As usual, I also photographed the “landscape” while we were out on the lake on Sunday. I was hoping for some nice wind sculpted snow on the lake but there was not much to see in that regard.
However, I did make two “non-porcupine” photos that I thought blog-worthy.
Yesterday was the first day with above freezing temperatures since early January… the high was 33 degrees! The warm spell did not last long. It was 11 when I got up this morning and it is -1 (-15 with the wind chill) as I write this at about 8:30 PM. The low tonight will be around -10 without the wind chill.
We are down to about a cord and a third of wood… I suspect that we’ll be switching to oil in a couple of weeks!!!
Joan and I took advantage of yesterday’s warm spell by heading across the lake on snow shoes. Our main goal was to rake the three feet of accumulated snow from the roof of our camp. Eventually it will warm up and rain on the snow and that sort of weight is not kind to old structures. Thus the need for snow removal.
While I started the raking, Joan explored the various animal tracks in the snow on the lake. A coyote had walked along the shore of the cove and stopped to dig out and explore an animal carcass buried in the snow.
Another set of tracks ended at a small hemlock a few feet off the lake. Sitting about eight feet up in said tree was a porcupine doing what porcupines usually do while sitting in hemlocks… eating!
It is very common this time of year to find the snow under hemlocks littered with small bits of hemlock branches; a sure sign of a porcupine had a meal aloft. Hemlock seems to be their preferred winter food and they are messy eaters!
I was easily persuaded to exchange the roof rake for my camera and was able to move to within a dozen feet of the porcupine without any evidence of concern upon its part… it just kept on munching hemlock boughs.
Eventually, it descended the tree and headed towards me along the edge of the lake. It shuffled around for a short while and then climbed another, small hemlock a few feet from the first. It settled in to eat again about eight or ten feet off the ground. After some time it headed further up the tree and I decided that it was time to get back to the roof rake.
About a week ago, I headed “down back”. I was expecting fairly harsh light as the skies were mostly clear and light from a low angle in the mid-afternoon, just before the sun dipped below the ridge to the west.
My expectations were met and I was able to make a series of photos of the vegetation sticking up out of the snow casting shadows on the nicely textured snow. Every once in a while nature cooperates with the photographer and his visions!
A couple of days later we got another 10-12 inches of snow and although I have not been down back since, I am sure that there is not much emergent vegetation now!
My next vision involves shadows and wind-blown snow out on the lake. But not today (I think) as the mid-afternoon temperature is hovering right around 10 degrees (and some where around -5 with the wind chill).
Like so many things in life, photographing small birds takes practice.
Thus, yesterday afternoon I set up the chair blind, tripod, etc. near the feeders in our yard intent on getting some practice.
In addition to the usual birds we see all winter (chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and downy woodpeckers*) we have been seeing small flocks (8-12 individuals) of goldfinches at the feeder in the past week or so. I photographed them all yesterday.
I have decided that the titmice are the hardest of these birds to photograph.
Many individuals fly directly to the feeder from fairly far afield. Those that do stop at one of my “photo perches” near the feeder rarely stay for more than two or three second; a much shorter interval than any of the other species**.
Photographing titmice requires rapid reflexes… and much practice!
* We also seem to have a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers that visit the suet feeder regularly, most often fairly early in the morning. I did not see them yesterday afternoon.
** The red-bellies are hard to photograph as well for similar reasons. They spend a much shorter time at the feeder than the other woodpeckers. They stay only long enough to dislodge a large chunk of suet which they then carry off into the woods. I suspect that they cache much of this food for later use.
Snow is not simple.
Once it falls to the ground, it begins to change. It is sculpted by the wind, pitted by rain, trod upon by animals, etc.
The late afternoon sunlight playing upon a snowy landscape makes life interesting for photographers.
Joan’s old friend Sally sent me a copy of a wonderful book about stone walls for the holidays.
I finished the book, Sermons in Stone by Susan Allport, last week and was inspired to photograph the snowy walls along Brimstone Corner Road.
All of these photos were made within a quarter mile of the house.
A few years ago (before I retired), I bought a book titled Book + Art. Handcrafting Artists’ Books by Dorothy Simpson Krause. At the time I read through it but I did not find the time to experiment. Now, I have the time… so I have been experimenting!
My proximate motivation, was the series of “Autumnal Abstracts” I made this fall. I was interested in finding a way to display a set of images from this series and a small book seemed like a good solution.
My first usable book (Photo A1, below) began with two small photos printed on a half sheet of regular inkjet photo paper which was then folded in half. This makes for a final a page size of 4.25″ x 5.5″. Three of these folded sheets were then sewn into a card stock cover.
This construction is very nontraditional…the open ends of the folded sheets are placed at the crease of the cover and sewn in place. More usually, the creases of the pages are place into the crease on the cover for sewing. However, the “odd” construction worked pretty well and I did not need double sided inkjet photo paper. One small snag with this construction is that the book is very stiff… it does not lay open by itself. (This is why there is not a photo of the inside!)
I was so pleased with the result that I made seven more copies for an edition of eight!
After my “success” with the Autumnal Abstract series, I decided to try a similar but larger book (see photo A7) with photos from my “Flow” project. The construction is the same as above but I used 11″ x 17″ sheet of paper; again printing two images per sheet. This results in an 8.5″ x 11″ page when folded in half. For a cover, I used a very nontraditional material… a sheet of thin “craft foam” from one of the chain stores.
Emboldened and wanting to experiment further, I switched back to the Autumnal Abstract series.
The next version (Photos A2 and A3) of was a more traditional construction. I made, using traditional methods, a small booklet (4.5″ x 6″) out of bristol board and I glued photos on to the pages.
In looking though my stash of photo paper, I found that I actually had a package of double-sided paper. It is not high quality paper but it sufficed for another experiment. I printed two photos on each side of a half sheet of this paper and trimmed them so that the pages were 5.25″ square when folded in half, Three of these folios were stacked together for the final book. I added a card stock cover and bound them all together with a traditional pamphlet stitch. The result (Photos A4 and A5) is a very traditional looking booklet.
About this time, I visited Zephyr Designs, an art supply store over in Brattleborough, Vermont. I came back home with a number of sheets of decorative paper with which to continue my experiments!
Photo A6 shows one result. The construction is similar to the second version described above except that I again”went square” (6″ x 6″) and the cover is made from a piece of heavy and woody paper rather than simple card stock.
Long thin (i.e. panoramic) photos are often difficult to display traditionally (i.e. matted and framed). In thinking about this “problem”, I decided that an accordion book might be the solution… so I experiments some more!
I won’t bore you with all of the failed experiments. Suffice to say that most photo papers have coatings that crack when folded and that a number of the resin coated papers contort into all sorts of interesting shapes when glued to more traditional papers! (Plastic coated papers don’t react to moisture the same way as regular papers do.)
My first successful attempts at accordion books involved printing on regular watercolor paper (a half sheet that measures about 7″ x 20″) and adding decorative paper covers to the end panels. (see Photos A and B below; these are showing up at the end of the series for some reason…. #%@$ computers!)
This was a good start, but not every photo looks good with the muted contrast one gets when printing on “plain” watercolor paper. So I continued my search for an ink jet paper that would work in this context. I also was interested in completely covering the back of the print (i.e. not just adding covers) with decorative paper.
I think that I have got all of the problems solved! The remainder of the photos below show the front and back of five different accordion books (measuring about 5.75″ x 16″) that I have made over the past few days.
Here in northern New England, folks with long driveways often keep a “plow truck”.
These old (and usually unregistered) pickup trucks are kept running for the sole purpose of plowing snow off the driveway during our long cold winters.
I have driven past this long unused plow truck dozens of times over the past three or four years but the light falling on it was never “interesting”. Yesterday morning things were different. Thus, with the temperature in the single digits and ungloved hands, I stopped and made a few exposures of this plow truck.
Oddly, this particular plow truck has been left way down at the road end of a driveway that is long enough that one can not see the house from the road. Usually plow trucks are kept up near the house. After all, who wants to have to walk the length of a long driveway in deep snow just to begin the clearing of one’s driveway. Just one of life’s little mysteries!
Yesterday afternoon Joan and I took a walk “down back” in “our” beaver-made wetland. The temperature was about 15 degrees F (up from a low of -12 the previous night) but there was no wind (a stark contrast from the day before). As long as we stayed in the sunny spots the walking was quite pleasant.
The sky was cloudless. The sun was low. There was a light coating of new and very dry snow. These conditions made all sorts of interesting patterns on the frozen ground stand out. I photographed them!
Back in 2011 (see this post), I started an annual tradition of choosing a dozen photographs to represent my work for the year. I some how missed making a similar post for 2012, but I continued the “tradition” in 2013 with this post.
Maybe this will actually become a tradition, since I have remembered (in a timely fashion) to choose a dozen for 2014.
Here they are:
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