Yesterday afternoon our friend Diane asked me to makes a few photos of the Peace Bridge in Memorial Park. The bridge is scheduled for replacement in the very near future.
Last evening, the sky and light were pretty nice so I took a drive to town to see if I could make the photos Diane asked for. While I was downtown, I made photos of a couple of other landmarks that were bathed in the evening light.
What is the difference between the first day of spring and the first spring day?
The answer, at least here in northern New England … “Six weeks!!!”
Over the past few days we have had periods of sleet. Just a thin coating accumulated on things and most of this disappeared pretty quickly. However, it has been cold enough and cloudy enough that that, even more than a day after it fell, traces of sleet were still hanging on in some spots.
Yesterday dawned foggy and stayed that way most of the day. After lunch I headed out for a walk to see if I could capture the “feeling” of our lovely spring day; the temperature was 33 degrees F.
About half way back on the return leg of my walk it began to rain lightly. About a half-hour after I got back inside, it began to snow. The snow lasted roughly an hour. When it stopped we had an inch or so on the ground.
Ahhh… Springtime in New England!
I ended up with two series of photographs from my walk.
Jane’s Barn:
Along a Foggy Woods Road:
This morning one of my monthly therapy photography groups met at the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, VT. After more photo talk over lunch I headed back across the river and pointed the truck in the direction of home… well sorta!
I meandered through West Chesterfield, Westmoreland, Walpole, Alstead, Ackworth, Lempster, Washington and Hillsborough before arriving home in Antrim around 6:30. Along the way, I even made a few photographs in some of those towns.
Shown here are the photographs made using my camera obscura.
I also made additional exposures with my regular camera for an experiment that came out of the discussions this morning. Those will require some thought and processing before they are ready to be shown… all in due time.
Yesterday afternoon was warm (just about freezing) and sunny, perfect for a walk on the lake. There are about half a dozen bob houses out on the lake (and a couple more on the shore by the boat ramp).
To my eye, the structures per se do not make particularly interesting photographs, particularly in the harsh late winter sun. However, there were many details that caught my eye.
My friend Bill wanted to make my portrait. Why me, I have no idea! However, when it comes to such things, I know not to question another’s choices as there is no “right” or “wrong” in art.
Thus, we met yesterday for lunch at the Harrisville General Store before getting down to “work”. I arrived, at most, ten minutes before Bill. In that interval, I made these photographs, all within a hundred feet of the store’s front door.
After a bowl of wonderful soup, we headed to the house and got to work making portraits. I am very interested to see the result.
The first photograph in this series, reminded me of another photo of a black board I made almost ten years ago, see: Rule #47.
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!!
I made this exposure back on the 12th of November at the church in East Washington, NH. The building was locked up tight. Thus I was outside with the camera help above my head and the lens pressed flat against the window pane. I framed the photo using the tilting LCD on the back of the camera. Ain’t modern technology wonderful!?
One might ask how I knew that this scene existed if I had to hold the camera above my head. Well, I initially peeked in the window by standing on tiptoes on a small ledge and steadying myself by holding on to the sill. The scene, lit by the late afternoon window light, was wonderful but I was not going to be able to photograph it while standing on that ledge.
When I got back to my digital darkroom (i.e. the computer) I cropped the frame (as I most often do) to a 4:5 ratio, converted it to black and white and “developed” the image to my liking (in this case with a very slight warm tone). Next, I went to make a print.
One of the features of Lightroom’s print module is that it remembers which print template you had used during your last session. In this case, it just so happened, that the template which popped up containing my 4:5 cropped image was set to make a square print.
I was immediately struck by the square-cropped version, a possibility that I had not considered. The image had much more impact cropped to 1:1 than at the 4:5 ratio I had originally selected. Being stubborn, I printed both versions and have spent some time living with them.
The square crop is, to my mind, definitely stronger. What say you?
Here are two more photos made using my camera obscura on the same afternoon. Since the ground glass of the camera obscura is square, these images are always in the 1:1 ratio. The two photos were made from essentially the same spot, at roughly ninety degrees from each other.
After finishing my errands this morning, I took a stroll (with camera in hand) around downtown Peterborough in a light rain.
The light was dull and flat, it was not a day for black and white photos, but the rain did make the colors really pop!
Meetinghouse Hill was the original center of Antrim. The original meetinghouse was built near the summit in 1785. The associated cemetery is still well maintained an offers nice views of Mount Mondanock after some recent logging activity on the southwestern flank.
The meetinghouse building was moved to the foot of the hill (maybe a half mile trip) in 1832 and was purchased by the Antrim Grange in 1894. It still used as the Grange Hall and they are in the midst of a campaign to restore the building. Across Meetinghouse Hill Road from the Grange is the Uplands, an old farmhouse and barn. The Uplands is the home of our friends Victor and Lynne who run a bed and breakfast there.
Last Friday, I spent some time on Meetinghouse Hill making photographs.
About a week ago (Tues., 14 Feb, to be exact), I headed to Keene to run some errands.*
I parked in the Gilbo Street lot.
As I returned to my truck, I noticed the nearby snow-covered skate park. Upon wandering over to investigate, I noticed the tracks of a single individual going into the park and over to a pile of stuff on the ground. The pile of stuff turned out to be a memorial for a Pabst-drinking skateboarder.
After photographing the memorial under snow, I pointed my lens at some of the nearby structures.
* I know… I’ve been a bit slow in processing these!
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