Thursday evening I found myself in Brattleboro with some time on my hands.
The only camera I had with me was my digitally “enhanced” camera obscura. Thus, this is what I used to make photographs; all were made within a couple of hundred feet of the Vermont Center for Photography’s front door. (The last two photos were conceived as a diptych.)
Remember the days of yore film?
Every once in awhile you would develop a roll of film and find exposures that you had forgotten that you had made!
In these days of instant gratification digital photography, this doesn’t happen nearly as often, but I had this “forgotten film” experience recently.
The photos below were made (using my camera obscura system) on 23 May, the day before my cardiac ‘event’. They lay forgotten until this morning.
I used the camera obscura to make some photos on Thursday evening. When I went to download those photos this morning, I discovered about two dozen frames that I exposed back in May.
Yesterday afternoon I turned right at the bottom of our driveway and headed down the unmaintained section of “our” road.
As I walked, I noticed small patches of color on the road. I began to photograph them.
As I made photographs, I began to think…
Journeys can be measured by distance or by time.
While I walked roughly two miles on my afternoon journey, the small patches of color on the road reminded me that autumn is almost upon us, yet again, and that the annual cycle by which we measure our lives marches on relentlessly.
This neither good nor bad… it just is.
* Literally and with a modicum of apologies to Messrs. Kerouac and… Nelson.
Yesterday afternoon, Joan and I took a walk at the Nature Conservancy’s Loveren’s Mill property. This site, which lies along the North Branch river and is partly in Antrim, contains a rare white cedar swamp. I brought along the “ode rig” and thus concentrated on photographing small things close up.
There were a smallish number but a good variety of odes present… ebony jewelwings along the fast moving parts of the river and meadow hawks and some unidentified (and unphotographed) damselflies along the woods roads. Oddly, we saw no odes along the boardwalk in the swamp proper.
The most common, by far, insect present was a small (about an inch across), drab tan moth. There were spots along the road where each foot step stirred up a dozen or so individuals.
Botanically, there was an interesting mix of early season spring ephemerals (e.g. painted trillium, clintonia and bunchberry) in fruit and late season wildflowers (e.g. joe pye weed, asters and goldenrod) in bloom. Additionally, the damp summer has been very good for the fungi and I photographed a number of different mushrooms.
Sorry for the lack of captions/titles. The last upgrade to the blog software seems to have introduced a small incompatibility with the gallery software. I thought I had figured out a work around for the previous post, but now I can not remember what I did the other day!
Yesterday, Joan, her cousin Suzy and I took a trip to the Zealand Falls area in the White Mountains.
Joan and Suzy headed for the top of Zealand Falls and the AMC hut. I headed up the same trail at a much slower pace. My goal was the downstream end of the extensive beaver-made wetlands complex (which is downstream from Zealand Pond). It is always a nice hike and I was in search of odes.
On the way up, I observed a number of darners at a couple of points along the river and along a creek feeding into the river. No photos though, as these were typical darners which are constantly on the move.
Within a couple of minutes of arriving at the first beaver pond I saw two dragonflies… a blue corporal (I think) and another dragonfly with green eyes. Neither hung around long enough for a good look much less a photograph. Without success, I waited for some time hoping that they would return. Eventually I moseyed on up the trail. I saw no odes for the next fifteen or so minutes and decided to turn around.
On the way back across the boardwalk I finally espied another dragonfly with bright green eyes; an emerald of some sort. It perched briefly and I was able to make two exposures of it before it took off again… the first photo, below, is one of them.
One the way down, I stopped at the first beaver pond again, hoping that I might re-spot one of the two individuals I saw there originally. I was rewarded with a second sighting of the green-eyed delta-spotted spiketail. It briefly perched near me; almost too close for me to photograph. I was able to lean back enough to get it in focus and was, again, able to make only two exposures before it flew off.
I made it back to the car about five minutes before Joan and Suzy. We hightailed it home so that Joan could make her evening Parks and Recreation Commission meeting.
Yesterday, for the first time this season, I took the “ode rig” along with me on my daily walk.*
I was rewarded with some nice photos of calico pennants (see below). The individual in the first photo is a male and the other two individuals are females; the one in the third photo is carrying a number of mites both on its abdomen and it thorax.**
In addition to the half dozen (four male and two female) calico pennants I observed, I also saw a single male meadowhawk and a number of female spreadwings.
* There was a light overcast and the temperature was about 70 deg. F. I was out from about 1 to 3 PM.
** Something has happened to my ability to caption individual photos in the gallery. Thus, these descriptions will have to suffice.
Thursday afternoon, shortly after lunch, I was wandering by the doors that open onto our deck. As is my habit, I looked out to see what birds were present at our feeders. To my great surprise, not only were there no birds present, but there were no feeders in view!
I headed out the doors to investigate. I found empty feeders strewn about and the steel pole upon which the feeders were once mounted bent over at a right angle at ground level.
I knew at once that we had been visited by a bear… in broad daylight no less!
This conclusion was confirmed, maybe an hour later, when Joan summoned me to the deck doors. The vandal had returned! She/he was looking to see if they had missed any seeds during their first visit. I took two quick photos through the kitchen window before heading outside to chase the miscreant away.
As soon as I opened the doors to the deck the critter looked up and as I put a foot out of the door she/he headed into the woods at top speed. A good response!
Joan was sitting out on the deck later that afternoon and thought that she heard the bear in the woods, but we have seen neither hide nor hair since.
Alas, in the interests of not habituating a wild creature to humans, our bird feeding is over at least until December when the bears begin their hibernation.
I’m back!*
Yesterday afternoon, just before four, I received a call from Diane (one of my vast network** of wildlife informants). She said that there were four small herons on the mill pond behind Town Hall.
Big Bertha and I arrived as quick as we could and we spent roughly two hours making photographs of a quartet of juvenile green herons. I was unable to get all four in the frame at once; three was the best I could manage.
* After an unplanned, health-related hiatus.
** OK, so there are only two: Joan and Diane!
I spent this past Friday and Saturday on Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. The trip (which is organized by Eric Masterson) was timed to coincide with the spring migration of birds.
Joan and I went on this trip back in 2014 (see this post for birds and this one for landscapes); this year I went by myself as Joan was occupied with editing the June issue of the Antrim Limrik.
The birding was not as spectacular this year as it was in 2014 but I had a good time anyway. One can always find something to photograph if you spend time looking carefully.
Birds
Other Work – Color
Other Work – Black and White
I brought home (from our recent trip south) a handful of small shells (none larger than a half dollar) from some warm sunny beach on the Florida panhandle. This morning here in NH, with the weather cool and wet, I spent a bit of time in my basement “studio” making photographs of these shells.
Warning… photographer talk ahead!
The shells were photographed on a black background with a single light source at camera right. I used a reflector to control the shadows. The general “room lights” were turned off. The “in camera” background (which is never quite dark enough and often shows dust and other crud) was replaced by masking the shells in Photoshop and adding a background layer of uniform black.
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