Category Archives: black and white

Back from Ireland, working on Post Pond show

Foot Bridge Over Trout Brook Lyme NH Post Pond

I have new work from Vermont I’m quite excited about, and also I’ve hardly sorted through photos from the Ireland trip, just recently over. But I’ve been focused on working a show of work made in Lyme New Hampshire, which opens on July 12 at Matt Brown’s Gallery in Lyme.

The photo above is relatively recent, made with a modern Zeiss lens and the full frame camera. Maybe more like what I would do now. I’m including a big print of this, Foot Bridge Over Trout Brook in the show as bit of new work done in Lyme.

Though the show will mostly be of work just around Post Pond, I’m also including this old one, just brought live and printed large. It was exposed on 4 x 5 film back in my view camera days, in 1983, when I was a skinny kid with a pony tail. This was exposed at a pond called Pout Pond near where I lived in ’83, schlepped my view camera up there. I haven’t been there since ’84 or so, so I don’t know if it is still wild and undeveloped.
Black Ice, Pout Pond, Lyme Center NH

Then I’m also working up several images, often reworking them. This is one I tried a different file of once, but I never quite was happy with it. Worked it up now, and it’s nice:
Post Pond, Autumn, Reeds, Yellow Curve

On July 12 at 5PM there will be a gallery talk. I will be joined by my friend, poet and writer Jim Schley, and Matt Brown will join in as well. We are going to be talking about time.

I’ve talked about time some. Anyone who knows me knows I have an unconventional sense of time. Time is interesting in photography for a few reasons. Any time I make an exposure, the subject of my attention is instantly destroyed immediately after. Sometimes the actual subject doesn’t last long, but certainly the light, the feeling, the moment will never come again. Have I “captured” that moment? No way! I create a new experience, which will perhaps live on in a series of new moments.

Time is also interesting, I think in that it is a bifurcated experience. We experience Newtonian time, a ball drops to the floor in the time we expect, a car accelerates on the highway according to its capabilities, and we experience that in accord with the real time, often enough. But also, we live in what I’m taking to calling “literary time.” In a novel time is never “real” but subject to the character or narrator’s looking back, looking ahead, paying attention to details as the moments unfold in the story. The reason we can click into this so well when we read a novel is that we experience this way anyway. Anyone who has ever meditated much knows that time shifts and warps with our mindstream. An hour can be a very long time, or fly by. Nothing to do with the clock, when we are with our experience. All very interesting.

Prints Heading Out to Bernie Sanders’ Office

Prints ready for FedEx to Bernie Sanders' Office

I should be back tomorrow with a new image and some writing, but I’ll be heading out to FedEx soon to send off these prints to Washington DC to hang in Bernie Sanders’ office. I am a Vermont resident, and in fact have lived in Vermont more than anywhere else in my life, by far. (For the other part of my adult life, I’ve crossed the Connecticut River into New Hampshire for some stretches). So the news is that an intern from Bernie’s office contacted me requesting the loan of some images to hang in the DC office. I gave them various options, and in the end they picked these four, which of course are all Vermont images. They’ll be there for a year, and I’m pleased about it.

One thing that is interesting is that out of all of the range of papers I print on, these are all images I print on Epson Hot Press Natural paper, a creamy and velvety matte paper with a warm tone. I like this paper for infrared photos, because it tends to look more natural, and I sometimes like it for snow scenes because it gives a smoother rendering of images with a lot of high key or white in them. Two of the images are infrared, and the other two “normal” capture, one on black and white sheet film.

The images are:

Three Trees, South Strafford
This is an early exposure of mine, exposed to 4 x 5 film. I was a skinny young adult just out of college, schlepping a big view camera around. In my darkroom days I used to print it on a warm tone portrait paper, Agfa Portriga I think it was called, and then tone it hard with selenium. So I print it the same way now.
Three Trees, South Strafford Vermont

Haying in Progress, Barn, South Woodstock, Vermont
This was a day when I had a lot of time in this location, in South Woodstock, Vermont. A pleasant summer day, and I had time to pass. They did a lot of work on that hay field while I was there, and the clouds of course changed quickly and constantly. I made a lot of exposures with a normal camera and also the infrared camera. This one, from the infrared, is the one I’ve picked of them all as the best.
Haying and Barn, South Woodstock Vermont

Field of Dandelions and Barn
This is a conventional capture, printed as black and white. I’m very lucky to have this particular hayfield a short walk from my house. Most years, the dandelions go crazy. It’s a rare year though when there is a good bloom and seed-set like this, and also an opportunity to photograph the full display before the wind, a thunderstorm, or the hay-cutters take them down. I haven’t managed to photograph quite such a display in more recent years, when some changes in camera and lens choices would make it interesting to experiment. As it is, I’m not sure I could beat this one if given another chance:
Dandelions and Barn, Vermont

Spring Cornfield, Hay Field, Clouds, Hartland Vermont
This is also near my house, but in another direction. Within a half mile of this, I’ve probably made well over a thousand exposures in all seasons. It’s quite a spot. This is my only really famous image though, and doubly famous now. The first brush of fame is that the Boston Athenaeum bought this print, and then chose to display it (I had three prints hanging in the show, out of the dozen or whatever that they bought) — displayed it in a show of “recent acquisitions” last summer. It was a really great show, and I was honored to be hanging in it. It’s an infrared exposure, but it looks quite natural, I think.

Spring Cornfield, Hayfield, Hartland Vermont

Eight Wordly Winds

Icicles on Cliff, Mt Ascutney Vermont

The last week has been an interesting one photographically, and of course it always is. To start, I had a very fruitful day early last week, where I exposed the image above. The light, ice, and snow were nice all day, and it wasn’t too cold to spend a 7 hour day out with the camera. I enjoyed it, and I think I made some other good exposures.

Before I move on, what about the same exposure rendered in black and white? Thirty five years ago, when I used 4 x 5 sheet film, it would be a no-brainer: of course it has to be black and white. But I find I love the subtle colors in the image above. A photographic friend once said of me that I make color photographs like I’m working in black and white (I’m not sure it was a compliment from him). But personally I’ll take it as a compliment. For me, form, texture, tone very often take precedence in deciding a composition, but lately color is a bigger influence as well. As an option, here it is below in black and white. I think I’ll put them both on the site for sale until it is clear which is better.

Icicles on Cliff, Mt Ascutney Vermont

Anyway, it was an interesting week, as I said. After this great camera day, I had a let down from a potential vendor of my work. We’ll still see about that. But it felt like a blow. And then I think the next day, or day after that, I got an out-of-the-blue email from the office of one of my Vermont Senators, Bernie Sanders. Yes, Bernie. They asked if I would be so kind as to let them hang some of my Vermont images in their DC office. Umm, yes, I would be flattered.

Then another camera day, yesterday. It was a promising camera day, beautiful new snow lacy on all the trees, some rime ice in some places, and nice ice over rivers and streams. The only problem was that about 2/3 of the way through my stamina and camera battery supply, I fell through some ice into a stream, about belly-button height or higher. I was too busy to take careful notes at that moment. The water was ice cold and running fast. It was all I could do to pull myself up on the ledge of ice. (I noticed later I scratched my hands and wrist in that endeavor.) I had a camera backpack and a side-bag full of gear. The side-bag was floating. All the gear stayed dry enough, except the micro four thirds Olympus, not my main camera, but I love it, and on it was a lens I love. They fell in the water as I tried to scramble out. I fished them out and am drying them, though I think the lens is a loss. Besides being quite miserable for some time until I got home and dry, I was pretty bummed out about that lens. The camera, we’ll see. It didn’t seem to take on much water, and it’s quite a weatherproof wonder.

Also this last week, my ancient car, which has had charging system trouble since November, has made it clear that it is still not working. I was nervous climbing up the riverbank to it, soaked through, in about 15 degree F temperatures, not 100% sure it would start. It did. Being that wet and not sure the car would start was damn scary. It’s an 18 year old Volkswagen, which I’ve really loved for all these years, my favorite car ever. But now I think it’s time to get rid of the damn thing.

So, ups, downs, and my mind continues along, stumbling and soaring, as it does.

One Buddhist teaching on this as aspect of life is formulated as “The Eight Worldly Winds,” or often, “The Eight Worldly Dharmas.” In life we sometimes get praise and sometimes blame. Sometimes fame, and sometimes its disrepute. We get things that we want, but then we lose them — we can’t keep anything permanently. So there is always gain and loss. Likewise with pleasure and pain.

Though obviously derived from the Buddha’s teachings, I’m not sure it was formulated and presented as this list of 8 pairs of opposites in his time. I’m guessing as a list it comes from the Nalanda period in India, around the ninth century, but I’m not a real scholar of this, and there is a lot of pseudo scholarship online.

Between the idea of the title of “The Eight Worldy Dharmas” vs “The Eight Worldly Winds,” I like the Winds better. Right at the start, you get the idea. There are these winds always blowing us around. We are pulled and pushed by our attraction, aversion, and ignorance. We can tend to go off to the races every time the winds blow, or we can train to understand that this is just what happens as humans in this world and take our seat to watch the display without getting quite so caught. I like this teaching, this view, because it is basically neutral. Of course, as humans, things happen and then we respond emotionally. No blame. It’s just that we’re better served if we place our allegiance with awareness rather than with the emotional tides.

To purchase prints:
The color version

Exactly one year ago: newly plowed corn field, dappled light and low clouds

Newly Plowed Cornfield Vermont Black and White

I had been thinking about this image for a couple of weeks. I actually wake up sometimes with them in my mind. Sometimes I can’t sleep in the night because I get such strong flashes in my mind, like I’m making the exposures. Sometimes I have dreams that are like slideshows, streams of my photos. Anyway, I thought about this photo very vividly and then realized it was made just this week, last year.

There are so many things about it I like, but better to let you come to your own relationship with it.

This is an example of my work being informed by my past — my work in silver images with large format film. But I have to say that this panorama with a modern Zeiss lens, stitched from high resolution images from a very good modern sensor, is better than anything I could have made before. I will print it pretty big, and it will shine that way, but there is enough resolution that I could print it really big. If you like it and have a large wall, let me know.

This print is available for sale here.

New Corn and Fresh Pneumonia

Spring Cornfield and Echo Curve Cloud, Vermont 2016

The morning of June 4 was a beautiful one, fresh late spring growth, the corn in the field still showing nice clear geometry, and cirrus clouds echoing the curves and curls in the sky. My wife kicked me out of the house to go down the hill to photograph, with the idea there might be some low mist on these fields along the Connecticut River. There was not, but the clouds were great and I enjoyed making some I think well-seen and well-made exposures, with this, with clouds echoing the curve of the corn rows, maybe the best of them.

The rest of the day was busy, as a weekend day can be in early June in the country. A lot of gardening.

As the evening fell and the air cooled, I caught a chill and shivered. Fever all night, and the next night, and then diagnosed with pneumonia. Knocked me flat and got me behind schedule. But nevertheless I have made a lot of good exposures since then. I’m getting toward full tilt again.

This photo is for sale as a print in a few sizes on the site.

Dune Fence and Shadows, Beach Grooming

Dune Fence and Beach Grooming, Jersey Shore

I was staying near the beach, so I had the chance to go out while the shadows were long and the light was soft. I’ve been meaning to publish this one for a while, and I finally got the spur to work on it.

Photographers out there may have heard that Google is giving away their Nik collection of software for free. I’ve been using Nik Silver Effex for some time. If you’re careful not to get too carried away with its power, it offers some nice additions to a straight conversion to black and white, some ways to get the tones just right. Silver Effex has been crashing on me a lot lately anyway. I was working on making an output file for a print that sold the other week, and it must have crashed 30 times or more, and it was a large file to reopen each time. Ugh.

So I took this news as an opportunity to move on. A new one I’m trying, called Tonality CK, does not crash. So I’ve been taking it out for some trips around the tone poems. This is one.

This photo is for sale on Canson Rag Photographiqe paper

Two exposures: Pine Tree by Former Cranberry Bog

Pine Tree by Former Cranberry Bog

not-infrared, from D800e full frame

Pine Tree by Former Cranberry Bog

exposed with infrared-only camera

A few weeks ago I had a chance to make a collection of small matted/bagged prints for a flip-through bin at Frog Hollow in Burlington. They only wanted infrared prints. That’s a little bit of a funny restriction for me, because I usually consider the infrared to be more like an extension of my palette rather than a separate realm. Anyway, I was very glad to have the chance to do it, and I treated it as a little show. Usually in a show I’ll work from a range of prints that I know work, to something very fresh, new to me. I take it as a chance to stretch out and push myself, which is funny, because I can do that any time. For this show, this image was one of the new ones, and I was very happy to see it come out of the printer. I printed it on Canson Rag Photographique, a slightly textured matte paper, just a little smoother than etching paper, but still with a very nice tooth.

After that I was printing some things with a different ink set in the printer, for “luster” paper rather than matte. Then when I had to switch inks again (a process that is a little expensive) for a print sale last week, I decided to print that infrared print bigger on the different luster paper (Canson Baryta Photographique) to see if it would have different qualities. Yes, a very nice print indeed.

In the old days, when I carried around a view camera with a bellows, dark cloth, and boxes of film-holders, I used to also expose infrared film. It was a tricky and squirrely business back then, often failing. So even if I “saw” the image as infrared, I would also expose some regular sheet film as well, just so that I might get something, or in case it worked better on black and white tri-ex or plus-x or T-max or whatever. That’s a habit I carried forward, but the difference now is that the infrared isn’t always the hardest to manifest. At least last year the most difficult camera I used was the Nikon D800e full frame, trickier to get a good image than with the good reliable Olympus or even the infrared. Often on a given subject I might work with three cameras.

I looked through my catalog to see if I had made the exposure with the full frame rig, and I had. And I got a good one! With the infrared reading informing my vision, I rendered this as black and white. It’s very hard to decide which of these I like better. I think for a small image, the infrared might have it, but the full frame version has much more detail, and it will make a much better large print.

In a previous blog post I wrote a bit about how I am letting go of my notion that each situation or scene can only have one definitive print. More and more I’m opening up to letting it be OK to let any particular vision expand a bit into its various facets.

The black and white non-infrared version is no longer on the site, but let me know if you’d like a print.

The infrared version is for sale in various sizes here.

Seeing What’s Here, Letting Go of What’s There

Vermont Ice Storm Ascutney

Anyone who has spent any time at all honestly examining their mind and experience knows very well that most of the time most of our awareness and attention is not directed at the situation at hand.

So it was that I started the day of New Year’s Eve, 2015. I was looking forward to photographing at Post Pond a bit later in the morning, since I was scheduled to be in my old town of Lyme NH at 10. I figured I would leave early and give myself a generous amount of time there to photograph before 10.

Here in Hartland VT the trees and weeds were glazed with ice from freezing rain the night before. The light was soft but bright, and there was some fog and mist in spots. A good opportunity! I had to spend some time here before I headed to Lyme. I made way too many photographs right in the back yard, and heading off I was just barely going to be on time. But I still had to stop and expose the image above.

It turned out that as I approached Lyme, the ice storm was not in evidence, the light didn’t have the luminous quality that we had in Hartland. My 10am appointment was to gallery-sit at the Long River Studios gallery. After that was over I went to Post Pond, and — nothing inspiring. I could spend some time and find something, always, but it was not as it had been in my mind. There wasn’t even any ice on the water.

But in honor of my fantasy of how it was going to be, I’ll resurrect an old exposure of Post Pond — sort of how I thought it would be there. It’s kind of funny, because I’ve been wanting to go back there with my newer, higher end cameras and lenses, but that gear didn’t help with nothing interesting in front of it. The photo below (which I will not be able to print very large) was exposed with my earliest DSLR and the worst lens I ever owned in 2005. It worked out. Sometimes the situation works out if you’re fully in it.

Post Pond, Ice and Mist, Black and White

These photos are available as prints:

Ascutney Mountain Through Ice Storm Branches VT

Melting Ice and Mist, Post Pond Black and White

Extending the Series of Vermont Squares

7 square black and white photo series

I got inspired to extend the series of 4 prints that have been hanging this fall at my show at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, this series:

Series of 4 square fine art photographs

That series, which I love, was quite a breakthrough for me. I had quite a lot of wall to cover, and short notice to hang the show. I had enough framed prints around to do it, but I wanted to include a lot of new work. This series was really new in several ways. I had never printed or even post-processed these images, or thought of doing it particularly. In spite of feeling challenged in the past to create series of images that cohere, I set that as my task: not only would they cohere, but they would essentially be one unit, carrying a theme of a curve that would reverse from image to image, undulate through the series, and switch out different textures and tones that all related. I had four square frames with glass I could use, and about a 6 foot stretch of wall to fill. It was a bit of work scouring through my catalog and trying different things out, and then printing and framing right up to the day I promised I would hang. I was thrilled with the result.

Just this week, I realized that the four squares was a somewhat arbitrary series, based on that wall space. Maybe it was perfect, but I decided to try to extend it.

I’m also happy about the photos I included in it as stand-alones; and each of the series works as its own image.

New ones are:
Leeks and Frost, black and white photograph

and

white ice curve black and white photograph

The series is for sale as a set of 10 x 10 prints or a set of 12 x 12 prints for a discount price over individual prints. Email me for a purchase link.

Back to Post Pond — black and white from November 2006

Post Pond Black and White Photo

They say you can never go back. The other week when I traveled to Lyme to drop a print at the Long River Studio gallery there, it was a real flashback, and I wrote about it some here. It was so funny, being there in a different mind, the place the same but different, even walking past my old house across from Clay Brook as I walked along the brook, the outlet to the pond.

It’s also sort of the same going back through the old exposures. The file from 2006 is the same raw data from the camera sensor. The sensor and lens I had then wasn’t as good as what I have now, and my vision and mood is different. But mostly I think my eye is a lot better, both to recognize and develop images. I guess the main point is that even if I’ve got an older file, sometimes it’s like I just went back there with the camera and found something new. May it always be so. May the past, present, and future always be seen freshly.