Wired for Photography, Blue Rocks No.3

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I reached Blue Rocks even before my Lunenburg workshop was set to begin. Arriving in town early, I found the B&B not ready for guests and began my explorations. It was drizzling when I threaded my way along Herring Rocks Road to the dead end. I was a bit surprised to find someone out there already shooting photographs from a tripod. I waved hello, and we kept to our solitary ways. As I shot, occasionally more cars reached the dead end, took in the scenery, and turned around; it was Sunday; everyone was on holiday. Then, I noticed another photographer setting up a tripod. As we momentarily engaged in a bit of photographer fellowship, comparing favorite lenses and cameras, a couple drove up and a woman began looking intently and opening up a tripod. Was this some sort of photographer's mecca? I patted myself on the back for sniffing it out so quickly.

Well, of course, the truth was that all of us were enrolled in the same photo workshop. When you reach Lunenburg, and the B&B isn't ready, if you're a photographer you head east toward the water. Doing so, one will eventually reach the dead end of Herring Rocks Road and the wharves.

Catching Sunrise, Blue Rocks No.2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Beyond The Lane there are no structures between the road and the ocean, only the blue rocks that give the area its name. The road dead ends at some piers with an open bay and the sea beyond. Although I spent little time photographing from the rocks, under the right light they are a rich slaty blue and run in ridges parallel to the shore, clearly a photographic target for some future visit. To successfully photograph them one must get both sun and tide to cooperate. What might they look like under a full moon?

Air Mariner, Blue Rocks No.1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The fishing shacks & cottages that perch on rocks along the ocean's edge in Blue Rocks range from the quaint to the idiosyncratic to the totally outlandish. I went over the hump onto tiny Herring Rocks Road. It hung out over the edge of the bay and then threaded its way between a cluster of ramshackle sheds. The majority of the shacks lie between there and The Lane. A small island, hardly more than a band of rock outcroppings with soil on top, encloses a tiny harbor and wharfs, and shacks straddle the harbor from both sides. At low tide it is an especially rocky affair with wharves perched high on stilts.

Rainy Night, Lunenburg

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - My intention was to wake before dawn and shoot in the early light. I'd set my alarm and closed my eyes early. That had been my habit whenever possible in my travels. It had never been my habit to wake at 2 AM to go out shooting in thunderstorms. I'd barely napped, but if the rain persisted, sunrise wouldn't be worth shooting anyhow, and I was out the door.

The truth is that after I took the photo on yesterday's blog, later that night, Lunenburg was watered down by a drenching rain. We were all in the common room working on our final assignments, and reluctantly I decided not to go out. I was deep in preparation, but the missed opportunity nagged at me. I was hoping there would be one more big storm. Be careful what you wish for. I didn't expect it then.

I've had several inquiries following the last two images wondering if they were HDR or what special techniques were used. In fact, I did nothing special unless using a tripod constitutes, "special." In fact if all you have is a point and shoot, you could have rested it on the hood of a car and taken this shot or yesterdays. If there is a trick, it is in learning to see places where surfaces reflecting a bit of light will glow under a long exposure. The shutter speed for this shot was 102 seconds but that let me keep a deep focus. The aperture was f22. I thank Neal Parent for pushing me to explore low light photography.

As my camera will only time exposures to 30 seconds, I carry a timer, but I've found that I can come pretty close counting in my head. Since there's only a stop of light difference between 45 seconds and 90 seconds, being off by 5 seconds in my timing means I'm off by less than a tenth of a stop - insignificant. Besides, there is a certain amount of guesswork in a shot like this. I know I will have to blow out the highlights in the street lights. The question is, by how much? One can only experiment. Digital makes that easy as feedback is immediate.

I should add there is a special time in the evening or at dawn when the sky is bright enough to illuminate exterior surfaces, but not so bright as to drown out the lights behind the windows. Yesterday's image was made at that special time as was New England Farmhouse.

I often worry about the redundancy of images. If two images are redundant, it seems to me neither has quite made its point. I was puzzled by this pair until one of my workshop colleagues suggested this might work best as a monochrome. I think she was right.

Entering Lunenburg

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The only road out of Blue Rocks eventually leads along Pelham Street through the middle of Lunenburg. The intersection of Pelham and King Street seems to be the commercial center of the city and a vital counterpoise to the shipyards and harbor. Once a center of ship building and home to a large fishing fleet, the activity is much diminished though not gone. At one point while I was there, three large tall ships were anchored in the harbor.

Time has settled on these two communities so as to open a particularly wide window on the past. While encouraging tourism and promoting its history on many public signboards, Lunenburg has kept honky-tonk to a minimum and the architecture is largely preserved. It's an architecture enriched by the community's ship building history. Has anyone studied this phenomenon along the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, the degree to which the cross-fertilaztion of shipbuilding and home building enriched the inventiveness and fantasy of domestic architecture? Blue rocks is arguably even more fanciful though cobbled together with little craft.

One could spend weeks photographing details in either place, but my bent is a more direct kind of time travel, trying to find a path along the streetscape between the here and now and the there and then. I had a special sense I was on that path as I came over the first hill into Lunenburg, that some hint of ancient commerce floated above Pelham Street that evening. I stopped at the next street for this photo. Perhaps I caught some hint of the ancient salt air.

Lighthouse

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - Blue Rocks seems more like a collection of shanties and shacks left high and dry by a retreating tide than an actual place entitled to a spot on a map and a name. However whirled about it is, it solidifies here at what seems like a crossroad. It feels like a center, though what it might be center to remains in doubt. A couple of houses down, one branch ends at the water, and two branches end as dirt ruts. The store is gone. The only real road from here is the road back to town. I drove past here at all hours, and once I saw a couple of children playing in the street, but most of the time not a soul was about. Of course it must have been a thriving community of fishermen once, and somebody still keeps the lights on from Sunday to Sunday.

Lobstermen's Sunrise

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Please redirect lights away from your computer monitor, or turn them off, and look at this image before reading further.

The sound, what there was of it, was gulls and crows. At 5:20 AM they were already disputing rights to the highest peak in the neighborhood. A tribe of gulls had recently claimed a lobster shack next to where I had set up my tripod. They were jostling for position. Occasionally one of the gulls would sermonize or sound off or the crows would scuffle, but mostly it was all wing flapping. One might miss the pickup trucks that drove out onto a nearby common wharf at ten or fifteen minute intervals. From them lobstermen, singly or in pairs, would cross the dock, stop and chat, then descend with lunch bucket to their dinghies. Then they'd paddle off and disappear among the anchored lobster boats. In a bit would come the soft purr of an engine and soon the boat would appear, and its spreading wake would momentarily rock the harbor. This is lobstermen's rush hour. The harbor was again quiet when I made this image. The gulls, having established pecking order on the nearby roof were already heading off one by one to colonize and re-fight the same battles on some other roof.

*****

"Keep it real." It was hardly what I expected to hear from someone who photographs dreams and nightmares and beautiful, inventive, and sensitive abstracts, who creates dreamy montage overlays, jiggles and pans while shooting, and who promotes all manner of experimentation. How could I make sense of this advice in relation to the body of André's work. Later I asked, "You don't really believe that, do you?" and he said, "No." But I wished I'd asked differently. André's comment occurred following a discussion of HDR, and I wondered if it was a reflection of his own uncertainty regarding the newly popular technique. He complained about the cartoonish look of HDR, but later showed a demo HDR that was completely realistic. "Keep it real," was a surprising comment. I can't recall any other bit of prescriptive advice in one of his workshops. It has always seemed to me that one of the pillars of Freeman's and André's workshops is that any time anyone says, "This is how to do it," one has an obligation to try to do it differently. Now suddenly such a broad prescription, "Keep it real."

In the end I disregarded the comment, but in part, perhaps it reflects the difficulties in adopting new procedures that significantly alter shooting and processing habits. It may be as difficult to begin seeing and shooting and processing for HDR as it is to start seeing and shooting and processing for jiggles, multiple exposures and montage techniques. However, there is another aspect. André spoke of the cartoonish look of some HDR images. For me the danger is that there is an HDR look which is often indiscriminately applied to all images; it is something I try to avoid. Ultimately, I can't make much sense of, "Keep it real." However, I take comfort in discovering that someone whose aesthetic beliefs are as fully considered and established as André, still struggles with the conflicting roles of photography, a medium that asks to be used to grab realistic moments from the continuum of life and that opens itself to the careful, hand-wrought and formally organized expression of painting.

Wharf

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - On Jiggling
One of the first points Freeman Patterson made in the workshop I took with him and André Gallant some years ago was that a photograph says as much or more about the person doing the photographing as the subject being photographed. On Wednesday we were asked to jiggle which has nothing to do with hips and thighs, and everything to do with how to guide the camera through an eighth of a second exposure that effectively makes the camera a tiny bit like a paint brush. Jiggles, pans, multiple exposures, montage overlays, shooting weird reflections are some of the techniques offered that effectively subordinate objective reality to subjective expression and got everyone in the workshop clearly talking and shooting in the same language.

Of course every workshop I've ever taken has been about making your photography more "expressive." Usually one learns a few strategies for composing or catching expressive images and sees lots of examples to emulate. Beyond that, you're on your own. Only in one of Freeman or André's sessions would you find everyone out in front of the B&B jiggling their cameras at otherwise unexceptional bushes. The result is workshops that get everyone photographing more freely and that open new paths to self-expression.

I know that the very best to be said of the vast number of my jigglings might be that they were, "unexceptional," and everyone accepts a high rate of failure in this. One of my images almost works. Had I known when I took it what I know now after seeing it on my computer, I would have stuck with that spot and maybe made it right. However, some of my workshop colleagues succeeded in creating images of great beauty and surprise, and André has produced a body of magnificent photo images in this manner. We saw one framed and matted and on its way to a gallery in town; its beauty sticks in my mind still.

So why am I unlikely to begin jiggling again regularly any time soon. I think that's true of other participants in these workshops, though I know several who jiggle still and with much success. Those who don't may feel some guilt as I did. Is it insecurity that keeps me from adopting the new techniques? I don't think so.

For one thing, as André confided, one must set out to jiggle; while seeking images to jiggle it may be hard to see other images. It's the same as when I photograph bugs or water drops among the weeds and become become blind to the roll of the hills. Also developing an eye and a hand for jiggling takes time and practice. One must commit to such a path. Of course if I see some curvy wrought iron stuff like the stuff that gave form to my, "nearly successful" shot, it might lure me to begin jiggling, and I'll probably look for some good side light on the swamp maples at Macricostas to pan or jiggle the way André did in the framed image he showed us. I may have a future in jiggling yet, but perhaps to jiggle or not to jiggle is not the question. The path of every expressive photographer is to find his own voice and articulate it clearly. Perhaps the real value in these strategies is that they break any link to photography as documentation or to photography as imitation while encouraging experimentation toward forever rediscovering and epanding one's expressive potential. The image above is not jiggled, but I find much in it that I recognize as my own, consistent with other images on this blog; and yet that stripe of green is definitely new.

Morning Comes to Consciousness

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Lunenburg lies across the neck of a rocky peninsula on Nova Scotia's ocean coast. A single road leads out onto the headland to the tiny, fishing community of Blue Rocks which sits perched on ledge as far out as one can build. The center of Blue Rocks is marked by a crossroad with an old, wooden church, but beyond that Blue Rocks is little more than a collection of piers and shacks, a handful of small homes clinging to the rock at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Roads branch from the Blue Rocks Road along low ridges, then turn to dirt and then to ruts with grass down the center to provide access to a scattering of small, vacation houses and fishing shacks on the various small bays and along the northeast shore, but nothing lies further out on the low-lying, rocky headlands than Blue Rocks.

We woke around four AM on the first morning of the workshop and were at the end of Blue Rocks Road before sunrise. One of the joys of this workshop was the energy and seriousness of purpose of everyone in the group. It's hard to believe that when I shot this we barely knew each other.

I set my tripod up on a tall flat rock to get as much separation as possible between the lobsterman's motor boat and the bit of island behind it. The land beyond is part of the headland and encircles a shallow cove. Lobstermen use small boats like this to get to the fishing boats which they anchor off shore and take to the open sea. We'd seen the lobsterman leave shortly after we arrived, and one of my workshop colleagues made a great silhouette of him walking along the dock with his lunch bucket. I almost didn't notice his boat passing in the background of this shot ten or fifteen minutes later. In a few minutes the sun will appear behind these rocks. Low clouds blocked much of the sunrise, but two of my colleagues got stunning shots anyhow. Another great joy of workshops is seeing the shots I didn't see.

Lunenburg Panorama

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I arrived in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on Sunday, May 24, after photo explorations that took me to Jonesport, Maine, and across the Canadian border into Campobello. I photographed the lighthouse at the eastern most tip of the U.S.. After three summers of site scouting along Maine's coast, I'd finally reached the top, and I'd become familiar with fishing villages and other features at the tip of each peninsula. I crossed the border to Canada in Calais, a name which the locals pronounce like the numb, hard spots on my feet. I reached St. John, NB, late in the afternoon and ferried to Digby, Nova Scotia, docking after dark. I finally arrived in Lunenburg the next morning to begin a week long photography workshop with André Gallant. The best way for me to resume my journal is to reflect on that workshop.

I find taking at least one photo workshop a year to be a wonderful way of pushing myself into new territory, and challenging habits and beliefs that guide my picture taking. In a good workshop participants become aware of the aesthetic values and sensibilities of the instructor and are guided by them. In the end, one encompasses, makes one's own, what is harmonious to one's own sense of direction and purpose, but that is a lengthy process.

There is no shortage of competing photography workshops in New England to choose from each summer. I had taken a workshop with André and Freeman Patterson previously, the first workshop I ever took. That experience with André and Freeman combined with my interest in visiting Nova Scotia to make this workshop my overwhelming first choice. Anyone with an interest in creating art photography should look for a chance to take a workshop from André or André and Freeman together. Who better than André to guide me to the best fishing villages and other riches along the coast of Nova Scotia? And it was the right time for me to reengage with André's aesthetic and benefit from his sharp eye.

How can I put into words the subtle effect this week had on me? Am I even aware yet of its true impact?

The most tangible fallout is that it has led me to shoot panoramas, not that panorama shooting has any measurable importance in André's work or thought, but he showed us the way to stitch panoramas easily in Photoshop, and how could I not want to make my own panorama of Lunenburg Harbor? This is about three-fifths of the full panorama I shot. Even so, the cropped original of this jpg is still 20,983 pixels wide, though this copy is only 1280.

Most of the considerations for this panorama were technical rather than artistic, though every decision is ultimately an artistic choice. Except for color, it is essentially like the famous panoramas of New York harbor shot from Brooklyn more than 100 years ago. It has no special reason that dictates where it begins or ends, and only enough water and sky are included to set off the shoreline; the weather is generic; the time was chosen to accent with shadows. I debated whether it belonged in this blog at all. One could thoughtlessly go on producing similar panoramas of many waterfronts. especially when they can be easily viewed from across some bay and at enough distance to avoid dealing with the effects of perspective.

Never-the-less, my love of using my long lenses to flatten architectural forms into simple, clear compositions was teased and challenged by the possibilities of shooting this way. Prospects such as this always pose hard questions about where to begin and end, and the possibility of deciding later, thoughtfully cropping on a clear computer monitor instead of through a tiny viewfinder is tempting though also a bit unsatisfying. It avoids essential questions such as how to best make use of the long form compositionally and how to compose landscapes in the long form that integrate and lead the eye through foreground and background meaningfully. Throughout my travels after the workshop I kept trying to study this question, to see inside a different box. I'm also intrigued by the way panoramas complicate normal expectations of time and space in photography; the same person may appear repeatedly by moving into each frame, the space behind me will appear in front of me and soon repeatedly if I rotate far enough.

In any case I can't deny the amazing visual power of images such as the one above, the way it offers a sense of omniscience, and its automatic authority in documenting the life of a city. It's with good reason I saw almost identical panoramas of Lunenburg on sale in stores around town.

Hay Wagon

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

At the top of the stair
I was slapped by Spider Light.
Complexities resolve
To effortless geometrics,
Commanding the eye
Like the rose window
At the end of the cathedral nave
Where the organ point reverberates,
And like the inside of a fiddle,
Resonant and lithe.

Only later did I notice
The flying hay wagon
In the attic air
Like the lost chord,
Last vestige of
Kuerners working the land
Of root clinging to rock and earth.

So obvious and so enjoyable was the "vaulting" of the barn that it was awhile before I gave any attention to the wagon, here, on the third floor. I wasn't expecting it. This bank barn burrows in two full stories so that the hay wagon can be driven in here and the hay unloaded where it's dry. Hay is dropped left and right to level 2 for storage in the haymow and piled two-and-a-half stories high. Later it can be dropped again to feed animals housed in "the crypt" below or to reload onto wagons waiting down in the barnyard. Here, at last, farming still carried on by Kuerners. Betsy's hay lies somewhere below.

Karl J. Kuerner has done some beautiful paintings of this space. One of them, "Unloading Straw," is on his web site.

Spider Light

Tattoo

The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there -
Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.

There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.

by Wallace Stevens

Over the Mow

KARL J. KUERNER: "The way I really came to understand hard work was to make hay with my grandfather. He drove the tractor while I threw bales on the wagon for my father to stack. Grandfather never slowed down to accommodate me. After he was gone, it was even worse. Dad drove and I had to load and stack."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I didn't reach the third floor until very late in the morning. Perhaps I should have taken time earlier to explore the building fully and to construct a mental image of its layout. It will require a return trip to think about and to reconcile what I know of the inside and the outside, but my approach to photographing here was more immediate. I stopped whenever I thought I saw potential for an image, and I never knew if something better lay ahead. My only goal was to move at a pace to permit shooting on all three floors before we quit and to try to move at the resonant tempo.

Looking at my interior and exterior shots now, I realize there are parts of the building I never saw, never figured out how to reach. On the other hand, and whatever the results, my seeing was always fresh, every step was an adventure, and I avoided the perils of returning later to search for a position and a shot that had resonated deeply on first approach but had vanished now. Cook when the fire is hot.

This flight to the third floor is not directly above the flight from first to second. I wish I knew why. I like the homemade hand rail on the left of the stair and the sheer drop on the right.

I took an especially long time in the stairwells; I suspect four distinct light sources is a photographic rarity. Two are obvious in this image. A third is behind us, a bit of glow from deep in the barn and of no consequence here; there is a fourth source behind the stairs, through a door to a room with an incandescent bulb that radiates amber light onto a wooden ladder half hidden leaning against the wall and casting a shadow noir. I made a number of images that tried to contrast these last three distinct light environments, especially the way the white light from the window met the golden universe of the bare bulb.

So many possibilities to compose! So many ways to lead the eye! I took my time, but eventually I could no longer resist the pull of that attic space, my ultimate destination for the day. Gene Logsdon ends Wyeth People by noting that Wyeth, "paints people who have learned this basic lesson of life: to endure. He paints endurance. He paints eternity." Was that what I was doing now, trying to walk through a bit of Wyeth's eternity? Where would it lead me? What might I find?

Betsy's Hay

from "WYETH PEOPLE":
"I tried to tell her [Betsy Wyeth] about my excitement in finding the subjects Andy had painted.
... 'But aren't you disappointed?'
... 'Not really. Everything is usually smaller than I thought it was from the paintings, but I enjoy seeing how he edited out all the stuff that would have weakened them.'
... She smiled. 'Well, at least, after that, you won't say Andy paints like a camera.'"

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: It is early spring. Out the window Kuerner Hill has recently turned green, and the hay mow is, understandably, nearly empty. It's clear that what farming occurs here now is just to provide for the few animals on the property and the livestock of a few neighbors. This is actually, I think, "Walt's hay," as the name on the front wall suggests. Betsy's hay was an even smaller pile to the left. At least here is a spot where real work is still going on.

I shot this too quickly on my way to something else. Had I been more patient I would have made one more exposure to clean up some of the shadow detail. Thirty seconds is a long exposure, but to get two stops more brightness for the next exposure, in the sequence required getting the pocket timer from my backpack and lingering two minutes more. I'd been doing it all morning, but somehow I didn't believe this shot would please me as much as it does, and time was precious. The pressure to rush must always be resisted; let the right brain lead.

Kuerner Hill

GENE LOGSDON: "The whole [Kuerner] farm was like a museum of Wyeth paintings cleverly concealed by reality. It was delightful hunting them out."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: In the great barn the spirit of Wyeth was always elusive, just out of reach, even as it was omnipresent in light and textures and in my thoughts. Like many barns, the second floor opens over the barn yard in a large Dutch door so that stored, hay bales can be dropped onto waiting wagons. The door is flanked by windows, and all stare eternally at Kuerner Hill. It is one of those views familiar from many Wyeth paintings and drawings. as is the view back the other way. Wyeth may have only rarely sketched the barn, but he sketched from it, perhaps taking a bit of shelter in the winter behind the Dutch door while he drew Kuerner Hill.

In the Nethers

KARL KUERNER, SR.: "Andy spends a lot of time over here, painting. We don't pay him any mind. We let him alone. That's what he needs. To be let alone. To know that we don't care how long he stays, or when he comes, or when he leaves. He could just as well be a rabbit coming and going. That's what he likes."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  When we arrived at Kuerner Farm Tuesday morning there was a red pickup in the driveway. Although we worried that it might be someone who would try to countermand our mission, fortune was smiling. We quickly discovered that the pickup belonged to Karl J. Kuerner, the grandson of Karl Kuerner, Sr., Andrew Wyeth's surrogate father and friend. Karl J. is a painter who learned to draw as a child, "watching Andy," and studied painting with Andrew's sister, Carolyn. Karl was happy to answer our questions and talk about art, and soon he was showing us through the barn and then showed us how to close up after he left.

Beyond the red door we passed between horse stalls into a deep, crypt-like space forested by columns. At the front and side of the barn, light poured in though several windows but barely seemed to penetrate the shadows. At the back, where the barn was dug into the hillside, a yellow glow came from a bulb above a steep, narrow stairway. How could I help but imagine Andrew Wyeth on his first adventure here perhaps as many as seventy-seven years earlier. Even though Wyeth rarely drew the barn, I sensed his spirit among the cobwebs and, I'd like to think, lurking in this image.

Karl Sr's spirit was quite evident everywhere. Karl J. writes of the, "No electricity needed here...stubborn independence that marked the Kuerner's 75 years of farming." Karl Sr. has been portrayed as a hard-working individualist who lived a utilitarian life and prided himself on his capacity for labor-saving, home-spun innovation. We'd already caught a glimpse of how he harnessed the underground spring. Most working barns are practical, make-shift affairs, added on to and altered as needs or crops change. Barns are studies in "form follows function," and Karl had made sure his barn was as functional as possible.

Kuerners' is a bank barn, a large one. The lower stories are dug into the hillside. At the back wagons can load hay bales and grain directly to the two upper floors. Inside, the arrangement of spaces was filled with surprises. It was clear it was the result of a careful plan integrating vertical spaces with horizontal layout. Making sense of them would require a longer visit or an expert tour, but I'm sure it's all geared to what needs to be where at which season. Various chutes and ducts seemed to have been added or altered as practices changed slightly. What was the adaptation that scooped a bit of daylight onto the steep, narrow stairs. Light was a necessity there before electricity. On the other hand, extra space for stair wells and in some cases stair rails were an absent luxury. I could imagine someone lugging an awkward bundle down the stairs and how a rail might make that impossible. Few bundles are lugged now. Hay bales are stored, but no cows are milked now and the dust has settled.

Later we visited Karl J. at his home, just behind Kuerner Hill, and I especially enjoyed his clean sense of design and the thoughtful characterization in two of the portraits I saw there.

Kuerner Stable

KARL KUERNER SR (quoted from Gene Logsdon): "This place is, well, like home to Andy. It IS home, by golly. Andy and me, we've known each other a long time. My land butts up against the Wyeths' over the hill across the road, and the Wyeth kids played around this farm from little on up. I raise my Brown Swiss cattle, grow a little oats and hay for them. My son and I work together. We mow grass and trim trees and such for people around here. I don't farm so hard anymore. More money in taking care of estates."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL "Following the Footsteps of Andrew Wyeth - Kuerner Farm, Part 1": It had been drizzling on and off all morning, big drops that felt as if they came from the trees, but we were in the middle of the field and trying to make the most of limited shoot time. We shielded our gear with towels and endured. I've been treading the footsteps of Andrew Wyeth again. Thanks to my friend Gary and access provided by the Brandywine River Museum, the two of us have just spent several days photographing in and around the Koerner House and other sites in Chadds Ford, PA.

Kuerner Farm is where Andrew Wyeth reached adulthood as an artist. He became part of the Kuerner family and the land. Among his best works are the "soulscapes," he painted here. One could certainly never stand and photograph one, nor would I ever want to try.

Gary and I were still in the upper field, once an orchard, when the rain picked up. We headed for the only open door, but I stopped first to shoot the Kuerner house behind clusters of yellow flowers, wet and glistening in the grass; so Gary arrived at the stable first and dryer. When I got there he was already shooting, peering over gates into stalls and passageways toward depths in the base of the Kuerner barn that had been dug into the side of the hill. Three more stories of barn were above us. It was an immense structure.

In the picture above most of the barn is in front of me. Behind me is the old milking room where Wyeth painted "Spring Fed." The great stone trough is still there, still filled from the underground spring which flows when the faucet is turned. At the foot of the trough the bucket is still perched upside down between the wall and the pipe. The windows are more as they are in one of Wyeth's sketches. Other sketches suggest this was not just the milking room but also the room where animals were slaughtered and butchered. In several Anna is seen busy, cleaning the milkroom. In a final watercolor, there is just a single window through which we see Kuerner Hill brightly glowing and the bull standing by the barnyard wall. In the final tempera, however, we are looking into another room, through more windows with bull and Kuerner HIll proud in the background. However, as I looked through the actual windows nothing lined up and a pile of farm refuse was in the outer room.

The facts of Spring Fed mostly remained but I felt none of its spirit. It was the barn itself that called to both of us. For the next hour we made images peering into the shadows of the lower barn, a place where time seemed to have stopped. Whatever lay behind the red door, for now it barred our way.

The Brandywine River Museum and Kuerner Farm

Waller Under Spring Clouds, April 23rd, 2009

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The barns of Waller are venerable. That's as simply as I can say it. Unless I'm preoccupied or totally insensitive I can't pass here without feeling their power. How long it took me to understand! They are so quiet now; they barely whisper, and twice a year the fields are hayed. Are the barns also in retirement? I like sharing in their quietness and their testimony, and it can't help but influence the kinds of photographs I make here.

The barns are great hollow shells. Inside, empty cow stalls remind us that this field once reeked of cow manure and urine, that it was often mostly mud. Or, more likely cows grazed on the uphill slopes, and this flat, rich land was planted with corn. One of the barns is a tobacco barn. At some point tobacco grown here supplied the prized wrappers for which Connecticut was known. What did farming look like when the American Revolution stirred within some of these walls? But even without their pedigree, the barns themselves are a venerable presence. It's in the wooden clapboards that hold their volume. They anchor the north end of The Great Hollow, one of the few places that a visitor from the late 18th century might almost recognize.

Others have noted that photography is 25% preparation and 75% luck. From two hills over, at the orchard on Baldwin Hill, I could see a patch of interesting cloud forms, and I calculated that the lake or Waller Farm might be, pardon the expression, ground zero. It's usually futile to chase clouds, but this felt right. I had to pass the lake to get to Waller. I rushed because the clouds were moving. Coming down the road from the left I saw my chance, parked, hoisted my pack, shouldered my tripod and took off across the field. Because I've shot here often, I knew where to stand to make the barns fan out across the field while putting the klieg light at the back. The first two exposures were a quick HDR set, just position, zoom, and shoot. I had time for five more shots and the clouds were gone. As it turns out, those last five shots were just wishful thinking. Fortunately, the first exposure was spot on, and I worked up two versions, one using the single shot and one with the HDR set.

A few other images made at Waller Farm:
The Hollow
Clarion Call
Peeking In
The Other Side
Colors of Winter
Waller Farm
Inner Space
Behind Inner Space
Composition in Triple Time
Barn Dance
Unarbitrariness
Window Faces

Hillside

HENRY PEACH ROBINSON: "A picture should draw you on to admire it, not show you everything at a glance. After a satisfactory general effect, beauty after beauty should unfold itself, and they should not all shout at once . . . This quality [mystery] has never been so much appreciated in photography as it deserved. The object seems to have been always to tell all you know.. This is a great mistake. Tell everything to your lawyer, your doctor, and your photographer (especially your defects when you have your portrait taken, that the sympathetic photographer may have a chance of dealing with them), but never to your critic. He much prefers to judge whether that is a boathouse in the shadow of the trees, or only a shepherd's hut. We all like to have a bit left for our imagination to play with. Photography would have been settled a fine art long ago if we had not, in more ways than one, gone so much into detail. We have always been too proud of the detail of our work and the ordinary detail of our processes."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: It's not of great importance, but this strikes me as an odd composition. I thought so when I framed it. What is it that makes a photographer take a stand at a particular spot and compose? Jane wondered why I didn't jump the fence. Well, I'd already been shooting those barns from the other side, and I was surprised at the way they turned up in an odd place with the big fence hogging the frame. Now that I see it, what I really like is the objective, offhand point of view. Does it suggest a moment in passing? The rational mind wants to take aim at the farmstead; make a picture about that farmstead. This composition interests me because it gets past that prejudice of the reasoning mind. It splits our attention. Two roads diverge...

It all depends on balance, I shot two versions. The rejected version placed the large post further right so it became a frame element; it made the all-too-diminished farmstead became the subject of the image. Here the fence post occupies prime real estate at the "thirds" position. How odd! And it leaves us with choices. The angled fence leading to the too-important fence post opens a second path, and it's no longer just about the farmstead. I'd have liked a bit more mist rising out of the Shepaug River valley just this side of the last hill. Maybe I'll watch this spot until it happens, but by then the horse will have moved.

Whan that Aprill, with his Shoures Soote

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:    At long last, here is spring, still tender and whispering, the first blush enhanced by overcast skies. Correspondents have for the past few weeks hinted, urged and cajoled for images of Spring. The photographer is limited by what the landscape offers. However, what began in the swamp is now climbing the hill. For me, not even Fall can surpass the delicacy with which Spring paints the hillsides, but the changes at this season come as a relentless surge; one day the trees are all Seurat, the next day they are Van Gogh. Fall can wash away in one good rain, or it can drag on for weeks, but spring always marches through, and the photographer who wishes to make the most of the season must watch and plan carefully. No good dawn is to be wasted. Some days I shoot both dawn and dusk. For some Spring is a time of pilgrimages, for me it is a time for vigils.

TODAY'S PHOTO - Lower Plunge, Early Spring, Late Afternoon

Maeve Benchy: "Life is never dull if you know where to look."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Much of the time, especially in the "off seasons" when the landscape is drab, I set out on a walk to see what images I can make. In March and early April, everything is beaten down, and often the best shots are taken close up, or I return home having found nothing worse than a good walk. Then again, I welcome any time of year when my view can stretch out to encompass the grand landscape.

Where better than Plunge Pool. Really a series of five pools divided by beaver dams, the trail down to the upper pool is relatively untraveled but not so remote as the 4 lower pools. To reach the other four pools one must balance on logs tossed across a stream and cross over the first beaver dam. The logs have decayed badly over the winter. At the far end of the first dam one must cross two additional channels to reach the trail on the other side that leads back alongside pools 2, 3, and 4 to the last pool. Last week the dam could not be crossed, so I went in from the other side.

This approach is equally remote even though Pitch Road goes directly through the lower pool. With each season more of Pitch Road is under its water, but I've never seen a car even where the road remains open. Nor is it a pleasant stroll over the road's ruins which start long before one reaches the pond. No place in the vicinity has such a feral feel. The pond is a gaping wound consuming forest as the beavers tend their dikes. The beavers, the ducks, the Canada geese took over here long ago, but it is the wreckage of forest that makes it so forbidding. Root balls tipped as the forest fell are bathed in the rains and dried in the sun until they turn brittle and white. Along the shore fallen hemlocks stripped of their needles loom like the rib cages of felled animals. Everywhere the ground oozes as the broth warms.

I've been coming to Plunge Pool for many years. It's taken this long to figure out how to order the enormous complexities of the place into an image. It's a matter of getting to know the players. There were more of them in past years. I've finally realized that the cluster of dead white pines that hug the shoreline in the center back of this picture give the place its grandeur. If grandeur is the goal then all else follows from this. The dead pines must be visible to the very top. Because I know the place well, I've discovered where the best supporting characters can be found and which ones will be most useful in deepening the picture space. Of course there are many more images to be made here, but late on a sunny afternoon, this is the place to stand if you want to watch the slow power of time. It's been raining for two days. I'm eager to get back here and see how it will look when it is full.

Here are images of the lower pool made in 2007 and previously published on the blog: 1, 2, 3.

Surface Tension

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Even in a small pool the very slightest whisp of air will set the surface of the water moving long before faint ripples appear. The specks on the water are tiny, drifting barges that give away the motion of the pool. In a fifth second exposure (as above), unless the surface is absolutely still, one sees their trajectory rather than their form. I waited a long time before the pond stopped rocking and the spring flotsam came momentarily to rest.

I've been visiting Emerald Pool almost daily for the past week. Unlike the earlier photos, this one was taken in mid-afternoon so the lily is back lit. At first glance the transparency of the lily pad may make it appear otherwise, but the photo's focus is the backlight that reflects off the rim of the leaf, off several bits of floating matter, and off the bead of water that usually forms where the leaf fold bends the pond broth.

Migrating birds follow the stars. Tuberous lilies, deep in the mud, seek the sun. Where does body end and mind begin? How infinite the forms of spirit!

Self in Christina's World

Searching Wyeth's Footsteps

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: How many different qualities of light can be caught in a single image? It's not the first time I've thought of Vermeer while shooting in Wyeth's footsteps. Wyeth, himself, raved about the light here.

The shot is a serendipitous rediscovery from last summer's adventure rummaging in Christina's World. In this hallway the shadows were dark, and the highlights were bright, and the camera couldn't encompass the difference. Even though I wasn't processing HDR images back then, I shot the required steps and briefly contemplated doing the laborious cut and paste in Photoshop. Then I forgot about them until I stumbled on them Monday night. HDR is much quicker and achieves better results.

An interesting article on Andrew Wyeth

Unfolding Spring

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: On NPR this week I learned that migrating song birds, not only travel by night, but that they navigate by the stars.

Aroused,
thrust through dark mud,
tubers,
subterrestrials,
touch and probe
their bottom empire.

Then,
folded and furled,
tucked and pleated,
infant tissues
spiral out,
unfold in spring waters.

Lily pads,
they seem so simple.
Origami nightmare
to put them back,
or redirect
their solar collection.

Pond Musk

MINOR WHITE: "Sequences originate for me from some hidden place. Though I habitually play photographs against each other, or words against images in pairs, triplets, or rows of four with expectations of magic, sequences originate from within. And I prefer to let them. In fact I cannot seriously do otherwise than photograph on impulse and let whatever words will, flow spontaneously."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: What has been wiggling at Emerald Pool? Since my last visit the ice has completely melted, and here and there ragged, rubbery pads have been poking up through the surface and spreading out. Beneath the surface shoots and stalks stir the broth to cloudy life, while down in the murk tiny things scurry. Still no peepers here. We decorate nurseries with pretty flowers to flatter the eye and fill our yards with crocuses and daffodils, but throughout nature conception is a messy affair that begins in the dark mud. To find the start of spring I prefer to look for it there.

On Thursday morning I stood from 10AM to noon shooting things beneath the surface. Bright sun poked unevenly through the rim of trees occasionally spotlighting things deep in the water. I was in position when the right wind cleared the path for a beam to brush this bouquet, and I clicked the shutter before the same wind churned the water's surface.

March Meditation No.2

GUEST DIARIST: Ah Spring! The translucent ice has melted on Emerald Pool. The snowdrops are blooming in the yard. The skunk cabbage is popping up along the roadside amid the sand of winter. The day lilies are showing signs of life. The water of the Shepaug, like the water of Great Falls, is washing away the rotting leaves. Spring, Passover, Easter: times of remembering and looking ahead - a new beginning!

From the Haggadah:

"Were it our mouths were filled with a

singing like the sea,

And our tongues awash with song, as

waves-countless,

And our lips to lauding, as the skies

are wide,

And our eyes illumined like the sun

and the moon,

And our hands spread-out like the

eagles of heaven,

And our feet as fleet as fawns,

Still, we would not suffice in thanking

You, Lord God-of-us.

For those that sow with tears, with joy

will reap.

Walks-on the walker crying, bearing

the sack of seed;

then comes the comer, rejoicing,

carrying his sheaves."

--Jane Roth

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: "Emerald Pool"! To call it a pond seems an exaggeration. One must bushwack through forest to get to the shoreline except for where a remote trail leads by one side. To people it's not much use. Why is Emerald Pool here? I have no idea - an idea of foresters or beavers, perhaps? To the west the land falls off in an area known as "the boulder field" where one scrambles over stones as large as refrigerators and box cars and the forest grows in the crevices. Maybe the pool is merely the result of a dimple in boulders covered over and clotted with dark mud. As forsaken by people as it is, it is a meeting place for all sorts of animals who share its cool waters. It seems even more animal-friendly for being so small. In the summer it is where deer and great blues, frogs and water lilies, beavers and water striders meet.

It is in this remote spot that the last of the season's ice is just giving way to spring; as if right here the season was on the edge of tipping, the last of winter melting into the pool as the earth's axis positioned itself for spring. Even as I watched the leaves of 2008 swallowed by the dark mud, I also knew that shoots deep in the earth had begun wiggling. If I return the next time the sun shines, I may hear peepers.

March Meditation

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT: "The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - I was at Emerald Pool a week ago. It is a small pond, deep in the woods, and ice along the banks had not yet let go of winter.

A Paneful Composition

EDWARD WESTON: "My eyes are no more than scouts… the camera’s eye may entirely change my original idea, even switch me to different subject matter. So I start out with my mind as free from image as the silver film on which I am to record, and I hope as sensitive."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - Perhaps this car image is redundancy? ...it is, I promise, the last of the series, but the image accompanies an observation or illustration of the mysteries of photographic seeing. ...and besides, I like it.

The process of the shoot took me steadily closer, first in the driver's window, then through it, closer until the grit on the dashboard nearly scratched my chin. "Noir Technicolor" seems to represent the optimum for sharp focus on both the steering wheel and the dash grit. Leaning closer, the soft focus grit made "Farm Noir." The car door was stuck; I couldn't lean further in; I thought I was done.

I gathered up tripod and camera to climb down from the culverts on which I was uneasily perched, when a flash came at me as if out of the corner of my eye. I was just pulling back lens, head, tripod - - - I had been in just this position near the start of the sequence, shot unsatisfactorily and moved on - - - but this time I saw it in a new way. I had a sense as if gears had suddenly meshed, and I knew that the car and I could travel. In yesterday's shot I had caught the logic of the things: steering wheel, dash, and through the windshield with it's wonderful shades and shapes. The gestalt had shifted now. I saw a rhythm of forms, flickering planes that were previously concealed. I was in sync with a different reality and knew just where to put my camera to balance the composition. Why had this shot been invisible fifteen minutes earlier on the way in? The light seems not too different.

The photographer's job is always to refine and simplify the complexities in front of the lens. However, much I may work on this consciously, the simplifications require changing eyes. Noticed or not, new images only form when the gestalt shifts. It is the practiced spirit behind the singer's voice that shapes & characterizes the sound; the photographer's eye must become like the singer's voice.

To make this composition work in the exposed image it had to be processed differently, not for contrast but for greater evenness of tone. The eye must be able to move easily from the driver's window to speedometer gauges, and on - from shape to shape. The viewer's eye follows a very different path here than it did in the noir images, and the outcome is different as well. Is this composition more abstracted than the noir images?

Noir Technicolor

WALKER EVANS: "The meaning of quality in photography’s best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system; ...our overwhelming formal education deals in words, mathematical figures and methods of rational thought, not in images."

ARISTOTLE: "You should never think without an image."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Stop. If you've looked at this picture and haven't seen the word, INTERNATIONAL on the dashboard, you might want to go back, turn down a few lights around your computer monitor, and get the image as close to full screen as possible.

There now...

Before posting, I always consider the danger of redundancy. Often exhibiting two slightly different versions of the same basic composition suggests neither of them is quite right. I post them both in order to consider their differences. However, if forced to chose I would pick this.

A number of people wrote to say that they liked "Farm Noir," but that it seemed unlike my other photos. It's not the subject that's new. There are other car shots on TODAY'S; it's a subject I return to from time to time. What's different in "Farm Noir" is the immediately recognizable, cinema, blue-gray, soft-focus wash of stylization. One can argue whether "Noir Technicolor" is really noir at all; "Farm Noir," leaves no doubt. Making such literal allusions has never been something I do.

Jane and I have been watching a lot of Film Noir lately, and I was consciously enjoying the noir ambiance as I shot seven distinct compositional groups of shots. So why is this the shot of choice? I think mostly because this is more true to what drew me to shoot here. Before I began shooting, I liked the high-contrast lighting on the steering wheel, it's noir possibilities. I liked the control HDR tone mapping would give me to reveal clearly just enough shadow detail down the dashboard, another noir effect. However, those things didn't draw me to shoot. Rather it was the wonderful windshield splashed with the late-day sun, a backlit, abstract, firecracker of a mural framed by the dashboard. This shot makes the most of it.

Having said that I prefer "Noir Technicolor," others are, of course, free to chose differently or reject both, and I'm delighted that I can keep both.

Farm Noir

MAXWELL BODENHEIM: "Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Every old, working farmstead has at least one old, rusting truck ready to drive me off into a 1940s sunset. Some of them have stories attached, but most are mute like this one. Brent, often full of stories, shrugged at my inquiry. "Gee, Grampa's International's always been there." I returned last week to discover he'd removed the Weber barbecue that had been snuggled into the passenger's seat for almost as long. It couldn't have happened at a better moment; the light was perfect.

Even by published standards for decaying farm vehicles, this one is a prize. There is much beyond what I photographed here. Where exterior surface remains unrusted & uncrusted, it has patina that ranges from cranberry to custard but which is mostly variagated slate. Where it has not been colonized, the finish is sometimes as smooth as egg-tempera paint. But much of the old International is teeming. The swooping fenders are a cornucopia of multicolored lichens and rust. Since the light is pretty good for much of the afternoon, one can compose these elements into compositions for hours. But best of all, the setting sun shines directly into the windshield. That's great for shots like this, but it also creates a glancing light across fenders and sides that is image dynamite.

The light pouring through the windshield was irresistible, and the window on the driver's side was long gone. I set my tripod there, by the driver's side door. I wanted to get close, but debris made it difficult. It took me awhile finally to get this close. Alas, as the photo shows, even at f22 I was too close to keep both wheel and windshield in focus. Sometimes a technical flaw is a compositional virtue; does the soft focus dash suggest the view of the last groggy driver, slumped on the wheel, opening his eyes momentarily, shortly after his last accident?

Rabbit Hill, Winter, 2005

WALKER EVANS: "When you say 'documentary' you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive the word. It should be documentary style because documentary photography is police photography of the scene of a murder. . . .  That's a real document. You see art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I'm called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction."

WALKER EVANS: (from a wall label for an exhibition of signs and photographs of signs): "The photographer, the artist, "takes" a picture; symbolically he lifts an object or a combination of objects, and in so doing he makes a claim for that object or that composition, and a claim for his act of seeing in the first place. The claim is that he has rendered his object in some way transcendent, and that in each instance his vision has penetrating validity."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: March is the time of dead land. Change is in the bud and cracking up through the hard earth, but the ice is not yet melted, and the buds are tight shut. I strain for the least hint of color and wait for the warm rain. Tentatively I am crossing my fingers and hoping my dungeon labor at the computer is done. The backup genie seems satisfied for now. Enough! One more photo from 2005 suggests the mood I can't quite throw off.

I spent all of today shooting on Rabbit HIll where brisk wind drove the patchy remnants of tired storms over the hill. Later in the day breaks occurred promising, "theater lights." I scoped and waited. The sun frequently bathed next the hill south and later lit the hills north, but there were only thirty second when it fell on Rabbit Hill. An inky track of impenetrable gray gloom moved all day long over rabbit hill stopping the sun.

The photo above shot in January of '05 has never been shown before. Until recently I was bothered by the position of the wires. My compositional aesthetic is more reminiscent of painting. I don't seek a documentary style. Then again, the sense of moment is acute enough here that I've come to find this more documentary-style composition quite intriguing. Best seen, like the previous TODAY'S, full screen.

Corn Grater

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - Three Maxims

My daily dungeon labors subvert all new photographic work. I hike and shoot as often as possible, but I do so knowing I must return to a stubborn and ill-tempered computer that balks at transferring almost 170 DVDs to new hard drives. As each folder of photographs is transferred I must move the link that ties it to my catalogue so that notes and keywords will be preserved and no images lost. For reasons I don't understand the transfer process devours much of my computer's power, so other work must be curtailed. My guru tells me to imagine a new Macbook. My son has been telling me to upgrade for years. All this stress and loss of work time is necessary for my backup genie to keep pace with the backup task. He won't stop nagging me until I'm done. Until then I must fight for every bit of concentration and know that I will have no time afterward for processing new work.

This photo was made the same morning in 2005 as Winter Burn. The contact sheet is always a record of consciousness. The first exposure of the day was taken on top of Rabbit Hill at 8:45 AM. It was a day of both making and taking. It appears that I stopped my car in two places and walked and shot a bit in each location. I made a number of exposures before the sun appeared dimly, but wind and snow forced me into the car at 8:58. I tried shooting through the car window. I took one "Impressionist-like" shot of whiteout before moving on.

Twenty minutes after reaching Rabbit Hill I was off the hill and shooting beside Lake Waramaug. Winter Burn was taken at 9:12. In fifteen minutes I made 26 exposures comprised of an initial exploratory group and 4 distinct compositional groups. That's very fast work, even hasty. The contact sheet is always a record of consciousness and sometimes of unconsciousness. My fitful wanderings show my struggle. The best shots in the set had compositional issues that might have been avoidable at the time of capture. Exposures were perfect. Seeing was imperfect, and it wasn't the whiteout.

By 9:29 I was back at the top of Rabbit Hill and shot this image. I think it was Atget who made the point that the hardest part of photography is knowing where to stand. This shot isn't as simple as it may seem. The fundamental idea is just that this strange sun should be of a certain size and in the center above the snow-blown tract. The corn field is a force field. If one walks along the edge (or had I greater wisdom or fortitude then, down into it) and keeps the sun centered in the image, the most important change will be in the angle at which one looks down the cornrows. How quickly and in what direction should the cornrows lead the eye? They are a bit like the rhythm section in that - how best to make the tempo harmonize with the background hills? How to let both set off that frozen fire.

Today I wouldn't be satisfied with this shot without walking the walk along the edge of the field and shooting along the way. Often I won't know what "the best place to stand," is until I've passed it. I snap as I go, each shot, hopefully, a refinement or improvement on a previous one. I never know what the scene will look like until I get there. Back then I was new to landscape photography, and didn't appreciate the importance of this last maxim; I was in the approximate right place. I took just three images. They reveal some of the details I was struggling with. Then I moved on to the Scottish highland cattle, covered in snow in the woods across the street.

Winter Burn

MINOR WHITE: "Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I took this photo during the first snow storm of 2005. Back then I was still a bit nervous about being out on the roads at the storm's worst and wasn't sure how much snow abuse my equipment could suffer. I knew enough to realize the sun was worth experimenting with, but I had no idea how powerful it could be in the finished images or how to properly expose for it. I got lucky, but had I known then what I know now, I might have spent the whole event at the top of Rabbit Hill and never driven down to the lake.

By the time I got there the snow was falling again and the sun was still trying. I stopped the car determined to make a solid effort at shooting, even though I hugged my car like a security blanket. If it were today, I would pull into the lot by the state park and walk, as I do on clear days, until I saw shots. I would have been relaxed and taken my time and known what I had when I went home. Back then I shot, excited by the beauty but convinced something even more spectacular must be happening over the next hill.

In spite of myself I made a few shots that day that I've often returned to, but this and one other taken a few moments earlier were milestones when I shot them. I've decided it's time to reinterpret this one in a new, finished image. The hardest part is getting the whites right. Too light and the sun loses impact. Too dark and the mist and snow can no longer be accepted as filtered and shadowed white. I've also removed branches from a tree that intruded from the side.

The image was used as the cover for the Winter, 2006, Washington Art Association Seasonal Bulletin.

First Lights

WALKER EVANS: "Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: It is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is defining of observation full and felt."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I did succeed with a few of the images I shot into the sun with my old Nikon 4300, but it was always a compromise. Without a tripod the only way to reduce lens flare was to angle the camera further away from the lens than I really wanted. The result was to reduce the wattage of the grass.

This is the most successful of the grass images taken before returning to 35mm SLR format. It was taken at the north end of the Macriscostas Preserve in September of 2005. When I took this, I knew I had a future in grasses no matter how sinful shooting into the sun was. Three months later I purchased a Nikon D70 DSLR (suddenly regretting all the Nikon lenses I had sold a few years back), and the great file swelling began.

Meadow Gold, Macricostas Preserve, 9/9/06

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  I spent much of the summer of 2006 standing in Macricostas Meadow shooting images into the sun. It was a summer of meadow textures in preparation for a fall show. Even before attending Freeman Patterson's workshop in Shamper's Bluff, New Brunswick, I had pointed my lens toward the sun, but I did so guiltily and went back into the woods. The images I made were more swiped than composed. As expected, the images were filled with lens flare, but the little, hand-held Nikon 4300 I was shooting with left little chance to shield the lens. That December I returned to shooting with a single lens reflex camera and bought a hat with a wide brim.

My last morning in Shamper's Bluff, right after Freeman's workshop had ended, he invited me back to his gardens. For the first time all week the sun came out. After using the best of the morning light making compositions from the textures with early sidelight, I began packing up. Freeman suggested I go to the foot of the hill and shoot back toward the sun. I stayed and shot from there for an additional hour or two. Freeman had validated what I'd wanted to do, and I shot into the sun shamelessly.

Meadow Gold is but one of many photos made at Macricostas Preserve over the summer of 2006. Such backlit meadow textures were a significant addition to my photo palette and a favorite way of shooting even today. Throughout the summer of 2006, Macricostas provided an ever-changing variety of shapes and colors as layers of plants kept unfolding, throwing shoots and buds, blossoming, and going to seed. Each stage brought its own host of insects and the activities of the birds changed with the seasons. Every few days the show changed as I continued to look for new ways to shoot the same fields and new things to shoot in them. 

Looking back now I realize how important the experiences of that summer were. There were few barns that summer, but I'm still wading into grasses.

Freeman's Meadow

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I have several reasons for changing the name of this not quite daily scrawl. First, "journal" more accurately reflects the way I have come to regard these pages; a place to jot down thoughts and musings of many kinds that flow from weekly shoots. No change in content: recipes, reports and ruminations from my photographic odyssey. The name change comes now to leave a mark that here the hard drive failure has led me to review old files and take stock. Where has this odyssey traveled?

I came out of the woods in the spring of 2005 - gave up mushrooms, tree toads, and indian pipe for the openness of the meadow. When it happened I was standing at the edge of an old pasture shooting toward a bolted-iron windmill out in the field. As I set up the shot - stone wall, vines and branches leading the eye to the windmill - just then the light changed and there was a Monet moment that fired up the branch. Thereafter, walking the tall grass I saw painterly textures of all kinds, many more than I had seen in the deep woods where there's no room for the light to spread out.

This photograph was made in the gardens of Freeman Patterson the following spring (2006). The painterly textures of the meadow have been drawing Freeman's lens for many years. In the fields that stretch from his house down to the loch in New Brunswick, he has encouraged a wild meadow of myriad surprises. The sun rises early behind his house and sets far away across the water. The meadow produces an ever changing palette from which he makes photographs of great beauty. As students in his workshop we were lucky to be able to play in his garden. I'd completely forgotten this photo and was pleased to rediscover it this week.