Joan was in need of some plants for the yard. So, today we made a trip to Nasami Farm, the Native Plant Trust’s nursery in the Connecticut River valley village of Whately, Massachusetts.
While Joan selected plants, I wandered the grounds looking for photographs.
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Yesterday morning I picked up my last load of compost for the season. This final load was destined for Joan’s cousin Suzy who lives near our abode. Since I had no fixed schedule, I meandered vaguely in the direction of home. Of course, I had my camera with me.
As I drove, I noticed the nice texture (at least in some directions) in the clouds and went in search of a foreground for the interesting clouds. I ended up at Halfmoon Pond in Hancock, near the Harrisville border (see the first photo, below). The textured clouds did not last long. The overcast built steadily and it began to drizzle.
Knowing that Joan had to make a trip to Harrisville Designs, and with the lunchtime approaching, I called Joan and arranged to meet her at the General Store for lunch. After lunch Joan headed to the yarn pushers for what she needed and I wandered about the village to make photographs.
Harrisville, NH is a quaint, well preserved old mill town. It is among my favorite places to make photos. Since the weather was not suitable for grand landscapes (think low, thick overcast and intermittent drizzle), I concentrated on the details.
It was almost 5PM before I got the compost delivered.
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Today (Sunday, 24 April 2022) is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD)!
This morning I mounted a pinhole on my camera and headed out to make some photographs. I drove a loop and stopped at a number of my favorite places to photograph: the North Branch (a section of Antrim), Hillsborough Center, East Washington, Bradford Center, Washington, Lempster and Marlow. I was “out and about” for five or six hours.
Here are half a dozen photos made today. The last of these is the one I submitted to the WPPD website*.
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* The folks at WPPD allow one to submit only a single photograph each year.
Warning… photography talk ahead!
A week or two ago, I noticed the wizened, remnants of three cone flowers that had grown up last summer close to the back wall of our garage.
As I went about life I mulled over ideas on how to make a photograph of these stems. Many ideas stewed in my brain. Eventually, I decided that the three stems lit with harsh light and positioned close to the background (to get nice shadows) might make an interesting photograph.
This afternoon I headed outside with scissors in hand and brought the three cone flowers and a nearby sprig of goldenrod into my studio.
Placing a subject close to the background creates problems in that it is impossible to throw the background out of focus while keeping the subject in sharp focus. This means that every small flaw in the background sticks out like a sore thumb.
I initially and unsuccessfully tried a piece of light gray craft foam that I often use as a background. Every speck of dust showed and worse yet, the texture of the foam was evident in my first test frames. I switched the background to a sheet of hot press (i.e. very smooth) watercolor paper. This seems to have worked well.
Here are the final photographs.
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Here are a few more photographs from my “cloud day” excursion.
The first (“Hedgehog Mountain and Clouds”, is a three frame panorama.
The remaining four don’t feature the clouds quite as prominently (or at all) as the photos I posted yesterday.
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Yesterday morning, I headed to the grocery store. (We were out of the makings of salad for lunch.) However, I got waylaid by the interesting asperitas clouds. We had a rather late lunch.
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Yesterday morning I ran errands in Peterborough.
The day was overcast but fairly warm. There was wonderful texture in the clouds.
I could not resist and took a short detour on the way home. Stopping in spots where I knew I could get good views of the sky, I used the camera obscura to make a few photographs.
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Yesterday evening I gave a presentation titled “19th Century Photography” at the Tuttle Library here in Antrim. The presentation accompanied an exhibition of my cyanotypes, salted-paper and platinum/palladium prints* that are currently on display in the library.
Along with the talk/slideshow I did a demonstration of salted-paper printing; shown below is the print that resulted from the evening’s festivities. I have matted the print and will take it down to the library for their collection.
* These processes were all invented in the 19th century: salted-paper printing in 1839, cyanotype in 1842 and platinum/palladium printing in the 1880s.
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