Photographs by Frank

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.

Self-Portrait #1

Self-Portrait #2

Self-Portrait #3

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.

The Leopold Shack

The Parthenon

The Good Oak

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:

Winter Vegetation

Greater Yellowlegs

Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker Feeding Interaction

Botanical #1

Zealand Lower Falls

Abstract

Cattails

Star Island Kite Festival

Autumnal Abstract

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Botanical #2

* 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.

This afternoon was middle-of-summer hot and sticky. I headed to the cool of the basement to make a photograph that has been rattling around my skull since about February.

The subject of this photo is the only piece of nine cords of firewood that we did not burn this winter. When I came across this piece of wood, I placed it on the mantel instead of in the stove.

Truly a fine piece of New Hampshire firewood!