Autumn

Leek, Frost, Black and White 2010

Autumn, garden, Uncategorized, Vermont No Responses »

Jan 162012

This photo isn’t a prize iPad lock screen image or home screen image, which was a roll I was on last week, but I did find it while flicking through a catalog on the iPad. It struck me, strikes me, to be very much of the lineage of large format based silver prints I used to make in the darkroom in the early 80s. This looks a lot like an 8 X 10 I might pull out of one of my archival boxes of silver prints I made in the darkroom. It’s kind of surprising it came from a digital camera.

The good gray tones, textures, a wild composition with strong lines — it has all the stuff I used to try to do. I’m not positive I like it, but I think I do. I know I’m not the same person who made those other photos back then with the big film camera, but there is some echo, some thread. Very mysterious.

Beat up Shade and Sunflower, 1981

Autumn, black and white, New England, Still Life No Responses »

Feb 082011

Beat up Shade and Sunflower
As the last post featured a sunflower facing west, this sunflower actually was facing west as well.
In 1981 I was young and skinny and wondering what to do and nursing a recent heartbreak, a year out of four years of college, wanting to be a photographer. I was working hard at that, trying to hold onto something. Funny to try to hold onto Photography as the one solid thing in my life — like grasping moonbeams and falling snowflakes. Funny now, but So Serious then. I lived in a shoddy apartment, but with good hearted people. My life was quite full of open hearted friends, and we had an amazing garden. I worked enough to buy food, sheet film and paper and spent the rest of the time with the camera or in the darkroom. I washed a lot of silver down the drain, and crystalized a lot of it onto film and paper too.
I scanned this film today, and also found silver prints of this image in archival boxes. I will print it a bit better now than I was able to in the old days.

Sunflower Facing West, November 2010

Autumn, Flowers, New England No Responses »

Jan 142011

I’ve been thinking of scanning and posting an old favorite of mine. I’d have to find and scan some 4×4 film, not such a big deal. And I want to do that anyway. But then I got caught up in looking at more recent images, and this very much reminds me of that other one.

This is from the same ice storm as that other image I posted, the stump and weeds.

I’ll try to post that old favorite one next week. It hasn’t been online since the 90s, and I can get a much better scan of it now.

grass and stump after ice storm, November 2010

Autumn No Responses »

Dec 082010

On this day I was busy with web work (an interesting project, now complete: The Corinth Social History Project). It was a good day to be working at my desk, with cold freezing rain outside. During a break I took a look out the window at the “awful” day out there. Beautiful! I poked my head out the window. Yes! Where’s my camera?! I went out and filled the 2GB card that was in the camera, and I had to come back in for another card, and ended up with quite a few good photos. Unfortunately I was so caught up in the day and the photography that I didn’t stop to grab the smaller Canon G11. Sometimes the greater depth of field afforded by the smaller camera is an advantage in this kind of work, though much of what I did that day actually benefitted from the shallow depth of field of the prime lens I had on my DSLR.
This is a of photo with qualities I’ve had in my mind to work with for many years. It’s great to see them come together here.

To me it evokes baroque music, but also with the added sparkle of psychedelic electric guitar work, with some post-modern minimalism thrown in. There were times when Jerry Garcia would tease Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” during jams, but alas, that musical confluence was all too rare. Here we have it visually, at least in my mind.

Water Weeds, Autumn Foliage Reflections, Hartland VT 2010

Autumn, New England, Water 1 Response »

Oct 122010

Sometimes in the Autumn I go mad with the push/pull I feel in photography. On the one hand, here in Vermont at this time the landscape is the kind of beautiful that would be worth traveling half way around the world to experience. On the other hand, it’s hard to avoid cliche.

On one hand, the colors are vibrant and electric, the environmental energy is dynamic and constantly fresh: moving from heavy gloominess to bright, crisp, sharp and thousands of shades between. And on the other hand, the plants are dying, the days are shortening, and we’re spending much more time indoors.

On one hand, this is one of the most clear manifestations of the changing of seasons, touching into the eternal cycle of life on our planet, a timeless quality. On the other hand, here in Vermont there are so many gardening and household chores to do, that it’s hard to find a moment to look up and pick up the camera. And that struggle starts after I manage to get away from my desk. Luckily (though not from the photographer’s perspective), work always seems to gear up at this time of year. It’s our constant human dilemma: existing in eternity, with the capacity to touch the timeless — but stuck in time and too busy to look up and notice.

So here, I found a bit of time to look, opened up, avoided cliche (I think) and made an image I like. This is literally in my backyard, our little pond reflecting our maple trees.