Photographs by Frank

15 May 2016

Black Fly Season

Filed under: Monadnock Region,wildflowers — Tags: — Frank @ 1:00 PM

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly no matter where you go
I’ll die with the black fly a-pickin’ my bones

— The Black Fly Song, by Wade Hemsworth

Those of us who live in the northern woods are “blessed” with black fly season. In this neck of the woods, black fly season is mercifully short, lasting roughly from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day. The farther north one goes, the longer the season lasts.

Black flies hang out in the duff on the ground in the woods. From there, they ascend to attack any warm-blooded creature who dares enter their domain. This behavior makes the wild flower photographer who must lay on the ground in said woods a prime target for these blood-thirsty creatures.

However, properly equipped with a full blown bug jacket, photographs can be made*.

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* Even though looking into the viewfinder through the no-see-um mesh of a bug jacket is less than desirable.

 

1 May 2016

Pine Haven

Filed under: Monadnock Region — Frank @ 10:00 PM

Pine Haven is a disused group of tourist cabins sitting at the junction of routes 9 and 31 in the north part of Antrim.

I know nothing about the history of Pine Haven. I can only surmise that the story of Pine Haven is much the same as tourist cabins throughout the country.

I do know that Pine Haven has been slowly decaying for longer than the almost forty years that I have been driving by these cabins.

Yesterday, I stopped to photograph them for the first time.

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Hawthorne College Grounds

Filed under: Monadnock Region — Frank @ 10:00 PM

Roughly a mile from Pine Haven sits another disused institution… Hawthorne College.

My father-in-law owned this property in the years around 1960 and ran the Monadnock Research Institute (MRI) in the barns of this old farm. Joan and her family lived on the grounds.

In the early 60’s, the MRI closed and the property was sold to the folks who founded the now defunct Nathaniel Hawthorne College.

Since the College’s closing in 1988, the campus has been owned by at least two groups that intended to open private secondary schools. Neither group has brought their plans to fruition and the campus facilities remain unused.

After I left Pine Haven yesterday, I spent a short time photographing (from the road) the North Branch Chapel and the barns.

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9 March 2016

Spring Training

Filed under: Birds,Monadnock Region,The Yard — Tags: — Frank @ 10:15 PM

Just like baseball players, the skills of small bird photographers get rusty over the winter. Thus for the past two days, in anticipation of spring bird action,  I headed about twenty feet out the back door for a bit of spring training.

Even though it was 70 degrees F this afternoon, the tufted titmice and the chickadees still seem to be in their winter mixed-flock mode. At times, there were seven birds at the feeder (with nine feeding ports). Also present were white-breasted nuthatches  and downy woodpeckers. A single red-bellied woodpecker made a brief appearance as well. There were also blue jays and crows present nearby but, as is usual,  neither species showed much interest in the feeders*.

All of these species spend the winter in our neighborhood and there was no sign of any spring birds these past two days. We did, however, catch a glimpse of a purple finch at the seed feeder a few days ago. I also heard the call of a pheobe this afternoon on a number of occasions.

Spring can not be too far away.

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* In the depths of winter we will get an occasional blue jay on the suet, but not when the ground is bare.

 

30 January 2016

Margins

Filed under: Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Winter — Tags: , — Frank @ 1:00 PM

Last Tuesday dawned cold and clear. However, by mid-afternoon the temperature was near 40oF and there was a thin, high overcast to soften the light.

Thus, camera in hand, I headed out for a walk around the edge of the lake. Because the sky was uninteresting, I concentrated on the intimate landscape.

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13 December 2015

Herba Senex*

Filed under: Monadnock Region,Winter — Tags: — Frank @ 8:00 AM

A couple of weeks ago, I roamed the yard with a pair of scissors and a cardboard box and collected a bunch of “past prime” plant matter. My intent was to make black and white photographs of the brown stalks against a black background in my “studio” (i.e. a table in the basement).

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon actually making the photographs that were floating around in my brain.

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* That’s Latin for “Old Plants”!

 

14 November 2015

Brimstone Corner Road Artifacts

Filed under: Monadnock Region,November — Frank @ 5:00 PM

artifact (är′tə-făkt′)
noun

      1. an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.

 

Yesterday afternoon, I donned my blaze orange vest (the main deer hunting season began on Wednesday)  and took a short walk up  the unmaintained section of “our” road.

I make no claim about the significance of the artifacts I found (and photographed). However, they are interesting, at least, to me!

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19 October 2015

Autumnal Abstracts 2015 — Redux

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Tags: , , — Frank @ 1:30 PM

About two weeks ago, I made my first batch of Autumnal Abstracts for the 2015 season.

Since then, I have ventured out on a few more excursions in search of the ‘proper’ scenes from which to extract more abstractions.

All but the last photograph made using a long exposure (in the range of 6-12 seconds) and deliberate movement of the camera. The only ‘photoshopping’ done to these photos is the processing typically applied to raw files from the camera (i.e. levels adjustment, contrast, etc.).

Many of these are much more abstract than the previous photographs in this series, in that they do not really have any trace of their origin remaining. I would be interested in hearing folks reaction to these photographs.

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First Snow

Filed under: Autumn,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Tags: , , — Frank @ 1:00 PM

All of a sudden it is seemingly winter!

The foliage is definitely past peak and Saturday night we got about an inch of snow. Sunday dawned cold (the high for the day was 39 oF) and sunny. The sun made quick work of most of the snow. By the time we (Joan, her friend Sally, and I) headed out to hike the Bailey Brook loop in the early afternoon it was mostly gone.

However, during the couple of hours we were out, the clouds moved in and we experienced three or four periods of snow showers and flurries. The combination of colorful leaves on the ground and traces of fresh snow made for some interesting photography.

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13 September 2015

Powdermill Pond Shorebirds

Filed under: Birds,Early Fall,Monadnock Region — Tags: — Frank @ 1:00 PM

The water level in Powdermill Pond remains very low due to the work on the paper mill dam. (See Solitary Sandpipers for more information.)

Yesterday (Saturday, 12 Sept), Joan and I spent the afternoon paddling the pond from the launching spot on Route 202 to the covered bridge and back*.

Amazingly, the only company we had during the roughly three and a half hours we were on the water was a lone fisherman in a kayak. We did, however, see a large group of birders (the spotting scopes and binoculars, were the field marks we used to make this ID!)  scanning the pond from a spot on South Elmwood Road.

We saw a nice assortment of shorebirds, but no really rare ones.

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* We also spent some time out on the pond last Thursday afternoon. We saw lots of migrating shore birds, as well as a juvenile bald eagle and at least two dozen great blue herons. The skies were heavily overcast and thus conditions were lousy for photography; I did not get any “keepers”. Yesterday, the skies were mostly cloudy but the clouds were thin, This made nice light for photography.

 

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