





Back in February I submitted five photographs to be considered for inclusion in a book titled “Our Magnificent Planet 2020” to be published by the folks at LensWork. The deadline for submission was the end of May.
In early July I was notified that one of my photos had been selected for inclusion in this book. About 3,700 photos were submitted and 300 were printed in the book.
This morning the book arrived on my doorstep and I finally found out which of my five submissions had been selected!
Of course, I could have asked which photo had been selected earlier in the process, as did my friend Joe Sack who also had a photo included in the book. However, I like surprises so I simply waited!
The five photos I submitted are shown below; “Ashuelot River in Autumn” was selected for publication.
Yesterday, I took a walk on our Patten Hill property. The skies were gray and the light flat and boring… not ideal for photographing the landscape. Thus, I focused my attention and camera on some man-made details.
Although many school buses must be feeling abandoned and lonely these days, their sense of abandonment doesn’t hold a candle to the school bus we “inherited” when we bought the property roughly twenty years ago.
The last three photos are of the Pump and Circumstances pumphouse on a small lot adjacent to ours. Pump and Circumstances is a very, very small company that supplies water to the seasonal cabins on White Birch Point.
Every autumn Mother Nature provides the woods with a new carpet. It is always the same composition but never the same pattern.
On my walk a few days ago, I was attracted to patches of dappled sunlight on the roadside.
Picasso had his Blue Period. Mother Nature has her Yellow Period each fall.
After the maples and birches are done with their autumnal display of reds and oranges in the canopy, it is time for the beeches in the under story to take the limelight. They turn yellow, then orange-brown on their way to a light tan.
Of course, beeches, like oaks, then hold on to those pale tan leaves until spring.
These photos were made on a morning walk up the unmaintained section of Brimstone Corner Road.
This afternoon I had to run an errand in Keene. The light and skies were perfect as I got to Hancock (around 5 PM) on the way home.
I had my camera with me and made a few photographs.
On the first Saturday of each month (COVID not withstanding*) I get together with a group of friends and fellow photographers in Brattleboro to share work.
Yesterday morning, I headed out for our meeting early hoping to find some foliage to photograph in the early light. I was not disappointed. In addition to nice light, many of the local ponds and lakes were shrouded in morning mist as sometimes happens this time of year.
After our get together, I meandered home from Brattleboro stopping to make photographs in Fitzwilliam, Troy, Jaffrey Center and Hancock.
Although most of the photograph were made using my ‘regular’ camera. I did breakout the camera obscura on a few occasions.
*After a several months of meeting via Zoom we have been getting together outside on the Common in Brattleboro. Now that the weather is becoming less conducive to outdoor meetings, we have to figure out what is next.
Yesterday morning I had some business to attend to in Saint Johnsbury, VY. It took me just a bit over two hours to get there via the interstates. The trip home took six hours… I meandered!
The foliage is pretty much peak in the northern part of NH and VT.
I left the house yesterday morning about ten on a mission. I first headed to Littleton, MA to meet my friend (and stalwart commenter here) Joe.
Joe’s car was loaded with cameras… roughly four dozen. A friend of Joe’s had decided to down-size his collection of antique cameras and I was glad to facilitate their donation to the Vermont Center for Photography.
After transferring the cameras to my truck I headed directly to Brattleboro (where the VCP is located) to deliver the goods.
One the way back home, I made a couple of stops at favorite places to photograph in Marlborough and Harrisville. The late afternoon light was nice and, at least in some directions, there were interesting clouds.
I pulled into the driveway at six on the dot. It ’twas a successful day.
This morning Joan and I headed out for a hike on the Peirce Wildlife and Forest Reservation in Stoddard. Our goal was Trout Pond, a beautiful and completely undeveloped body of water. Of course, I took along my camera.
On Saturday, I took my camera obscura out for a “spin”. I had not used it in a while. I have had a photo in my head for some months now and Saturday afternoon I thought that the conditions (skies, light, etc.) might be good, so I headed out.
The photo I had in mind is the last one in this set. It is the old railroad trestle across the Contoocook River by the paper mill in Bennington (NH). In addition to the light being right and having a good sky, this photo required that the river level be fairly low as I needed to “rock hop” out into the middle of the river in order to get the angle of view I wanted. It all worked out pretty well, except that I strained a muscle in my left thigh “hopping” the rocks. I put “hopping” in quotes because in reality there was no hopping done; only a slow cautious crawl out and back! In the end I made the photo I had in mind and as the saying goes one has to suffer for one’s art!
When I got back to the computer, I discovered that there were some exposures on the memory card that I made back at the end of April (the 28th to be exact). I had never downloaded these files and, in fact, had completely forgotten about them… sort of like what happened back in the day of yore film when you developed a roll of film and found exposures at the beginning that you made some months prior. This doesn’t happen often in the digital age, but it is fun when it does!
The first four photos below were made back in April. The last three were from Saturday.
Powered by WordPress