Of course, there were things other than bob houses to photograph during yesterday’s walk on the lake.
Here are a few of the things that caught my eye:
Last Sunday morning (6 Jan 2019), we left the house shortly after seven in the morning and headed for Williamstown, MA; about a two hour drive. Joan was to attend a ukulele workshop organized by our friend, singer-songwriter, Bernice Lewis. I went along to see what I could find to photograph (I was not disappointed) and to attend the afternoon concert associated with the workshop. We also had an enjoyable visit and dinner with Jeff and Robin, friends from our Grand Canyon raft trip before heading home in the evening.
Williamstown is located in the most extreme northwest corner of Massachusetts (it abuts both New York and Vermont) and is the home of Williams College. Having spent a career in academia, I have visited more than my fair share of college towns. Walking around the campus/town for a few hours, I was struck by the complete merger of town and gown. To this casual observer the line between college and town here is virtually nonexistent. I spent about three hours wandering about the campus on a gray Sunday morning and found much to photograph.
The last photograph of this series is of a sculpture “Double L Eccentric Gyratory II” by George Rickey. The morning was quite calm and I did not notice any movement as I approached the piece and raised my camera to my eye. As I began to photograph the sculpture, I had one of those strange moments that sometimes occur as one goes about life. While I concentrated on the angles, the background and the edges of the frame a very slight breeze arose causing the sculpture began to move very slowly and subtly. It took my brain quite a few seconds to realize that this was a kinetic sculpture and that my mind was not out of whack!!
No new photos for today, but I cannot let the day pass without comment.
I made my first-ever post here, eight years ago today… here it is, so you don’t have to search for it!
Four hundred seventy four posts later, I am still at it. Who woulda thunk?
As the last photo in my most recent post says… Life is Good.
On Sunday afternoon, scattered along about a quarter mile of our road, we noticed an invasion of snow people.
They seemed to rise phoenix-like from the slowly receding snow pack. Or maybe they stand guard like the Moai monoliths of Easter Island. Take your pick of metaphor!
We are grateful (for this bit of fun) to the suspects involved in their construction; you know who you are!
I would not, in any way, describe myself as a portraitist.
However, some times one needs to get out of one’s comfort zone. Thus, I have volunteered to make portraits at the Antrim Senior Center for Valentine’s Day.
Last week, I bought a lighting set (LED lights, stands, umbrellas, etc.) suitable for portraiture.
This afternoon, with a 33 degree drizzle happening outside, I decided to get some portraiture practice. I set the lights and camera up in the basement and corralled the closest subject… ME!
The last of these photos is modeled after a late nineteenth century ancestral portrait which hung in my in-law’s house. The stern look and the unusual pose always intrigued me.
These days, I often walk the mile between our house and the bridge down by the lake.
Some times, I take my camera along on the walk.
This sort stretch of rural road contains much of interest if one looks closely.
Passing vehicles, leave traces on our snow covered dirt road that would be missed if it were paved.
There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.
To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week-end in town astride a radiator.
The words above are the first three paragraphs of the entry in Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Journal titled “Good Oak”. Among the many memorable passages in this classic work, this one is always foremost in my mind.
Recently, Joan and I had occasion to visit the Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
These folks are the caretakers of the Leopold family’s “shack” and of the Parthenon. While we were visiting, I was delighted to find that the site of the “good oak” whose demise under the saw Leopold goes on to describe in his essay had been marked for posterity.
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.)
Yes, you read that correctly… this post is about onions, well really photographs of onions!
A couple of days ago Joan harvested all of the onions from the garden. They are sitting on a tray in our breezeway drying.
Yesterday, I borrowed a couple of them to use as models. I spent an enjoyable few hours (split between yesterday afternoon and this morning) playing with the lighting and making photographs.
This is the fourth year*, I have picked an “Adams Dozen”… that is, twelve of my favorite photos for the year.
The process seemed more difficult this year that it was in years past. I “exposed” 16,914 frames in 2015**. On my first pass through, I ended up with nearly eighty candidates for this years “Adams Dozen”.
Here is my final selection:
* See this post for the first year’s selection and for a more detailed explanation; see this post for last year’s selection.
** This is maybe a bit more than the recent past. My LightRoom catalog says I exposed 12,832 frames in 2014 and 11,735 frames in 2013.
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