Cloudy Afternoon at Peakéd Mountain Farm, No. 3

SUSAN SONTAG: "photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs - especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past - are incitements to reverie."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Larger than the Clouds

And so in one afternoon
the clouds moved
through many moods,
and I danced to
the southwest corner of the field.

As the sun neared the horizon
the spaces between the clouds became
larger than the clouds,
bales tumbling in the layered troposphere
on over Washington Depot and into darkness.

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Earlier photographs of Peakéd Mountain Farm:
Cartwheeling Rumble
Making Hay
Above the Bog before the Storm
In Fog at Sunrise
Etude in Diagonals

Cloudy Afternoon at Peakéd Mountain Farm, No. 2

AARON SISKIND: "We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect.... But as photographers we must learn to relax our beliefs. Move on objects with your eye straight on, to the left, around on the right. Watch them grow large as you approach, group and regroup as you shift your position. Relationships gradually emerge and sometimes assert themselves with finality. And that's your picture."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Continuing my shoot it became clear that the cloudscape I'd been photographing was made of two cloud layers. The bottom layer, the evaporating remains of the morning cloud blanket, seemed to hover barely higher than the hills until it became thin enough to reveal the great white monster in the background.

A big sky shot taken shortly after yesterday's image shows both cloud layers clearly. It's one of those "not quite," images. The diagonal of the cloudscape is not quite defined enough to make the image move. The dominant effect is linear and static. This image is even more linear than the one rejected. There's nothing wrong with a linear image if it's integral to the meaning of the shot.

What might Church or Cole have done here? Of course a painting is a fantasy, and a photograph is reality. Is it possible to photograph this landscape long and not find their ghosts lingering in spite of all that has changed?

Cloudy Afternoon at Peakéd Mountain Farm, No. 1

• What do I learn from returning to the same sites that makes results improve over time?
• How do I approach familiar sites differently than sites which are new?
• How familiar is familiar?

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The next series of images were captured on a single afternoon in early July from the field to the west of Peakéd Mountain Farm. Even though this is the most interesting side of the farmstead; even though as one moves around the field the forms of the buildings seem almost contrapuntal; and even though on clear afternoons everything is bathed in light almost until sunset, in spite of all that, until now I have never captured an image from this field worth sharing.

Timing is everything. When the weather changes skies are often most interesting. So it was natural that when the clouds began to break apart on the afternoon of July 2nd, I hoped that music would be playing over Peakéd Mountain. Clouds are fickle things (so Joni Mitchell tells us), and as I passed through Bog Hollow I worried that what I'd seen developing back in Tanner Valley was already evaporating here. There's always a tension - take the clouds where you are and make the most of them, or go somewhere special and hope that they're as good there & then as they are here & now.

Coming out of Bog Hollow I discovered that, if nothing else, fate had arranged a hay rake, a hay wagon and a dozen hay bales tastefully about the field. In this region farmers generally do two hayings a season. This year June rains that continued into July hampered farmers' efforts to cut and store hay from the first haying. They worried that the hay would rot before they could deal with it, while I was glad the bales and the equipment were still in the field when the clouds blew through. Timing is everything.

Since I knew the patterns in which the buildings danced I suppose I was more comfortable moving with them than I might otherwise have been, but finding where to stand in the counterpoint takes full and spontaneous engagement as the whole dance unfolds. Once the image is found I work quickly to correct so that the top of the pine has separation from the edge of the hill and so that telephone poles and other details do not get cluttered up together - work quickly before the light or the cloud moves on.

Timing is everything. I entered the field at the southeast corner because the sky. though constantly moving, is unmovable, and it told me to. The clouds felt tentative, quickly shifting. Would a few rays of sun break through? I watched the shifting cloud shapes watching for openings, and grabbed the few brief moments provided. In this exposure a bit of sun has just reached the first building, with the dark roof. Moments later the light reached the gable of the main barn and brightened slightly, enhancing the shadow under the roof line and causing the front walls to glow softly. It was a calm moment except that the clouds were no longer right. No matter; the tentative light of this first exposure also characterizes the moment. I call that, "catching the falling leaf," or at least whatever piece of it you can get hold of. When shooting landscapes I find the farther back one pulls the camera's eye, the harder it is to capture that falling leaf, but sometimes my pleasure comes in standing back.

I'm glad to have this shot as the small building with the light gray roof is precarious. It may not last the next winter. The loss of the building means little to the owner of the property, but to me it is an important dancer gone. Timing is everything.

Sun Spots

HARRY CALLAHAN: "I feel a little bit like a painter. A painter applies brush stroke after brush stroke, working toward something. It's just a matter of knowing when to quit. You know it's in there somewhere."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Back at Beardsley Farmstead this September I saw this late summer whirl, and I remembered images I made right here in 2008 (1), (2), (3), in the middle of winter in a snow storm. The painter, "applies brush stroke after brush stroke." The photographer shoots image after image, experimenting and refining, reaching after the potential that made him stop and shoot in the first place.

The recent series of blog entries was an attempt to sample some of the new farmsteads visited and photographed this summer. Reviewing those shoots and looking closely at some for the first time was overdue. As expected there are many photos I hoped for that proved to be, "not quite," even after I tugged at them in Photoshop in every way I could think of. As always, there were also days that yielded several images worth "developing." However, it was the old sites, farmsteads I'd shot last year and some the year before, that produced the majority of the best shots. New farm sites like Blueberry Hill, Smithfield Guernsey, Salmon Kill Hollow, Hammertown Road, Cream Hill, Sedgwick Hollow and others have potential not yet realized.

•What do I learn from returning to the same sites that makes results improve with time?
•How do I approach familiar sites differently than sites which are new?
•How familiar is familiar?

I came here because I knew the field would be "ripe," and the afternoon sun would make it glisten. I knew that even with my ladder the angles from the top of the field, between the rowed trees, would be tough. When I failed, I knew to check the garden. I noted one of the outbuildings had fallen down. I would have stayed longer, but I wanted to get to one of the new sites.

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This is one of those images that needs to be seen large. Click the image above to enlarge.

Quonset Barn & Swamp Foliage

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: "The Road from Sedgewick Hollow," Part 2

I knew I was heading toward a dead end. Not finding an outlet ahead and forbidden to make a u-turn, Gidget was near to having a nervous breakdown. She kept plotting the course over and over again, continually repeating, "Recalculating!" Moments later the road ended in a farmyard and I found my car surrounded by howling hounds. This was not the way I had hoped to introduce myself to Aunt Josephine. As they often do, the public road had turned private without warning, and I struggled to turn my car without squashing any of the pooch pack. Then Aunt Josephine appeared, running from the house and waving her arms. No. running is the wrong word. She moved as if her hips were frozen across, and the waving arms might have been unsteadiness, but she was moving fast, and I was surprised at how quickly she was beside the car. She was shouting something, and as I was backing to leave I simultaneously did my best to lower the window and the radio so I could hear what she was saying.

"Stop, he'll run right under the wheels." She was already bent over and snatching a long and low brown dust mop of a dog from the ground and restraining him forcibly in her arms as he tried to sniff at me. The barking continued through my introduction and apology. The commotion had not kept me from noticing that, "the mother farm," was even more photogenic than the buildings across from the quonset barn.

She was a trim octogenarian. Her hair was long and straight, her cheeks hollow and pale. Her eyes were straight slits. If there were any curves on her they had long ago been lost in the baggy overalls she wore, but she finally smiled and seemed happy to chat. My repeated apologies eventually put her at ease, and half the dogs had stopped barking so I could almost hear what Aunt Josephine was saying. I got a bit of farm history before I put my question to her, "May I photograph these barns?"

There was a long pause and a breath, and she looked right at me and the pupils of her eyes narrowed. It was as if she was trying to look inside me and a century suddenly had flown between us. "No." It was a strange "no," - full of forced determination. Then she added, "but if you talk to my niece she can give you permission. She's away now but she'll be back tomorrow.

She seemed quite unaware that I might not know who her niece was or where to find her. I had to ask repeatedly until she finally said, "Well, she's just over the hill," and she pointed vaguely somewhere behind the barns. There was no road that way, nothing but woods. I think she quite expected me to set off into the woods on foot, but I finally made clear to her that I needed directions my car could follow. As it turns out, the niece lived back where I started, at the house across from quonset farm.

I puzzled over the meaning of her, "No," and the subsequent half retraction. I took a few days before I went to see the niece. I wanted to be sure aunt and niece had time to deliberate. When I drove into the niece's yard, there were no dogs, but immediately the niece came running from the barns in overalls looking like a slightly younger version of Aunt Josephine. Before I could fully get my question out she interrupted me, "No." Clearly the two had met and the issue had been decided. "No photographs," she repeated. I tried to make conversation and barely got out that I'd photographed the swamp, but she was already heading into the house. Her voice trailed as she went inside, "You can photograph the swamp all you want."

All the photos I've made of Great Hill Farm have been from the public road.

Farm Fence & Quonset Barn

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:
"The Road from Sedgewick Hollow," Part I

The road back from Sedgewick Hollow leads through another century. When I point my GPS toward home it plots a course from the Hollow, not always the same course, through a warren of old country roads. Some are crumbling pavement, some have never been paved. The way is always sparsely settled and with more than its share of 18th century buildings and a few ruins. Without the soothing voice of Gidget, my GPS, I'd quickly be lost in time. After leaving Sedgewick Hollow she doesn't reach a road with a route number until I'm a few minutes from home.

I've been photographing in Sedgewick Hollow frequently over the past three weeks. Along one of the common routes, half way to the hollow the road forks. Both roads lead to Sedgewick Hollow, but I hadn't noticed that along this route Gidget took the left fork through the valley on the way out, but she brought me home over Great Hill and through the right fork. As a result, when I returned home from Sedgewick Hollow two weeks ago, I didn't know quite where I was when I stopped. I stopped in the futile hope of photographing a scene which had ended moments earlier. I'd have to find my way back here, wherever here is, at the next sunset when the sky was clear, and it would have to be soon.

At the top of Great Hill is a level area which may have been pasture once but which had become swamp. Leaves turn earlier around swamps, and here they had recently burst into color. As I reached the top of the hill, and came out of the woodland into the open swamp, the last few minutes of sunlight were being filtered by low haze. There was just enough light to make me realize the spectacle the sun's clear backlighting had made moments earlier.

It wasn't until I returned a day or two later and began photographing that I realized the cleared area was part of a farm or what's left of a farm. Warped boards and rotting roofs, rusted machinery, and across from this structure a farmhouse and a ragged collection of wooden out buildings. Nobody was around, but the house was inhabited, and I didn't want to trespass. I learned later that there had originally been many more buildings, but the farm was badly damaged in the tornado that blew through a decade ago.

As I was shooting beside the road, a guy in a pickup stopped to chat, and I asked him if he knew who might give me permission to shoot the farmstead here. He had the whole family story. Uncle Frank and Uncle Martin had died recently. Frank kept "the mother farm" going to the end, and Stephen ran this place and Martin had another place.... His explanations included names of roads I didn't know and, when I pressed him, directions I couldn't follow. I learned of marriages and divorces and who had done what and how they had or hadn't cared for each other as ends neared. He spoke to me as if everyone knew these people and where they lived. Clearly, this was an intimate community where everyone knew everyone. Still, I wanted permission to photograph here. Before he drove off I learned that the only one left was Aunt Josephine, and she was living on the "mother farm," to which I made sure I had good directions. She would certainly give me permission.

I would find Josephine before returning home.

Farmtique

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The yellow farmhouse on Route 202 was in disrepair even in 1974 when we first moved to Connecticut, but the yellow stood out and the various signs that directed non-existent traffic. We lived a few miles away and shopped at the old general store a bit further up the road. Back then one could still read the sign, and when I needed props for an "Old West" play I stopped here and bought an "antique," wooden box. The old guy who sold it to me emerged from somewhere deep within the house, said little, and happily took my five dollars. We keep kindling in it now.

When we moved in 1979 they were beginning to pave some of the old dirt roads from which spurs sprouted leading to cul-de-sacs lined with pastel dream houses. A new school was just opening. Nobody lives here anymore, and the roof is failing. A few weeks after I photographed here a sign appeared on the roadside, "Lot for Sale."

In Blazing Soy

ANSEL ADAMS: "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: In the landscape the first decision is always where to stand. Yesterday's image of this ruin was taken seventeen minutes and forty seconds after this one. The light was similar yet they are almost opposite in their effect. The making of these two images seems typical of the way I approach shooting. Compare the two and you may be tempted to ask, "Who moved the mountain?" My mantra is always, "You don't know what it looks like until you get there."Standing by the silo, you might not guess that by walking further down the soy hill, away from the farmstead, the tops of all three silos would be below the top of the background hillside.

When I shot this near the top of the hill I hoped that might happen. A slightly different grade and it would not have, but I'd already previsualized at the top the two shots I thought I'd get on this shoot, one with sky and one without; one in which the farm curled up at the base of the hill like a cat snuggling into an old blanket and one in which the crumbling silos raged against their demise. Move left, right, backward, forward, and relationships change; things are lost and things gained. I spent time studying how the top of the background silo might best intersect with the hilltop, and ways of strategically cutting the tops of the two silos, and the effects of compressing/expanding the cluster of buildings by moving laterally. I watched the balance of tonalities and how they met the margins and corners of the image. Sometimes I lost my light, and when it came back I considered how to utilize creeping shadows.

I moved slowly through the soy field trying to find the most committed version of each idea, but since I could only guess what things might look like from untried positions, I carefully composed both possibilities each time I stopped. I did this even though I suspected I'd already passed the most committed angle for this shot early on. I never want to have to go back and re-find a position.

In the end I had many exposures to look through. In this image I was up close with my lens zoomed wide and tipped steeply downward. In yesterday's I am standing back with my lens zoomed in tight. While I may have a good idea what I want the image to look like when it's done and that the essentials have been captured in terms of focus and exposure, it's not until I see it large that I know what I have and if it will work. When I finished that afternoon, a third of the "making" of the image was done. If there is a quicker way, I wish someone would tell me.

Forsaken Acres

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: It will be harder to unseal the time capsule on this old ruin. It has no name nor clear signs of what went on here or when. It is further north on route 22, not far from Boston Corners, NY, a town with a lot of history. Jane and I spotted the tall silo from the road, glowing bone white in the afternoon sun. We had been exploring and were on our way home, but I made a note to return and investigate. Was it here when Boston Corners was the meeting place of three railroad lines?

When I got back a week or two later it was also late afternoon. From the roadside I could see all three silos on what appeared to be an island rising out of a sea of soy. I made some images of the silos and the soy rows and learned from a neighbor that nobody cared who went here. He'd explored himself, but he had been afraid to go into the house.

House? By the time I said goodbye photo light was gone. Before heading for home I explored enough to see the house. It was in the grip of a jungle, and getting to it would not be easy. Photographing may be impossible.

When I got back the third time it was the end of September, and the soy had just turned yellow. Where there are silos there were usually dairy barns once. Silos came in to common use between 1880 and 1900 (The tall, cylindrical form was invented in 1891). They made it possible to store enough feed to sustain milk production through the winter and capture the high prices paid for winter milk. Alas, it's common to find old masonry and metal silos standing beside a concrete slab or stone foundation. These silos were in terrible condition, and I never expected anything was left of the barns. Life is fluid. They were in the final stages of being swallowed.

I spent nearly an hour making images of the barn ruins from different points in this field before exploring the rest of the site. A newer, metal work shed, also abandoned, is to the left. Beyond the field the ground drops off steeply, and from below I could look up and see the house. From directly below the second story barely reached over the goldenrod that covered the embankment.

Grand Cowshed

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - The Harlem Valley in New York State is an important corridor running north-south from Brewster to the start of the Taconic Mountains near the Connecticut-Massachusetts border. Through it run the The Harlem Valley Railroad and New York Route 22. What's left of the train remains one of the principal commuter lines to New York City, and the road is New York State's longest and oldest north-south route, stretching from the Bronx through Albany to Canada.

The Harlem Valley is not only long but also relatively broad, a series of gently rolling hills between, on the east, the steep ridge that divides Connecticut from New York, and on the west, the Hudson Hills that roll toward the Hudson River. In the Harlem Valley dairy farmers had easy access to transportation and flat open land for growing corn and grazing large herds of cattle. The farms that once were thriving here have left vast and hollow behemoths with giant silos that loom over the pastures. This is a small portion of one of these ruins.

I've been trying unsuccessfully to capture the hulking immensity of this farmstead for three years. The main shed is actually three times as long as the part shown in the back of this image. It has four more dormers like the two in the image, and throughout the sheds length it sprouts other buildings of various sizes. The patchwork nature of the whole suggests success-fueled expansion. Imagine the amount of hay that was stored over the dairy stalls on the first level! Four large silos stand at the back of the main shed. The metal roof gone on one and on another, rusted to a smokey bronze. The old farm house is in ruins as are many of the outbuildings.

No trespassing is strictly enforced, and most of my pictures have been shot from neighboring property. It is a matter of considerable frustration to me that I've been unable to make full use of this palette of forms and textures and insinuations. In any case, for me windows are always eyes, and I couldn't resist this grouping.

The Road through Fox Hollow

FREDERICK CHURCH: "Imagine this fairy like Temple blazing like sunlight among those savage black rocks.”

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: North of Pleasant View Farm my explorations took me through Fox Hollow, and several Fox Hollow farms are now regular photo stops.

What if Jane and I could follow the old road right through Fox Hollow and into the past. Somewhere beyond Ancramdale the road would turn to dirt, and then the power lines would stop, and we'd be in an open carriage, rattling behind a horse at a pretty good clip. If we were lucky, we'd have an invitation for dinner at Olana, Frederick Church's Persian, fantasy house on the Hudson. I shot this photo on August 31 at 5:45 PM in my own century. With another 45 minutes and 130 years to sunset, our carriage will still only be half way to Olana, but If we hurry we can get there just as twilight gives way to a nearly full moon.

When we get to Olana torches will be blazing on the terrace high above the Hudson River, and there might be a tiny glow from behind the shadowy Catskills. Church will show us his studio and his latest work which will look like our journey turned to a romantic adventure. We'll talk about his travels in Europe, the Middle East and South America, and he'll complain about his rheumatism and pass on a few wise words from Thomas Cole. Then we'll look at some of the rare plants in his conservatory and sit down with his family to an elegant meal, and plan a long walk for the first of September.

Fox Hollow didn't look much different then, fewer trees and more fields under cultivation or given to pasture. Some of the same families are still farming here. When we get back to the twenty-first century I will send copies of my images over the "new" power lines to their grandchildren's computers.

A Pleasant View

GALEN ROWELL: "You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: To call the view from Pleasant View Farm, atop Winchell Mountain, "pleasant," is to commit a felonious litotes. Much of this summer's explorations have taken me north, up the area known as, "The Oblong," on the border of New York and Connecticut. With the rising sun shining across Connecticut at my back, the view on this morning extends at least 40 miles. The most distant mountain in this image are in the southern Catskills on the far side of the Hudson River. Had I walked a few hundred feet south I could have looked east almost as far into Connecticut, but that's not where the view was on this morning.

As a breed, landscape photographers tend to be scavengers, combing the hills to rescue moments of sunlight, fog or cloud from the dissipations of time. Planned shots rarely are what one anticipates, but at Pleasant View I can count on finding rising valley fog on most mornings. I will return here often.

This panorama was made from three distinct images stitched in Photoshop. The original file has enough resolution to produce an image at least eight feet long.

Gereg Farm in Summer

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Neither hip nor gambrel, the unusual, many-hued roofs of Gereg Farm are wonderfully sculptural. Although I photographed here early in 2008, I photographed from the road. As I've expanded my territory northward this summer, I made an effort to meet the owner who was happy to give me a tour of the barns and permission to shoot from the pasture and yards.

If Misty Morning Farm (1), (2) is among the most difficult to photograph, Gereg Farm may be the easiest. At Misty Morning the hillside and large trees block the sun on all sides but the north, so light is almost always wrong. Morning light is best at Misty Morning, but often it is too misty and the metal roof is silver and glares blindingly under morning sun. Then there's the hill descending to the east; it is so steep that the barns almost disappear behind the crest until one is a long way off.

In contrast, sun washes the Gereg barn throughout the day, and out in the flat pasture there are clear views from east, south and west. At the perimeter of the field on the south is a rusted. rustic fence that gets tangled with weeds and wildflowers in summer, a delicious foreground screen to shoot through. Three Belted Galloway, "Oreo," cows pasture here. though in the summer they hide from the sun in a shaded alcove. I've caught them grazing in front of the barns in late afternoon, but I don't yet have the picture I'm after. In fact, everything is so photogenic here, that I'm having difficulty casting antique gloom across the barnscape. Everything comes out completely sane. Perhaps in fog I can make them loom.

While the view from the north is just as interesting, there has been a dumpster blocking it through most of the summer. Even from the north, once the dumpster is gone, I expect no problems shooting the intimate spaces there. The barns have some interesting features not visible in this image including the sheltered exterior passage tunneled under the barn where the cows like to huddle. It should be interesting to shoot there in the first half of the day. The barns are being sensitively restored, and as soon as some new wood weathers, they will be as good as old.

Misty Morning

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Misty Morning Farm has been an ongoing photo project throughout the last year. Few sites offer so much potential and pose such difficult dilemmas. Mist and fog are the least of the difficulties. On this morning 8 days ago I woke at 5:15 in order to catch some mix of sunrise light and pond mist.

Misty Morning Farm sits on the north side of a hill and does its best to face east. Down the hill from the farmstead and its fields and before the hillside disappears into woodland there is a broad pond. If mist will form anywhere, it will form here. Sometimes it is just a small plume that drifts with the prevailing breeze. Sometimes it is a rising mist that draws a delicate veil up the pasture and over the bushes and barns. On the particular morning it was a fog like a head cold that blotted out everything. I waited at the bottom of the pasture to see what the fog would do, but nothing moved.

I finally decided to drive a 4 mile circuit of the hilltop to see what things were like elsewhere. As I completed my loop, coming down the hill toward Misty Morning from the other side, the sun was just penetrating and dissolving the head of pond brew, and as I quickly parked and rushed around the yard, the sun through the fog sent rays through the trees and magnified the landscape. One can never plan such shots and must take gratefully whatever is given.

I'm developing Misty Morning Farm as a seasonal portrait. Preparing presentation images of Misty Morning from the last year has been keeping me from TODAY'S for at least a week. This was not the shot I had intended to follow next, but I'm happy for the excuse to process this image as a stand-in so as not to divert my concentration from Misty Morning Farm.

This one needs to be seen large. Be sure to click the image.

Great Hollow Rhymes

EDWARD WESTON: "Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I wonder what viewers will make of this image. I'm not even quite sure what to make of it myself, but I'm drawn to its abstract simplicity and the suggestion that all things are in dialogue.

I set out to post photographs from the past summer and have been momentarily distracted by a commissioned project that requires my attention. While working on that project I came on this overlooked photograph taken at Waller Farm in late winter, 2008. The rhyme of its forms seem a natural sequel to "Bolland Farm and Hills," and so it becomes part of this new sequence on farms and farmland.

Bolland Farm and Hills - May 1, 2009

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: "There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: There are few farms I find as aesthetically pleasing as this one, the way the barns ride the hills, flowing with their contours, digging in to the earth. I've been driving by here for two years seeking to get permission to shoot. Although there are usually cars outside and clothes on the line, I've never seen a person here, and I have not yet been moved to knock on the door of the nearby house.

On this lazy spring afternoon, under a soft, sprinkling rain and swept by a bit of spring mist, I stopped the car on the side of the road and composed this image. I struggled to keep raindrops off my lens. Greening had just begun.

Dairy Barn & Cow Stalls, Elliott Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: There's always been farming on this hill. I took this a week ago after a morning of photographing the barns from the fields below. The farmer who dug this barn deep into the hillside and near its top, knew that on chilly mornings he'd have the early sun on his back and on the backs of his cows, and that he'd catch the sun again in the afternoon as he loaded hay directly into the hay loft from the street side.

The 1853 map shows no barns, but the house is there, right where the road from town turns just as it does today as if it were to lead from town right up the front steps onto porch, only turning sharply left at the last moment to climb the hill rather than the stairs. Was it the Elliotts, who lived in the house in 1853, who built this barn?

The porch is gone from the vacant house. When did they stop farming here? Was it in 1928 when the creamery closed or in 1930 when the railroad stopped running, or were there dairy cows in the fields when I first passed by? Last year some of the barn boards were stripped away and the cupola tipped a bit more this year, and the roof won't survive another winter. One day I will come by and find the cupola fallen through the roof and smashed on the floor, the weather vane and it's four miniature gables shattered.

But it's impossible to know when. Perhaps it is miraculous that farming continues on this hill at all, more miraculous that some of the original families are farming here still.

Spring on Skarf Mountain

VERLYN KLINKENBORG (from "Goldenrod Time," NY Times):
"Somehow my internal timekeeper failed this summer - broken down, perhaps during the utterly sodden month of June. Time passed, and all the natural events that happen on this farm happened in order. But when the goldenrod began to bloom a few weeks ago, I failed to make the connection between the two.

"The Goldenrod ripens with nearly the same power as the leaves turning. It's one of the strongest temporal cues I know, and I usually respond to it the way I respond to most signs of shifting season: with an inward emotional tug.

"This year I seem to be absent, or perhaps I'm just resting in the lull of late summer. Or perhaps I've become just another of the creatures on this farm."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This has not been like other summers. For some time now I've been feeling what Verlyn Klinkenborg describes, a sense of having somehow come loose from the constant unwinding of the season, and now as the trees are suddenly starting to turn I feel unexpectedly reengaged with the ever-turning wheel. What happened to summer? Wrenched into autumn, can I find my stride before nature's pace quickens?

I exposed this image on May 18th, in the time between skunk cabbage and flox, exactly four months ago today. The fragile spring leaves had recently darkened. Six days later I would be driving in Nova Scotia and delighted to find a second spring just unfurling there. What timing! It was after that I became uncoupled.

Jane feels it too. She says it is not only the endless rain which extended well beyond June but also that the thermometer barely sweltered. That may be true, but it strikes me that before I began my photo and hiking regimen the gears of my life were not so tightly engaged to nature's clock, and a disjointed season like the one suddenly completed would not leave me feeling a bit unhinged.

Was there summer? I hiked almost every day back to favorite farms and into to much new territory, to Massachusetts and the Hudson, but I wonder if this year I didn't lean a little too comfortably on the feeling that summer was a lazy time, that its pleasures would last, that shots missed today would be much the same tomorrow. Would I have dug more deeply if summer had the urgency of spring or fall? Tomorrow begins today.

And yet I'm reassured when I look at the summer's farm images that I shot while processing and posting lilies. It seems I didn't miss it all. The next photo series explores some of the farms visited this summer.

I've been on top of Skarf Mountain before, but on the afternoon of May 18th the clouds put on a remarkable show. Because the fields surrounding these barns are open and vast, and because the sky that afternoon was dancing everywhere, I kept moving, taking in new angles. I didn't want to miss anything, but I didn't rush, and the clouds kept on dancing as I made a complete, great circuit around the fields around the farmstead.

Bugged

IMOGEN CUNNINGHAM: "If you don't like it, that's your problem, not mine."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Life is fluid. Even before the bee has probed the water lily's nectar, the transformers are at work on the grand, procreative, digestive economy of things.

Lotus Wind

ZHOU DUNYI: "I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This is the Sacred Lotus or Bean of India, worshipped among Hindus as a thing of purity. It does indeed strike the eye as something divine. Most people would know it immediately by the iconic, flat-topped seed cup, like a watering can, that is left after the petals fall away. Lotus roots in the pond bottom and spreads broad, round pads on the surface of the water while sending a stem 3 to 5 feet into the air where it produces a large bud that blossoms hugely and gets tossed by the wind in shades of pink and white.

The Sacred Bean of India Lotus is not to be confused with the Egyptian Sacred Blue Lily which is sometimes called the Blue Lotus.

From Wiki I learn that the Sacred Lotus of India can regulate the temperature of the flower as warm-blooded animals do. That distinction places it in the rare plant company of Philodendron and Skunk Cabbage. Certainly no water lily can do that. It is not yet known if it can read minds, but all parts of the plant are entirely edible.

Pirouette

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: There are 8 genera in the family of plants we commonly refer to as water lilies. The yellow lily, which has lost all but one of its petals, is of the genus Nuphar. The petals of these lilies are stubby and stay so tightly curled that they look like perpetual buds. In fact, the petals hinge back only slightly. Once they are open the flowers are as popular as a good Irish pub; it isn't long before many bugs are clamoring at once for a seat inside at the bar.

The pink lily is of a different but closely related genus, Nymphaea, goddesses of the woodland spring. The species of Nymphaea are much more numerous. They blossom in the air and sleep below water. The bugs visit here too, but are much more polite and refined.

Nuphar water lilies are sometimes referred to popularly by the term lotus, but the sacred Indian lotus for which the term is more commonly used is of an entirely different genus and family from Nuphar and the other genera of the family we call water lilies.

Pink and Blue

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

Lily Passage

Composition in Menisci

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: On Tuesday, in responding to "Paints and Painters," my friend Gary praised my meniscus. A meniscus forms at the margins where the pond water turns up to meet a lily leaf, a blade of swamp grass or any object on its surface. Often the meniscus will be revealed by the interesting way it catches the light. The Greek root is the diminutive form of moon and refers to the moon's crescent.

In the photo in question there is also water lying on the surface of the lily leaf. The surface of the lily leaf is designed to repel water (As I also learned from Gary, it is, "superhydrophobic," a condition known as, "the lotus effect."), and so the surface tension of the water curves downward at its edge. As a result, unlike the water in the pond that turns up to meet the lily leaf forming a concave surface or lens, the puddle on top of the leaf turning down forms a convex surface. Although the term meniscus is also used to describe this effect, I wonder if there isn't a better term; the moon's crescent seems less appropriate to describe this convex phenomenon.

I thought this might be an antimeniscus. Artie suggested descibing the phenomenon as imbricosity; the thing itself would be an imbriscus. Jane thought it might be an oobleckus, clearly caused by Suessian oobleckosity.

Clearly, there is still room for improvement. Is there a word maven out there who can invent a word to describe the downturn phenomenon described on the surface of the lily leaf?

Lily's Embrace

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Is striving the most fundamental characteristic of life? Rocks don't strive. All living things strive. From whence that yearning? The lily's striving is the bee's hunger and my adventure. When striving stops we are dead.

Lily No.106, July 28, 2009

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Life is fluid.
They tell us it comes from amino acids
in a process that began in a colossal,
super-nuclear,
big bang
furnace
that expanded outward from a center creating space as it went, where galaxies popped like firecrackers on strings hurling stars and planets corkscrewing through time and space.
Well, something like that.

Contemplate the protean thread
of life stretching backward
to that point.

Contemplate?
Where did we learn that trick of observation and reflection?
Where did we get the drive, the striving?
What force made it inevitable?
Did tenderness and compassion and a yearning for justice and beauty originate there as well?

Were they all there at the beginning in some concentrated "spirit"?

Or is that spirit self-made and tentative and ultimately uncertain, perhaps brewed from an predictable reaction of chemicals and passed
to slug
and toad
and a jackrabbit
and a student reading Pascal,
to a strap-hanger pausing on his morning commute,
and one day posed on a blog by a dude in an internet café and answered around the world.

Such question lie in a galaxy beyond reason and impervious to its probes, and regardless of the answer, what's precious is in that spirit.

Paints & Painters

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Anything having to do with water and light is a natural for photography, and I've enjoyed shooting water lilies since I began hiking with a camera. Few plants seem to me quite so mysterious from the first stirring of shoots beneath the prenatal soup to their full blossoming. Many water lilies open daily at the beckoning of the sun and close every evening. No sooner do the flowers hatch than they are beset by a host of small things from both water and air that find their nectars sweet and their landing places convenient. The tragic decline of the lily under this assault is every bit as dramatic as its rise.

Using a polarizer to photograph water lilies is essential. The polarizer allows control over reflectivity. Set one way, and the image penetrates the water's surface. Rotated 90 degrees, and the surface reflects the sky. Between these extremes one can dial in the desired composition. The polarizer also permits control of glare reflected by the lily pads.

Most of the lilies in this series were growing naturally in ponds and swamps I frequent. Among the pond's various bits of living and dying matter I like to capture mini-scapes, and I welcome the detritivores that delve the crevices and graze the tablelands. Look closely.

Steeped

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Until the previous Today's all the photos since early June have come from my Nova Scotia-Maine trip. However, for the past three months I've been shooting locally and expanding territory. This photograph continues the series of water lily images begun in the spring:

Pond Musk

Unfolding Spring

Surface Tension

In April the lilies were sending out stalks and strange tubes that unfolded into yellow and pink leaves which turned green as the sun hit them. On June 7th, a week after my return from Maine, the broth is still simmering after abundant rain and under June sunlight.

ISO 400, f18, 1/100th sec
400mm (non-digital = 600mm)

Great Blue Heron

MINOR WHITE: "Some degree of mirroring happens with any photograph, but it is especially strong with photographs rendered in a stylized or non-literal way. Mirroring is also strong in photographs in which the presence of design is equal to or supersedes the sense of the presence of the subject in front of the camera." (http://www.jnevins.com/whitereading.htm)

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I'd never seen a heron taking off before. The first time was at a teacher conference in Lakeville, and a colleague and I had gotten up early to take one of the resort canoes out onto the lake before breakfast and the first session of the day. As we paddled closer to the bird it spread its wings, and I could feel my own rib cage expand and hover with the bird in flight. The moment was too short, and I desperately wanted a replay.

When I returned seriously to photography one of my goals was to catch that shot of the heron inflating. I haven't done it yet, and other goals have always pushed that one back. For one thing, where I walk the herons are very shy, and they usually sense my presence and are in flight before I can reach a clearing suitable for shooting, and I have not sought out a suitable blind.

In some previous segment of TODAY'S that featured a gold finch and then a mourning dove I protested, "I don't do birds." Perhaps that's the more important reason. It's not that I dislike birds, Jane feeds the songbirds, and I love to see them each morning as I wake, and I feed the humming birds and will jump from my chair when they begin their antics. It is that birds (and insects and camels and much else) are so rarely seen with clarity that the eye is drawn to examine the image of the stilled, close-up representation of the actual object; as a result it becomes much harder to achieve what Alfred Steiglitz called, "equivalence," or what Minor White refers to above as, "Mirroring."

When my friend Rick Cassar invited me on an early morning photo shoot on Candlewood Lake I saw my chance to return to the heron hunt. The herons on Candlewood are a good deal more used to people, and Rick was an expert guide for finding them. I hope he invites me back. He did a great job maneuvering us for this shot, and I'm pleased with whatever degree of formality organizes this shot. However, how much more directly does the inadvertent, under-exposed graininess of Glide (previous TODAY'S) invite us to walk into its expressive spirit! That release is the serendipitous consequence of my inability to set the correct exposure fast enough.

NOTE: I've titled this, "Great Blue Heron." If there is an expert around who can tell me differently, I'm ready to learn.

TECH NOTES: ISO 800, f16, 1/80th sec, 400mm (full frame equiv: 600mm), VR. I probably could have given a stop of aperture for a quicker shutter, but the boat was drifting so focus was as delicate as steadiness, and I hoped to keep the background as sharp as possible.

Glide

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I thought the show was over, and I was ready to pack up my gear when this visitor arrived. I had the wrong lens on the camera and made a quick guess at exposure catching five, quick shots as he landed. But the picture isn't about that, and the evening was just beginning.

Mahone Reverb

GUY TAL: "The answers are ambiguous – the image needs to be complex but not to a point of clutter, or it needs to be simple but not to a point of being too literal. It needs to have a message yet without the message being too obvious… or too obscure. Confused? If so, you have just learned an important lesson – art does not follow hard and fast rules, and thus transcends any attempt at a ubiquitous definition."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I've often thought that by definition the the true nature of art is to defy all previous definitions of art but that even that definition was perfectly useless.

Composition in Blue Rocks

CASPAR DAVD FRIEDRICH: "I must be entirely by myself, and know that I am alone in order to see and perceive Nature completely. Nothing should stand between her and myself. I must give myself to my surroundings, must merge with my clouds and cliffs in order to become what I am."

SHERMAN HINES: "Someone asked me once how I got to the spot where I actually took a photograph. I found that I followed noises, clouds, the winds, smells – but most of all it was the light that guided me. I don’t force myself on the environment, I let it manipulate me. There’s no confrontation with nature because I give in to it. I let myself be seduced completely."

PAUL STRAND: "Either you do it or you don’t. Certainly with things as changeable as sky and landscape with moving clouds and so on, if they look wonderful to you on a certain day and if you don’t do it then, you may never see them again for the rest of your life. So as a photographer you become very conscious – at least I do – that everything is in movement."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: No matter how I submit, nature can be impenetrable. On the evening when this was taken, however, I was embraced. A clear sun that sparkled and defined form had given way to clouds that seemed to suck up the air. I was somewhere in the center of the peninsula, but the moaning song of the fog horn accompanied crows perched in still pines. Verse after verse sounded as the sun set. Not too far off the sea was changing, and I would change with it.

As a photographer, I live for those times when I'm so enfolded by the world around me. Day after day I may go out and submit myself to nature and she is closed, and then on one evening like this she leaves me breathless and vitalized. I point my camera and see compositions everywhere.

Composition in Red

GARRY WINOGRAND: "Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Of course Gary Winogrand's photographs look nothing like this, but his statement above strongly suggests a photography of abstraction. How to resolve the quotes accompanying the last three TODAY'S? Should the photographer aim for Evans' "what else they are," or only, "light on surface," or, as Eric Lindbloom suggests, will metaphor always slip through the smallest apertures? Should photographers cultivate an aesthetic philosophy, stake out a position with this camp or that, or is it better just to follow the heady brew as it delights my lens?

I know some who follow this blog will throw up their hands in exasperation at this image. I hope others will enter the space of the image, move with the curves, reserve judgement, and be surprised to learn it is a simple thing, nothing more than a reflection in a red car along a street in Lunenburg. André chose to publish it in our workshop highlights book along side yesterday's image, and I thought they belonged together.

Whatever your ultimate opinion, I'm especially eager to hear reactions to this one.

Wild Things, No. 2

MINOR WHITE: "One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are."

Cottongrass at Sunset

ERIC LINDBLOOM: "Try as we will to make a fair representation of things in the world that move us, metaphors know the trick of entering the work through a small aperture in a fraction of a second."

WIld Things, No. 1

BOB LEJEUNE (http://boblejeune.blogspot.com/) reacting to recent photos: "Before I did photography I sort of went along with the notion that pictures give a more accurate rendition of reality than words, as in the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words." Now I know that's nonsense. You move one foot, and you see a different reality in the viewfinder. You change the angle or zoom, and the world becomes more abstract. You photoshop out the garbage, and everything looks pretty. Etc. Forced to see reality in frames, I realize more than ever that there is no reality. So spending all that money is good "therapy" even if I never become a great photographer."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: A good friend used to argue with me that architecture was not an art form because art was forced to serve an independent program focused on issues of functionality and economics. He argued that art must be free to follow the artist's imagination, that the artist's passions must be given room to operate without extraneous concerns. This photo was shot "on assignment," as part of the final project for the Lunenburg workshop. My shooting for 24 hours was restrained and regulated by time and program. Without that assignment, I'm sure I never would have stopped to shoot these leaves, nor would I have discovered later that a tiny insect had momentarily scurried across one of the images. Contrary to my friend's beliefs, I find a strict program or assignment can lead to new discoveries and new seeing, and that success can rest as much on serendipity as depth of feeling.

Bayside Op

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Once seen, the pressing question was where to crop. That's always the case, but rarely must edges be so precisely calibrated at all sides and corners. The temptation is to shoot large and preserve all options by cropping in the computer. I prefer NOT to do that, and I try to compose to the proportions of the image my camera makes. (Of course, at a certain point the image has laws of its own that dictate proportions.)

A major question here was whether to include the details in the top right corner. Intuitively, I thought they should be avoided, and made most exposures that way. Back in Lunenburg, however, it was this one I chose to present to the workshop. Without the detail at the top left, this is a curious op pattern. Included, the detail is an annoying (perhaps slightly surreal?) presence that must be unravelled.

Have you figured out what it is, or did you grasp it right away? Once you do, you can enter the image space. Some would say that it is only then that this becomes photographic.

Can you stay in the image space? No need to anymore.

Of course there were many more images to be made here, but the sun was moving quickly and the moment was passing. I had come on this by chance, and I have no idea how it looked moments earlier. Surely, it didn't last long. Could I ever find my way to the time and space of this alignment of elements in order to watch the full arch transpire? Do I really want to go looking for images I've already seen?

Starboard Watch

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL

The snake-skin sea slinks across the harbor,
Sounds the music of the old hulls,
Lingers in the underdocks,
Ready to uncoil.

Wharfside

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - I must give some credit for this image to one of my colleagues (Sparrowhawk: http://www.btlens.com/) at the Lunenburg workshop. During a group shoot I had spotted these nails forgotten on one of the pilings and admired the colors and textures, but Sparrowhawk stopped to take the picture, and I merely made a mental note to get back there later while I hurried to something else I was after. When I saw Sparrowhawk's picture I remembered the spot and regretted not shooting it; when I found myself back at the boatyard another day the light was excellent, and I decided to try my own image. I'm pleased with the way this came out, but my colleague has a very sharp eye for composition, and I'd love to compare my choices with Sparrowhawk's.

Boatyard Composition No.2, June 2009

RENE MAGRITTE: "Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible."

Boatyard Composition No.1, June 2009

ANONYMOUS: "The film that survived a bomb blast, got wet when your boat sank , survivived x-ray machines at 5 different airports was ruined when someone opened the darkroom door and let all the dark out."

Hunk of a Dory

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL, "The Dory Ethic": A dory is essentially a, "plank boat," that's easy to build. It is a workhorse that carries a big load and that two can row with ease. The deep hull, flat bottom, and and natural curve make it maneuverable and steady. Coastal settlers in the northeast launched them from beaches and filled them with fish. When all else fails, one wants a reliable dory.

This photo was taken at The Dory Shop in Lunenburg, NS

Herring's Lament

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Mucilaginous porridge of brine,
The viscous vat, a universe.
Then scooped and bucketed,
Drawn and quartered,
Packed into purses,
And drowned in the parlor.
My essences drift,
Draw hungry crustacea.

The Lobstermen

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I met Howard on the pier at Thurston's Lobster Pound in Bernard Harbor, Maine. He and Roger were loading buckets of herring onto the "Dillon, Chris, and Linda." The herring would be chopped up for bait once they were at sea. I had already asked Howard if I could photograph him at work. When Roger went to get more herring Howard began a conversation about women, drink, marriage, and life. By the time he was ready to push off, we were friends.

The previous year I had vowed to get beyond photographs of the landscape, architecture and props of lobstering and photograph the lobstermen at work. Bernard, Maine, was the most likely place. In most of the lobster ports the fishermen leave from private docks which can be scattered. On some piers a photographer could wait all morning, and no lostermen would appear.

In Bernard there are two common piers used by most of the lobstermen. On the community pier lobstermen begin arriving in their pickups at sunup. The pier is a place of socializing as they fetch their boats, load them with bait and sometimes traps, stowe away lunch buckets and drinks for the day's work, and climb into their vinyl lobstering overalls. In the afternoon the boats return with the day's catch. They sell the lobsters to independent marketers who drive onto the wharf in white delivery trucks and wheel large scales out on the tailgate.

Other lobstermen leave from Thurston's pier. The lobstermen who sell at Thurston's take a lower price but they don't have to work to sell, and they use Thurston's large, dockside warehouses to store their bait. The pier is often a labyrinth of passageways through the lobstermen's idle traps.

That's where I met Howard and Roger and shared philosophy. As they pushed off, I asked if they would be back the next day. When Howard told me, "yes," he also asked if I'd like to come along.

I met them at 5:30 AM. This slide show contains some of the more than 300 images I shot aboard the "Dillon, Chris, and Linda," and it is a first attempt at telling a lobstering tale. I fear it fails to convey the fast pace and exhausting, assembly line routine of the work. In about 4 hours they pulled, emptied, baited, and set 200 traps and caught 55 usable lobsters.

On Leaving Peggy's Cove, June 2, 2009

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - "Peggy's Cove, Future Thoughts":

I left Peggy's Cove without all of the shots I wanted. I'd reserved Tuesday passage on, "The Cat," the ferry from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor. No cat sailed Wednesday, and I doubted whether I would find enough in Peggy's Cove to linger until Thursday. I no longer think that's correct.

1. I had arrived with a primary mission of photographing the harbor. One can almost make out it's mouth, left of center in this image. The cove is a narrow groove with steep slopes, a classic and there are many shots of it. I wanted to find my own.

Where to stand? I wanted to look down the length of the cove, to take in as much of its complexity as I could; I wanted a picture that would embody the concept, "harbor"; that would be a classic rather than a cliche. Perhaps it is always a mistake to preconceive a picture that way. The moment often brings a thousand little pleasures that are quite different from what one is after. In any case, this was the place to do such a classic. I wanted to be at the mouth of the harbor in the afternoon and at the back of the harbor in the morning, but all my attempts to get to the mouth that afternoon and on my previous visit were blocked by, "Private property - no trespassing." I made some afternoon images from the back of the harbor, but the June, afternoon sun is a dragon breathing into the cove. It was not a subject for backlighting, certainly not what I was after. The next morning I was up at 4:30, but the sun barely appeared, and the light wasn't especially useful. From the few images I made then at a moment when the water in the cove was almost still, I realized that wind and tides were more important than early sunshine. I have a hunch I want to shoot near low tide. It's always a mistake to preconceive the picture.

2. Where can I hire a boat?

3. There's no lobstering after May 31. What is Peggy's Cove like when the fisherman are active?

4. After a short, early morning shoot I went back and made a panorama from the deck of my room at the B&B. The B&B is somewhere behind that big white building to the left of the cove mouth. My deck overlooked the harbor, a splendid view and a successful panorama but not my shot. I packed my bags - good breakfast and conversation before heading off for Yarmouth. It was with some amazement that I pulled off at the flight 111 memorial site, just outside of Peggy's Cove, and looked back. I took this just before the rain came, wilting my eagerness and obliterating the view. The photo makes clear that there's at least a half mile of road between me and the church steeple worth walking and exploring for photographs. How many moods can the sky and the landscape conjure over several days? I never know what it will look like until I get there.

5. Since returning I've read that the bushes on the barrens turn vivid color in October.

Click the image to view large.

Peggy's Point Lighthouse, No.5

H. E. Clark: "He carefully picked his cast of clouds, watched them intently as they swirled in before the lens and hoped the sun would break in concert."

Town & Barrens No.4

DAVID BOHM (as suggested by Jane Roth and quoted from The Tao of Photography): "All is process. That is to say, there is ‘no thing’ in the universe. Things, objects, entities, are abstractions of what is relatively constant from a process of movement and transformation. They are like the shapes that children like to see in clouds."

Cove Composition No.2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: ...or are there photographs that must be connected to a real event at a real moment and yet transcend their time and place? Whether successful or not, this photo might seem less interesting if the viewer believed the birds had been photoshopped in from another image or repositioned for compositional effect. Why is that so? All of the other arts use lies to approach truth. Is there a "code of honor," for photography that makes it different? And if I wanted to float a cloud from another photo across this sky... ?