Category Archives: New England

Catching up!

I’ve been posting to the blog about show openings and such, and I’m behind on the new photos. The cheese and crackers is all very fun. I had a great time at the Athenaeum show opening in Boston, and the reception in Thetford Vermont (come meet me if you are local!) will be fun too. But there is quite a backlog of new material, as usual.

I won’t get philosophical or any of the somewhat usual ruminations, just point out a couple from one day in the field.

I know of a little ravine that has water falling over the edge, and in the winter it freezes and freezes. It’s a bit slower a flow than a real “waterfall.” I think a waterfall is disruptive to this kind of ice formation, though of course it has its own charm.

I headed out at 9 in the morning, with a lot of my gear, some almonds, half a chocolate bar, and a thermos of tea. That tea was very very good, more appreciated than when I have it at my desk. I was glad to have the tea, because I worked through three Sony batteries and didn’t finish making exposures until about 5 PM. It was rather chilly, though already late winter.

The light in that ravine is generally soft, with some strong beams at times. It’s workable, and very nice.

These days (a perspective subject to change) I tend to think of my lens selection as “Zeissy” or “Anti-Zeiss.” This day was very Zeissy.

frozen waterfall vermont

Then looking down:

frozen waterfall vermont

frozen waterfall vermont

Boston Athenaeum Exhibit is Wonderful!

On Wednesday evening, April 5, I really enjoyed the opening of the Exhibition in which some of my photos play a part: “New England on Paper: Contemporary Art in the Boston Athenæum’s Prints & Photographs Collections“

Here is a virtual tour of the show on the Athenaeum web site, but you should really see it in person if you are in Boston.

A Little Show Through Spring 2017 at Pompanoosuc Mills

Art Show at Pompanoosuc Mills

Last Friday I installed 8 pieces for a little show in the Pompanoosuc Mills showroom in East Thetford Vermont, as a sort of annex show for the Long River Gallery . I didn’t know about the green walls before I showed up, but as luck would have it, it works out. The lighting is good, the space is huge, the furniture is beautiful. I framed up two new pieces, shown above and some tried and true images.

“Light on One Morning Glory,”
Light on One Morning Glory
is printed on Canson Aquarelle Watercolor paper. I love how the sharp, dappled morning glory flower pops from the bokeh-blur background, which melts into the texture of the watercolor paper. I placed it in a spot where it’s easy to get right up to it to see the interplay of color and the paper texture.

The other new one is “Beets in Ice, which was a little tricky to get just right as a print.
still life beets in ice
There is a lot going on in this simple still life poem of tones, and balancing the light with the velvet of the shadows was the tricky part. It’s printed on Canson Etching Edition paper, with some nice texture, but less than the watercolor.

The big one in that setting is “One Cow, Thirteen Hay Bales,” a panorama in a 40 inch Ash frame.
One Cow, Thirteen Hay Bales Infrared Photo
This has always been one of my favorites. An infrared panorama, it gives a sense of space, and not just space in the physical sense, but spaciousness of mind. To me it triggers the sense that there is room between thoughts, that everything doesn’t need to be so dense and solid in our experience.

Two prints in Show at Pompanoosuc Mills
These are two “classic” prints of mine, exposed in Iceland on my last trip there. Though I’m not usually a purveyor of horse photos, I love the play of tones, and the emotional warmth of the two friends in the photo “Two Horses, Iceland”
Two Horses, Iceland

Horizontal Staircase, Iceland ” is a kind of strange poem, exposed with the infrared camera, and toned the way I used to split-tone prints on silver chloride paper with selenium toner, in the darkroom days

Horizontal Staircase, Iceland

Pickerel Weed and Mist

This single large print, Pickerelweed, Mist Breaking Up, Post Pond is also one of my favorites, printed on Canson Rag Photographique. There is just a bit of papery texture blending with the subtle tones.
Pickerelweed, Mist Breaking Up, Post Pond

All by itself, “Spring Cornfield, Hay Field, Clouds Hartland Vermont” holds the space quiet well. If you’re there, walk up close. For that matter, walk up close to any of them! I try to match paper texture to the print character, and the details are worth seeing in the print.

Spring Cornfield, Hay Field, Clouds Hartland Vermont

This print will be hanging through the spring and summer in a show at the Boston Athenaeum: New England on Paper: Contemporary Art in the Boston Athenæum’s Prints & Photographs Collection

The final photo is another from iceland, Black Sheep, White Sheep, Curved Road

Black Sheep, White Sheep, Curved Road, Iceland

Rose Hips in Snow and Fog

Rose Hips in Snow and Fog

A new-to-me vintage lens I recently acquired is over-the-top smooth and creamy in the background, while rendering the focus super sharp anywhere in the frame. It’s about 30 years old, I guess, and as good as any lens I would ever want to buy new, except that it’s not so good pointed toward the sun. While my modern Zeiss lenses have some aggressive sharpness and unbelievable coatings, there is something about this old lens that is so pleasing I can hardly contain myself. What a joy.

I bought this lens on the internet while I was traveling for my father’s funeral. In that dark time, an online vendor of used lenses was having a big sale, and I took that bait to good result. A relatively expensive lens, I might not have bought it at another time. What a weird juxtaposition.

Since I’ve had the lens, since my father’s funeral and the US election, I’ve been stumbling through the mystery of grief, which has its own rhythms and times and demands. It works without our consent or conscious knowledge — and yet it demands our cooperation in its mystery. It clobbers us, but also has some healing power. If we give it its due, maybe it gives us some insight or blessing in return. I’ve always been intrigued that an ever-recurring theme in world storytelling, mythology, religious texts, is a set of variations on the theme of the hero needing to journey underground in a dark place. Maybe my favorite is C.S. Lewis’ _The Silver Chair_, a children’s book rich in wisdom. We are compelled to go to the dark place, and there we have to keep our wits about us. We have to follow instructions (in my case my meditation and dzogchen practice). Then we gain something. It’s weird.

So this image, with this lens, is to me like the grief, somewhat, though of course I wouldn’t want to have that be your interpretation! This is of course more beautiful than the experience of grief, but that is one point; within grief there are glimpses of the beautiful world. Some murky mystery, luminous; and there is some brightness glowing. There are jewels of insight, wisdom, and growth to be found in grief, if we don’t succumb to it altogether. It has been weird for me this time, a foggy quality, something of this smooth semi-differentiated quality, not strongly articulated, a few aspects strongly etched.

I have mentioned many times in this blog my love of ukiyo-e (“floating world”); the dreamy woodcuts (and sometimes paintings) of Hokusai, Utamaro, Hiroshige, Hoitsu, Kawase, and others. I love that aesthetic in the past, and by masters who bring the tradition forward into the present, like Matt Brown. This is one of my images that feels inspired by ukiyo-e.

Luckily, I love what I do as a photographer and I don’t pine too much to time travel to ancient Japan. I love that sometimes photography can do what other mediums can’t. Both realistic rendering, and the way a good lens can draw and paint with light have their own aesthetic virtues, which sometimes can soar. I can’t do ukiyo-e woodblocks, but I can be inspired by them. I can make prints I am very happy with.

I print this image on fine textured watercolor or etching paper, or it also works well on the smooth baryta surface of my other favorite paper by Canson. If you order a print and have a paper preference, let me know.

Available for sale here…

New Ice and Rain, 2013 II

new ice and rain, vermont

About this time of year, about this kind of weather. Yes, late November has its own beauty. That year, 2013, there was more ice on our pond though. This year, 2016, of course has been record warmth, and that seems to be continuing.

This image is funny, because its big sister has been out in the world catching eyes for some years now.
new ice and rain, vermont
It has sold prints, gotten into juried exhibitions; it is even collected by a museum. But somehow today’s image, made at the same time, never caught my eye until now. In part this appreciation has come about with a shift to the full frame digital camera a year ago, and the use of premium vintage lenses with nice bokeh over the last six months. Which is to say that I have a greater appreciation for areas of an image that are not in focus, not covered by the depth of field. I like images with shallower depth of field a lot more than I used to, and in fact I’ve been making images with razor thin depth of field with beautiful bokeh as a lot of my work these days.

I guess I thought the not-quite-sharp foreground and background were more of a problem with this image than the other one. Glad I didn’t delete the file. We don’t always appreciate the best until we evolve, sometimes. Not positive, only time will tell, but I think it’s as good as its companion, in a different way.

This image is available as a print here:

http://www.lehet.com/photo/details/new_ice_and_rain_gsc_1418.html

Ordinary Miracles – Four Morning Glories

Four Morning Glories

In my practice of photography there is a tension. The natural tendency is to look for the unusual, striking, breathtaking, exotic. But my saving grace is an ability to be present with what simply is, and fully embrace that, at least sometimes.

In looking for the exotic, there comes a striving, a discontent with so much of what we encounter — even when we are actually in the midst of something spectacular. We become what Buddhists call “hungry ghosts” — a mental realm where nothing is ever enough. Photography in this context becomes a perpetual bar-raising for more unusual subjects and locations.

On the other hand, by being with whatever is, there is often more interest and beauty available to us all, right where we are — vast rich experience is available in all of our everyday life if we dare to approach it undefended and full of curiosity.

I was struck in a conversation at my dad’s bedside, a hospital visit recently. My sister, a bodhisattva, was talking about a situation where she was helping someone. The nurse’s aid in the room described that person as having found a miracle. And it is true, that causes and conditions have come together in a very lucky way for that person; you could call it miraculous. But what struck me is that by thinking of miracles as distinct from the everyday miracle of every aspect of our existence, we diminish everything. It’s not that this life is a low and dull thing, and somewhere, out there, are rare things called miracles. The whole thing is a miracle. The whole damn manifestation of this existence. Nothing less than miraculous.

In Buddhist meditation practice, we are constantly cautioned to not seek high or extraordinary experiences. Inhabiting the ordinary fully is the practice. I think, despite awareness of this dichotomy in my photographic life, that I wasn’t really fully understanding why we meditate in this way. It’s not just that we “settle” for the ordinary. Fully inhabiting the ordinary, we see its richness, depth, and mystery. To look for the extraordinary, we miss the entire miracle, the whole miracle of our existence on earth. You miss that, you miss most everything. Looking for something somewhere else, something fancy, we miss everything.

So here in my own garden in morning light with a vintage manual camera lens and the blessing of time to really look, it is enough. More than enough.

This is a high resolution file, and it makes a spectacular print at any size. I print it on Canson Arches Aquarelle Watercolor paper. Prints available 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.

Dandelions 2016

Dandelions Sunset Hartland Vermont

A couple of years ago I made this successful (for me — I can’t remember offhand if I’ve sold any prints of this) exposure and then very good print of a hillside with dandelions, below:

2014 dandelions vermont barn

I’ve found dandelions to be a compelling subject since I lugged a 4 x 5 view camera around (and I have a distinct memory of stopping by a meadow and setting up my tripod and big camera to photograph them after a very significant event — meeting Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — in 1982).

Still, it’s a bit hard. They are luminous; they glow, they are full of detail; and they whisper poignantly of impermanence. Even if you’ve got a good composition, you’ve got to pull off the photograph. I was a bit surprised and heartened by that good print from 2014.

Since then I’ve got a crazy high resolution sensor with good dynamic range on my main camera, and I’ve got some brilliant lenses. Zeiss and Voigtlander — some of the most brilliant and full of character glass I’ve ever been blessed to use. Not only that, but I live near some good dandelion hayfields here in the hills of Vermont. This year I’ve gone a bit crazy working with these plants. Some think they are weeds, but I think they are a prize beyond price, but only for that very short while, until the wind blows, the rain dumps, or the first hay is cut.

Another one:

Stone Wall and Dandelions in Vermont

These photos are available for higher resolution viewing and for sale as prints:

This Dandelions and Stone Wall print is no longer on the site, but you can email me if you’d like to buy a copy.

Dandelions, Hill, Sunset is for sale.