The Old Mill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  "A Day at the Mill, Pt.1":

I used all my powers to persuade the man to let me photograph the old factory sheds.  I followed him into the building as I made my case until we stood halfway down a long basilica-like space where a trailer served as his office.  The sheds come together at odd angles and were encrusted with rusted barnacles of past operations and promised a funhouse of adventure. He explained, the new owner had hired him to clean up.

He was alone, one man in a space the size of several football fields and loaded with equipment, some rusting and dead and some that looked like it must be the rummaged booty of failed corporations now dissolved and bankrupt.  The ceiling was leaking and the floors were greasy. He warned, "Gotta watch out for falling glass." In all directions the room seemed to disappear into shadows. There were places where stairs disappeared below the floor into darkness that I would never dare to enter.  Was that part of his job?  I also saw other dark doorways at grade level and off of catwalks high in the rafters.  I hoped he had a big crew coming. He considered my request slowly while he told me about other places he had worked and things he had done. He didn't seem at all busy. "Sure," he said finally, "you can shoot."  

W.A.A. Award

I'm pleased to announce that in the recent juried show at the Washington Art Association, my photograph, "Made in America" won 2nd place and a cash prize. Information about the show can be found at: http://www.washingtonartassociation.org/exhibitions/membersshow/thewinners/

Downstream

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Upstream Music

Upstream, 

rivers 

begin

as 

raindrops. 

They fall, 

splash, 

gather in puddles, over

flow into rills 

and creeks, 

runnels and freshets,

minnows and frogs,

beetles and waterbugs,

scarabs and butterflies, 

they tumble down cataracts, 

cascade along brooks and bubbling 

streams that wind through woods and meadows before 

becoming rivers surging white in spring rains, racing, spilling over 

waterfalls, 

where they pause.

In deep pools where trout lurk

they carry on the fugal singing

ever downstream

or along the gulf stream

or upswept

in an airstream 

in fogs and clouds and drops of rain

born at thirty-two feet per second per second.

As they fall they gain momentum

surge and coarse through

the industries of our kind

and whirling gusts 

in the maelstrom of

whatever's next.

We are their children

and long to honor them

as we desecrate their shores.

Rimmon Falls on the Naugatuck

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  

Nawkatunk

The first settlers 

followed the tracks 

the native people used

that followed the river

they called, "Naugatuck."

It was the easy way 

through wilderness boscage 

where native people hunted and fished 

and where settlers soon built mills, 

developed expertise in brass and copper

and later rubber, 

and where imaginative people 

built what they imagined. 

When railroads shot up the valley 

like vines up a sycamore, 

opportunity drew laborers

sprouting families, churches and schools, 

social clubs and selectmen, 

societies and brotherhoods, 

sisterhoods and neighborhoods, 

unions and country clubs,

parties and alliances,

relationships that helped communities 

endure and thrive.

Huntington, Birmingham, 

Ansonia, Humphreysville,

Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, 

Mattatock, Thomaston, 

Wolcotteville, and Winsted became

the towns that made the world's copper and brass.

Along the river by Rimmon Falls

in the time before the settlers,

near where the brass mills used to be, 

its told, 

there was "this old tree," 

"Naw-ka-tunk,"

in the native tongue,

a sweet place in the shade

prized for good fishing.

Watch Your Step

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

Move to the Rear

Watch your step, 

Move to the rear. 

Hold on to the hand rails 

when stepping up or stepping down.

Please keep your bags out of the aisles. 

Don't crowd.

Let departing passangers pass.

Watch your step getting off. 

Move to the rear.

Good Ol' Jack

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Would you buy a used digger from a raked gasser like that?

For the New Year No.2: Sweetheart

Beth Slater Whitson:  "Let me call you 'sweetheart.'  I'm in love with you."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I guess this series is devoted to the many ways our cars become us.

Remembered in Goshen

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  It was probably sometime in 2010, wandering in Goshen, when I discovered this farm. It was no longer in operation, and I spoke to the owner about his plans. There were men running earth movers in this field, but he said he intended to continue farming here though he lived elsewhere. He gave me permission to walk the property and photograph. He told me about the crumbling graveyard in the middle of the field behind me, and though I went back several times afterward, I never saw him again.  The detailing on the barn was crude, but I liked the bold proportions of the two cupolas, like no others I've seen. Because overstated, they work especially well in silhouette. The lower level was flooded, but the owner told me he hoped to save it.  When I went by this fall all the barns were gone.

I could have removed the power lines from this image and have done as much in other images, but such wires are a common feature of farmland, and I liked their relation to the local pole beside the barn. Was it put there in 1914 to bring the first electricity from the new Housatonic power grid in Falls Village. This was a family farm, and from the rambling sprawl of the house, I suspect it encompassed several generations. Usually I know something of the history of barns I photograph, but I know nothing of this one, and now it's gone. I must make a pilgrimage to the cemetery to see if the names are legible now.  

I can still hear one photo instructor asking me why I bother to take such photographs. I dunno.  I just do. Perhaps it's just for the record.

For the New Year

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  It's hard for me to believe that I've been making entries to this blog for a full six years, that this is the 973rd photograph I've posted.  My sole aim when I began was to challenge myself to a program of self-improvement by  committing to post a new photo daily (at least every third day) and to try to make each photograph better than the previous one.

The role of this written journal has evolved. It has always been a place for me to leave notes to myself and to record thoughts on photographic issues and to discuss what happened on the shoot.  More and more it has become a place for me to react in an expressive manner to the photograph posted and often to try to make photo and text speak as a whole.  The first draft of "Prison," was composed in these journals, and at least since then it has come to feel like a kind of failure when the text portion is less ambitious than the visual.  That new challenge has slowed down the production of new postings and has often played an, arguably, improper role in the picture selected for the day.  To remedy that, I resolve to forgive myself for more frequently posting a picture without any journal entry.

I will also recall that, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," and will forgive myself in advance the foolishness of my excesses. I will repeat Blake's words thrice daily to inoculate myself against the arrogance of foolishness.

A final issue occurs to me regarding this blog.  The daily stream of photographs created by a blog has its own story-telling rhythm. It is totally unlike the experience of looking at images in an exhibition or in a photo book.  Daily posting is less tolerant of images that rely on their context with other images to exert their full meaning.  By posting a single image at a time, every image seeks autonomy.  That's part of what makes producing this blog a valuable challenge for me.  However, as in the images shared from travels, and as I look toward books, I sometimes feel the need to post supporting images, images that fill in a bit of background to the larger story.  If in the future I make more supporting posts, the test for posting on the blog remains to try never to post an image that I would not enjoy framing, hanging, and looking at on my wall.

Many thanks to all those who look and/or read sometimes, all the time or from tim to time, and especially thanks to all those who occasionally send word to tell me what they thought about or especially liked or would like to see differently.  So begins year seven.

Just in Case of Owls

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  It was our friend who spotted it there on the branch of the hemlock just outside our bedroom window and called us.  Living in the woods we hear them sometimes at night, and occasionally they swoop across the road as we drive up the valley, and it's hard to be sure who is more startled. Even then, daytime sightings are a sign of turmoil and are brief. I've never seen one stopped, waiting. An owl here? ...perched on a branch three feet from where we slept? We were spellbound, whispering. It was more than impossible; it was portentous, worthy of Poe. Then I remembered the pair of cardinals that had been pestering the glass at our bathroom window and nesting there a dozen feet away, easy prey. 

Regardless of any deeper meaning, this was a two-gallon owl and a clear photo op, but to catch the image I had to shoot obliquely through a thermal window.  Light was low and exposure settings were extreme.  The owl seemed to feel safe even from photography on the other side of the murky glass, though once or twice it looked our way.  After shooting as best I could through the window, I decided to go outside and walk around the house to where the owl was perched, but before I could get within fifty feet, I saw the great pointy wings turn slantwise and launch between branches into the deeper woods and then vanish like smoke as if the bird had been a sorcerer all along.

Shot, as it was, through thermopane, I didn't expect much from the image, nor is it a technique I'll look to repeat, but I wouldn't mind having a thermo-optic filter in the kit just in case of owls.

Nocturn

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Wherefore?

Blacksmith's Shop in Winter

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The solstice brought snow reminding us that the holiday season is suddenly here whether we feel ready for it or not. My day began when Jane nudged me to consciousness and said, "Look, how pretty!" as she looked out our window at the snow-trimmed hemlock and our felled oak, coated in snow. 

I shot this image of the old blacksmith shop in January of 2010, after another light snowfall.  I wonder what marks three more winters have left. Photographs track me like footprints along a path that has so far led from cow tracks to train tracks in a search to photograph secrets and beauties where I live.

Brass billets have been piling up in Waterbury while the extruder has been out of commission, but the outlook in the factory is good for the new year. That's good for those who work there and good for making photographs.

Viridescence 2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

The Sea Turtle

Color, light and melody glide

beside oblique arpeggiation.

Preparing the Charge, No.2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Photographing fire has always seemed to me a tricky thing to do and rarely fully satisfactory. Photographing it here, where soot-coated walls suck up all ambient light, gave me special difficulty. I'm at ISO 1600, f/1.8 and a shutter speed of 1/60. Without further processing in Photoshop the fire is blown out, and everywhere else details are buried in shadow. Willy was mostly in motion, so I set my focus point to the scrap, copper tubes. This is another of the images taken the first time I witnessed the charging of the furnace. Here he is heating the initial charge to a precise temperature. The second time I saw the charge, I arrived too late to catch this part.

Today I went back, hoping to catch the ritual blaze again, but the best guess now is that the initial charge of the furnace will be tomorrow or Saturday when I can't be there. No matter.  I spent  three hours in the powerhouse. 

I believe I have now done serious shoots in every important interior space of photographic interest that I've been able to find at both the Waterbury and Ansonia campuses. How many buildings is that? Most of these spaces are unused. Some are abandoned, but I've posted few photos from them.  I'm not sure why I reached the powerhouse last. It is rich with potential still. Shooting there makes me think that I have arrived at a milestone where I can begin to assess the scope of what I'm about and plan a bit on how to continue and what the end production might be.  Each of the abandoned spaces will be a photographic adventure in light.  

Today, just as I was leaving the powerhouse, the low, winter sun came around to the front of the building and shines through the tall front windows, and how it shines across a wall of gauges and knobs and across large engines that cast monster shadows in one of the two three-story spaces in the building.  I know I also need a dark, overcast day to shoot the adjacent, three-story machine room beside where steam boilers used to hiss and roar.  I need to think about each space in relation to seasons and sunlight.  I need to focus on exteriors. I need to talk to Wally who knows some of the history and how everything works. It's time to plan.

The Charge

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  This week they are again rebuilding the furnace inside the foundry. I hope to be back then to catch a repeat of the ritual shown here.

The first time the furnace is restarted after any repair is a photo event.  The first time I saw it, I didn't know what to expect.  When the big shower of sparks began I was too close, the wave of sparks flew by too quickly, and the exposures I had guessed at were overwhelmed. I shot with the bucket in profile, but the light of the pour was huge, and the dark bucket form was uninteresting.  I readjusted as best I could, but there was no time to move to a new angle.

In a blog entry of that event on March 18, 2012 (http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2012_03_18_archive.html) I described the charging process, but I had missed my "money shot." I shot good images of Willy and Lucio preparing the metal for the charge, but none of this dramatic moment.

This image is from October 4th when I got my second chance.  With my camera set to ISO 500, f/1.8, and a shutter speed of 1/125th, I chose to shoot from behind the crucible as it poured. It had been the least likely choice. From this angle the crucible blocked the pour but also blocked the glaring shower of sparks that erupts, and reveals the striking silhouette.  What I had not counted on was added light from windows behind me that helped illuminate foreground forms and which let me relax exposure settings beyond what is possible further inside the gloom.