and ready to give up when I checked my watch. He must have been giving the Twin Elm microcast? I looked at my watch at 12:04 and when I looked up I knew the white glow over the most distant hills was not strange fog but the front line of the snow. If there was an event to be photographed, I was in place, and it was chugging up Oblong Valley. I'm still deciding if there was an event.

The first thing I did was forget everything I learned last winter about photographing in snow. Shutter speed is critical - 1/30th to 1/50th in light to medium wind will keep the flakes from unflaking too much. Only against dark backgrounds will smaller, distant flakes make visible texture. Did I forget or just not switch on a very different mind set?

Gloves - right glove off will speed work if the digits don't go numb. If that doesn't work it's glove liner weather. Some good news: I've finally mastered working with the camera "raincoat." Essential equipment.

The new screen loupe fills with snow - keep it pocketed.

But in the end the approaching snow did look like fog - very even fog that fell like a scrim instead of swirling like a serpent. It shaded the deep hills behind Twin Elm nicely, emphasizing the narrow valley between them. I considered finishing and posting that shot, but it wasn't right - too muted and bland.

I kept shooting, but the hills were buried in white-out long before the pasture was white. On the way home the roads were icy and they were predicting a second storm to arrive Sunday. How to get in sync?

Saturday's photos were the best of the weekend, but the work was effortful, and the snow was back fiercely on Sunday morning right through, "Meet the Press."

The solid gray continued throughout the day until an hour before sunset. Then, without warning, the lighting guy was back with a bit of razzle dazzle. It would have been a sunset to shoot from some high hill or from the orchard, but the roads were slick, and I was engaged in a dusk shot in the valley. Sometimes it's tough to get in sync with a storm.

Folded into the Batter

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The last time I was here, autumn leaves still consumed Twin Elm farmstead. I've been sticking close to home since mid-November, shooting mostly at Misty Morning Farm and the nearby orchards. I headed this way because we had some blue sky, promising clouds, and we have reached the solstice. Daylight is hovering at 9 hours and 10 minutes and the setting sun has the best angle for lighting this farmstead.

One never knows what one will get, and I went with no preconceived plans. The clouds never panned out, but with the leaves off the trees and the soft, low light of sunset sculpting the scene, the farmstead lounged out in the valley to have its portrait made, "Olympia." If it also tells a story that seems uniquely New England, I'm satisfied.

Tomorrow they are predicting 5 to 10 inches of snow. I've checked the weather maps and I think we will be between heavy storms both north and south. If snow doesn't stick me in the neighborhood, I may head back to Twin Elm. I'll need to be up on the hill before the snow gets deep.

Fireflies

GARL RIZBUTH: "The chief aim of art is to communicate something intangible and of the spirit directly, completely, and precisely to other people, often across gulfs of space and time."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Do kids still remember fireflies? Everyone who grew up in the Northeast back in the fifties and could get away from the city remembers them. They were more numerous than stars, and even a little kid could catch dozens in a half hour. I still live in the Northeast, but I only see a few each summer now, and often they don't look well with their lights stuck in the half position. That's the way they looked when I was a kid and I woke the next morning and looked in the jar, listless and short-circuited.

This is another image rediscovered when reviewing the October Orchard shoots. It caught my attention originally too, but I put it aside for some technical issues that don't bother me at all now. How easily it came as I walked among the peach trees! - the grass so perfectly lit, the composition, everything was just there.  I made just two exposures, two distinct compositions, and I like the other almost as much as this. Because they came so easily, seemed so obvious, I moved on.  Perhaps these are fireflies of the daytime. I'm disappointed only in that the technical problems seem to be a bit exaggerated in this reduced jpg version.

Click here for Firefly Information.

Orchard Psalm

Owls 'n' Elves

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Act I, scene 1; action: After leaving the October orchard I hiked back down the hill to my car which I had left near Misty Morning Farm. I wasn't expecting to find the proscenium framed with swags and the stage set, as if awaiting players. Jane wanted to call this, "Pyramis and Thisbe." I prefer, "Owls 'n' Elves." I recall someone said, "The play's the thing." Since the viewer must supply the play, the title is also yours to invent. I stick with, "Owls 'n' Elves."

This photo had little processing. Here is a case where the use of HDR would spoil the mystery. I could have revealed considerably more of the dark forest, even from my single image. I chose to raise shadow tones only very slightly. If our monitors are similarly calibrated, when you look beneath the background arch on the left, you should be just barely able to distinguish the suggestion of deep forest. Even now I wonder if I shouldn't reveal a bit more shadow detail. If this photo had included sky, it would have needed HDR to encompass the full tonal spectrum.

But hush! Somewhere, in the darkness at the back, the first player has just entered left. Let the play begin. ...

Orchard Orbits

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!"

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: In contrast to yesterday's image, this one, I thought, suggested destination. Then again, the serpentine vine climbing up from the shadows leads in a different direction, and I thought of calling this, "Genesis," but I'd rather not push such a strong meaning onto the image. Perhaps it is presumptuous to suggest beginning or end; it is enough simply to recognize the wheeling shadows of the orchard as it orbits through space.

Peach Orchard, October 6th #2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: We are again in October's orchard wonderland. This photo more than others seems to me to suggest the start of the journey. We stand as if in a shadowed vestibule ready to enter a garden of delights. Two trees invite us in and motion us on to the sunlit area behind where more trees await. But stand a moment and let your eye explore the path.

This is a single exposure with minimal processing.

Autumn Bower

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The shady place on the bright day is the photographer's nightmare. As shooting nightmares go, this is a pretty bad one, and I post it as much for technical issues as for any aesthetic qualities it may or may not have. I had timed my shoot to be in the orchard when the low sun lit up the red and yellow vines. Shooting from a distance as in yesterday's image could be handled with a single exposure. I didn't care if detail was lost in the dark boughs of the distant trees. It was their overall gawky form I needed.

In contrast, this close-up only works if we can see the leafy vines covering the shadowed side of the boughs. Standing there I saw those vines clearly. My photograph could not encompass that range. Setting the exposure to preserve the bright leaves left the shadowed area in black gunk. Fortunately, back in October, looking ahead to taking up HDR, I made a number of images in bracketed sets.

However, processing this set of images for HDR created new problems. There was a constant wind that vibrated leaves and branches of a certain length. When I processed my images for HDR the software was unable to resolve some of this movement. Along the left foreground especially, leaves that were frozen in the individual pre-HDR images appeared multiple times in the combined HDR. You can see a bit of this remaining about 1/8th of the way across the bottom from the left corner and in the far right corner.

Even more damaging was the way HDR processing spoiled a key detail of the shot. In very bright sections the original photos showed crisp veins in leaves rendered translucent by the bright sun. In the HDR version these details were smudged unacceptably.

HDR created a few less significant problems as well. In the right corner and in shadowed areas there is more noise than I expected. This is a result of not making a high enough exposure to get the darkest tones of the image into the mid-range tonalities. I've since read that it's advisable for the left third of the histogram to be blank in the highest exposure to get the dark tones well exposed.

To resolve the problems in the photo above, I found it was possible to combine an HDR and an ordinary image, making use of the parts of each that showed details best. Most of the image is a regular, unprocessed image. I chose one that handled bright areas well. The HDR version is the source of dark areas and good transitions to the lighter areas. Using an eraser with a soft, gradient edge I removed sections of the top, non-HDR image to expose the underlying HDR. The areas of the HDR exposed are along the shadowed areas and some sections where shadow and light mingle.

It's very easy to use HDR to stretch tonalities in very extreme and unnatural ways, and it can be useful for creating surreal or expressionistic distortions. My aim here, however, was only to open up the shadows and restore what was missing. I could have brightened the shadow considerably, but chose only small adjustments. Too much HDR and highs and lows are saturated but compressed. To me such images scream "HDR."

Peach Orchard, October 6th

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: It seems a world away now. I have to look back and remind myself. Just two months ago was there really a Van Gogh (or even Jackson Pollock) galaxy of light and color in these orchards to be snapped? I hadn't expected it - the pyrotechnics - this peach orchard garlanded in poison ivy and stung by the setting sun.

This peach orchard lies on the north side of of Baldwin Hill. The land slopes so gently that it's hard to find the top, but once there I can look northeast to Mt. Tom, the next big hill. Mt. Tom is a tall cone of rock. Baldwin Hill is a broad, fertile dome. Much of it is planted with old orchards. The apple orchards are at the top and descend down the eastern slope, but there is an open view southwest as well, thus the shots of the apple orchard backed by setting sun. The land has been farmed there since the mid 1700s, and the same family still runs the orchards.

In early October I was pretty much splitting my time between shooting here and at Hilltop Pond. The first of those pond photos were taken about when this was shot (1), (2), (3), (4).

Apple Orchard Friday

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I've been working with high dynamic range processing (HDR) for almost a week. HDR isn't new, but it's new for me, and it is changing the way I look and see as a photographer. Whether HDR leads to more literal representation of what I see is my personal choice, but it does permit greater fidelity between the world seen and the world photographed.

I shot this image on Friday. Last Sunday I would have passed it by. There are more than 8 stops of information in this image from the darkest pixels to the lightest, far more than film or digital cameras can record in one image. (Five clean stops of light is about the best one can expect from current DSLRs. After that the top starts losing saturation and the bottom gets noisy.) As one brightens this exposure, the sky loses all detail long before the foreground tree gets any. Nor is it just that detail is lost. Even in situations where the dynamic range is less extreme, over-exposed sky quickly bleeds into dark areas. This would spoil the crisp texture of branches in this shot.

To make this image I shot multiple images at shutter speeds ranging from 1/20th of a second to 1/5000th of a second. My goal was shots that encompassed the darkest and lightest tones and filled out a fair sampling of the middle. The software suggests shooting two stops above and two stops below the correct exposure. In fact, this picture required more to encompass the intensity of the setting sun. I checked the trailing lines at both ends of the histogram until I saw they had ended in all three primary colors.

I've found orchards, unless on or surrounded by some pretty steep hills, to be especially difficult to shoot. I photographed in the neighboring peach orchard through much of the fall. The grotesque contortions of the branches, the trees' neat rows, the foliage, fruit and flower all appeal to my photographic tastes, and, except when the winter wind blows, they are beautiful places to walk. At the orchards on the top of Baldwin Hill especially, the dance of the fruit trees wants to whirl in partnership with the sky, and often the best skies lie close to the sun. Until this week, I looked at such scenes with the knowledge that my image would be mostly silhouette. Knowing I can put detail into the shadows lets my camera enter new worlds.

Apple Orchard Sunday 2

S.T. COLERIDGE: "Those [winds] which mould yon clouds in lazy flakes."

Apple Orchard Sunday

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I walked today, but the lighting guy had closed up shop and gone home. Sometimes it's like that. The last good shooting day for me was Sunday. Although the sun broke through only occasionally and weakly, the clouds provided interest, and after using up the last of the subeams at Misty Morning Farm, I threw myself recklessly into the orchards on top of Baldwin Hill. Of many experiments, the husky alto of this music seemed to suit the moment.

TECHNICAL - Some time ago several friends recommended high dynamic range (HDR) processing. After shooting this I began fooling with the software. To use it, one needs images shot at different exposures. This image is about as good as modern cameras can record in the situation above. Where the sun breaks through the image is overexposed, burnt out, the pixels have been blown away. At the same time, where the trees are in silhouette the image is underexposed, there is not enough light, detail has been lost.

I've been preparing to shoot HDR for some time, taking three images to preserve detail at both ends of the histogram. I wish I'd shot this for HDR to see what I could have done with the finished image. On another occasion I might have chosen not to shoot in such unpromising light, but somehow, on Sunday this silhouette seemed right, and I'm not sure HDR could have gotten closer to the mood.

This is best viewed full screen. In fact, zoom in and you'll see the exposure was carefully calibrated to preserve much of the shadow detail.

Misty Morning Vegetable Garden, Nov. 29, 2008

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Saturday was a dark day with mighty clouds that hovered but never pounced. The bite of winter was in the air, and the dark season had digested most of the landscape. I set out more to walk and get my daily exercise than to photograph, but as I reached the bottom of the pasture below Misty Morning Farm, the landscape began to awaken. The swampy lowland between Misty Morning Farm and Dyer Farm offered welcome colors and textures though no shots yet. Even occasional, "theater lights," didn't make a picture, but on another day the pond behind these swamps might offer eye-catching reflections. I made note.

I'd never been to the bottom of this meadow, though I'd considered it last winter when it was covered in snow. The rewards seemed not promising enough then to justify the difficult trudge in snowshoes to the bottom and back; the hill is so steep that I thought the barns, set back at the top, would be hidden when I got to the bottom. Even in the spring it was too soft to walk comfortably. Now that the ground was frozen, I was scoping it to plan if/how I might shoot it when the snow returned. In fact, the barns were out of sight from the bottom, but there were other opportunities further up where rooftops and gables came into view, and I slowly wound my way back to the top exploring all the angles.

When I'd had enough I headed out for the rest of my hike. On the way, I passed the vegetable garden. The last time I was here colorful baskets full with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and squash lay beside rows of old leaves, stained and sunbeaten but green. The last of the Misty Morning's bounty was being harvested.

Gotham Lights

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: There are so many ways of inhabiting the past, in New York City especially, so many doorways to slip through, and a moment later I find myself in another time. I'm still pulling from photos created earlier this summer. This one was snapped quickly on a hurried walk crosstown in Manhattan. I was with my daughter and it was beginning to rain, so this journey was especially quick. She almost didn't have to stop as I snapped two images while only half hoping the results would turn out. I don't recall setting up my tripod on the busy sidewalk, so my hunch is the shot is hand held, and the EXIF data tells me I shot it at 1/13th of a second. Amazingly, I see only a tiny bit of vertical movement, and it adds to the effect. Zoom in. Look around. If you've brought a few matches, sit back and light up your Meerschaum.

Today's attack in Mumbai makes escape to another time seem especially appealing. Keep steady. Keep faith.

Spider Galaxy

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY:  

The sheet web spider lives, we say, upside down.
He hangs beneath, injects with poison, those who land above.
He pulls them down to devour them raw.
But who is to say which one of us is right?

Buy the Sea

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: The change in the weather has kept me in, and I've been looking through images from old shoots that I'd marked for possible publication on TODAY'S. I have culling process, but good shots sometimes get left behind. I wanted to see what was there. I'm sure some of you may be looking at this and getting ready to write that I should discontinue this excavation immediately.

None the less, I persist. I like this especially now that I've forgotten where it was taken and what those are? I could look up the shoot, and it would say, but I've decided I don't want to know. My best thought on the matter is that it was in some musty, wharf shop in a remote fishing village up the coast of Maine or maybe Nova Scotia, or perhaps its from the trip to Holland I wanted to take but didn't.

Why do I like it? It's the colors and shapes, the textures, the balance, its tensions, the patina of age, a bit of mystery, unspecified ironies, elves. It's probably curable.

Water Color

CORRESPONDENCE: In response to yesterday's post about viewing images on your computer, thanks Larry and Melissa for these suggestions:

Larry: "For viewing your pictures, I use either ACDSee or IrfanView. But, just for spaces sake, I convert them to jpgs via Vue Print Pro."
He confirms that both programs let you see your image full screen and with all the menus and scroll bars gone?

Melissa: "Using Firefox 3 and TURNING ON COLOR MANAGEMENT is a huge improvement on a PC especially (but MAC too) when viewing photos. http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html is one site that gives some info."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: I carry so many things now; perhaps I should carry my own duck.

Absence of Duck

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Yesterday I received a note asking, "How would you like your pictures to be viewed?" At first it seemed a funny question, and I wasn't at all sure what my correspondent meant. As it turns out, he'd spent considerable time with several of my images and was asking about taming his monitor to see them better. He was really asking what software I used. His question is well-timed since this image won't look like much against normal bright clutter of most computer screens. Since the question of proper viewing is so important here, I thought I'd share the suggestions I offered him.

Alas, he's Windows and I'm now firmly Mac, so if anyone has any WIN suggestions or additional tips, send them to me, and I'll pass them along. These suggestions are not for the photographers in the group, who probably have solved much of this, but for general viewers. Easiest and most important suggestions are offered first:

1. Check the lighting around your screen. Often it is a compromise designed for the various things you do around your computer. Desk lights and nearby windows sometimes glare and distract. Pull down the shade. This fix is free.
2. Some image viewers permit resizing photos to fit the screen. A photos composition can rarely be digested in pieces, and any good photo has good reasons why it begins and ends where it does. More on these viewers in a moment.
3. Do anything you can to clear away screen clutter. Most people don't realize how distracting all those scroll bars and menus are until they find software that lets them view an image against a solid background, preferably, I think, a dark one. Macintosh includes "Preview" "iPhoto," and "Mail," all of which accomplish both #1 and #2 in the various contexts in which one works with images. "Mail" is especially nice in letting one view any emailed image full screen.
4. Although it's essential to see images whole, some photos reward zooming in. The jpg images sent have limited zoomability, but you'll often find surprises you missed before you zoomed. Did you notice the abundant water drops on these birches? Zoom in and they are an important part of the image that you would have enjoyed in a good print.
5. There is a standard for monitor color. Calibration to that standard is the toughest issue to solve. Doing it properly requires expensive hardware and a bit of know-how. I use a Huey (WIN and Mac available) which not only calibrates my monitor but resets but resets it every time room lighting changes. Most importantly it gives me images where true whites and grays have no tint. Most won't want to spend for Huey. However, there are some web sites that offer free tools. Spyder, another maker of calibration hardware has some free virtual tools at their web site that will let you see how far off you are and tell you how to make some no cost fixes. (Another calibration site)

Fen Suck'd Fogs

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: When I was back at Hilltop Pond last week, the color had mostly blown away or crisped to brown. Low clouds floated over the hills and a thin mist rose from the still water. However, this shot seemed to me to come from someplace even darker. It could easily be the blackness of the words Shakespeare chooses in next quatrain of sonnet 73 to image darkness overtaking "twilight..."

Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

How smoothly those words slide from the tongue! However, the words that came to mind and that title this image are from the curses Lear hurls at his daughters before he rushes out into the storm. Although I seek no such vengeance on anyone (at least none who aren't in office), I am amused at how observant of natural processes is this furious invocation of deities that Shakespeare puts in Lear's enraged speech.

When Yellow Leaves

...or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
-Shakespeare (from Sonnet 73)

PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 has always seemed to me one of the most haunting and sublime songs in the English language - the futile rage that concludes the first quatrain, the black hush in which the second ends, and the just resignation to ongoing process of the third. The sonnet returns to me each fall about this time, and on days like this its polyphonic strains are a likely accompaniment as I shoot. I believe it is much more important that I find the tempos and harmonics of a place than find the shots. If I'm properly tuned, the shots appear.