Photographs by Frank

27 April 2022

Harrisville Details

Filed under: Early Spring,Garden Flowers,Landscapes,Monadnock Region,wildflowers — Tags: , — Frank @ 9:05 PM

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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24 April 2022

WPPD 2022

Filed under: Early Spring,Pinhole Photography — Frank @ 9:15 PM

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.

10 April 2022

Remnants… of last year’s flora.

Filed under: Early Spring,Garden Flowers,Monadnock Region,Still Life — Frank @ 9:00 PM

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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9 April 2022

Five More From Thursday (“Cloud Day”)

Filed under: Early Spring,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 9:00 PM

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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8 April 2022

Clouds

Filed under: Early Spring,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 10:45 AM

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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2 April 2022

A Short Detour

Filed under: Early Spring,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 6:00 AM

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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20 March 2022

A Tale of Two Days (in March)

Filed under: Early Spring,Landscapes,Monadnock Region,Winter — Frank @ 3:00 PM

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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7 March 2022

Last Embrace of Winter (Maybe?… Hopefully?…)

Filed under: Early Spring,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 4:00 PM

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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30 April 2020

April Photos

Filed under: Early Spring,Landscapes,Monadnock Region — Frank @ 6:03 PM

Here it is the end of April and I have not posted any new photos since the 10th of March. Early spring is usually a slow time for me photographically, but this year given the pandemic, has been especially slow.

I have been spending much of my time thinking about and making cyanotypes and I continue to do this. I have made some new photographs in April mostly by taking a camera with me on my regular walks around the area, although I did not download any files off the camera until today.

So, here are ten photos made in April… the earliest from the 6th and the most recent from the 28th. They are displayed in chronological order below.

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6 April 2019

Meandering Home

Filed under: architecture,Early Spring — Frank @ 11:29 PM

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.

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