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.
This afternoon, I went to the “Open Portfolio” event* at the Vermont Center for Photography.
As is often my habit when headed to Brattleboro, I meandered in that direction rather than taking the direct route.
Today, my meander took me through, among other places, Weathersfield Center, Vermont; a place that I had not visited before. The sum total of Weathersfield Center (other than a few houses) is an unusual (in that it is made of brick) and stately meeting house with a marble** (of course…this is Vermont after all!) Civil War memorial out front.
It was a cold and dreary day with intermittent snow showers as I drove…Perfect conditions for making photographs with my camera obscura.
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* At these bimonthly events, folks gather to share photographs and garner feedback about them.
** Geology note… the Connecticut River (the border between Vermont and New Hampshire) valley is the boundary of two tectonic plates. The Vermont side was in geologically recent times a seabed and thus Vermont is know for its marble, a metamorphic rock formed from the sedimentary rock, sandstone. On the New Hampshire side, the rocks are much older and New Hampshire is known for its granite, an igneous rock.
My friend and stalwart blog commenter, Joe Kennedy sent an email this morning announcing that today was “National Joe Day”… “Really” he wrote.
Of course, I did not believe him so I did what any modern fellow would do… I googled it!
Well, guess what? Today really is “National Joe Day“!!!!
In Joe’s honor, I made this photograph while I was in Brattleboro this afternoon. Being a true modern guy, I used my cell phone!
Happy (or is that Merry?) Joe Day, Joe!!!!
March… cabin fever season. One can get grumpy.
In order to stave off cabin fever/grumpiness I headed out to make some photographs.
I ended up in the small town of Temple, NH (about 20 miles SSE of Antrim) and made a few photographs in and around the town common with my camera obscura.
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At the very end of 2020, I bought a game camera just for fun. For those who might not know, a game camera is a waterproof, automatic camera designed to make photos of wildlife. When the camera detects movement, it makes four or five photographs. It does this day or night, using an infrared flash at night.
I experimented with the camera around the yard and then in March of 2021 (i.e. about a year ago) I strapped the camera at chest height to a tree “down back”. The lot that our house is situated on slopes back away from the house and ends in a beaver-made wet meadow about a quarter mile from the house. The tree I strapped the camera is located on the edge of the meadow and the camera was pointed out on the meadow.
Our property, which ends about half way across the wet meadow, abuts the roughly 2000 acre NH Audubon sanctuary at Willard Pond. This sanctuary is contiguous with another roughly 5000 acres of forested land, most of which is conserved. There are no public roads (only logging roads) in this area. In other words, there is a lot prime wildlife habitat behind our house. I was interested to see what we could capture with the game camera.
After setting up the camera, I promptly forgot about it, until today! I retrieved the camera this afternoon and was interested in seeing how long the batteries had lasted. The batteries are still just fine, but the memory card ran out of space after seven months (i.e. in November 2021). There were six thousand photos on the camera! Most of the photos were “false positives”… that is pictures of just the vegetation.
However, over the seven months the camera was active, there were forty frames that contained an animal. These documented twenty different “encounters”. Of these encounters, eight were deer, five were moose, four were bear and there was one encounter each of coyote, racoon and turkey.
None of the photos could be considered “art”, but here are seven of the most visually interesting. The monochrome images were made “in the dark” under infrared illumination.
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March is an ‘interesting’ month here in New Hampshire… is it the last hurrah of winter or the onset of spring? The answer to that question depends on the day.
Since my last post (about two weeks ago) the ground has been completely covered again with snow (two or three inches) on two separate occasions. The snow is mostly gone again. Only pockets of the winter’s accumulation remain in the coolest, shadiest spots. The standing water (beaver ponds, forest pools and the lake) is still mostly frozen but there are bits of open water beginning to show.
Last Thursday was a late winter day; the temperature was in the low forties and it was overcast; there were brief periods of light rain. Mid-afternoon brought an interesting “ground” fog. I put “ground” in quotes because the heaviest fog was actually over the still mostly frozen lake. There were thick rivers of fog about 20 feet high in multiple spots.
Friday was the complete opposite of Thursday; an early spring day. The temperature was in the low sixties and it was partly sunny. I took advantage of the nice weather and went for a walk up Hattie Brown Road. I made it as far as the old farmstead before deciding that it was time to head home for lunch.
There is not much left of the Hattie Brown farm… just a cellar hole and much metallic debris scattered about.
The pockets of snow that remain this time of year are littered with the winter’s detritus… beech leaves, hemlock cones and various small sticks and twigs.
Beech leaves are how we will know that spring has truly arrived. Last year’s leaves are still tenaciously hanging on to branches in the under story. They will drop only as this year’s leaves begin to bud out. Then, we can declare that spring is here to stay.
The first four photos below were made on Thursday; the remainder are from my walk on Friday.
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On Saturday afternoon, I took a walk up the unmaintained section of our road. Given the weather forecast, I figured that it might be the last time this season for wintry photos.
The forecast from Saturday turned out to be pretty accurate. The high yesterday (Sunday) was almost sixty degrees and barely dropped into the 40s overnight. There was a lot of bare ground showing this morning. Today’s rain (which started about noon) is making quick work of the remaining snow.
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Back in October 2018, during our road trip to the Southwest, Joan and I made a stop at Hovenweep National Monument. This site, located near the Utah/Colorado border in southern Utah, preserves several ancestral Puebloan villages that were inhabited by groups related to those who lived at the better-known sites in what is now known as Mesa Verde National Park.
Hovenweep is a quiet, peaceful place compared to much-visited Mesa Verde.
Back in January I selected ten of the exposures I made at the Square Tower site in Hoveweep and prepared digital negatives from these files with the intent to make platinum/palladium prints.
As is my habit these days, I initially made small (4×5 inch) negatives/prints to work out the adjustments (mainly dodging and burning) necessary to make a good print. Once I have a small print that looks good to my eye, I then print a larger negative (usually for an image that is 7.5 inches on the long side) and print that on 8×10 inch paper.
Last week, I spent roughly twelve hours (in two sessions) making the ten final prints that are shown below.
My original intent was to place the ‘bare’ prints in a folder with an appropriate title page and colophon. However, making prints that are precisely placed on the paper and that do not have any extraneous marks on the sheet has proved to be difficult. Thus, I am having second thoughts about that presentation and may end up mounting and matting all of the prints to 11×14 inches and placing them in a traditional print box.
As is often the case, the scans do not do full justice to the original prints.
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My late father-in-law, Winslow Caughey, was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. He enjoyed making photographs of his grandchildren and other visitors as well as the Rocky Mountain landscape. He generally shot slide film and would occasionally have prints made from the slides.
The photograph shown below, which Winslow titled “Progress”, was one of those that he had made as a large print. That print now hangs in Joan’s brother George’s house. We thought that the original slide had been lost and thus print was unique.
However, I recently spent a few cold winter evenings going through the slides we saved when Winslow died and lo-and-behold, I found the original slide which I promptly scanned so that it is saved for posterity.
I have not yet made a print, but I intend to do so and to find a place to hang it in the house. It is a witty photo that deserves to be seen. So here it is…
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