Category Archives: summer

Three Bales in a Little Hayfield, Clouds, Canaan NH

Here in deep winter, summer, sunlight, and cumulus clouds seem to hold appeal to me right now.

This was from Canaan New Hampshire, where I used to drive a lot. It’s a funny town, maybe a bit ramshackle around the edges and right though the middle, but also very beautiful. My wife lived there then, and the house she rented was probably in the most beautiful spot I ever had the luck to spend a lot of time. And that’s saying something, as I’ve been very very fortunate in that regard in my adult life.

In browsing through my not-yet-published collection in lightroom — photos that have made some kind of progress past raw camera data, but which nobody particularly has seen — this struck me. Why isn’t this one online? Here it is.

Besides all the rest of stuff I want to work on, I have a lot of good work with hay bales that wants to see the light of day, and then some of the transition of ice-to-spring camera work from the last couple of years I think will form something of a body of work.

Available for sale and to view at higher resolution here.

Haying, South Woodstock, 2014

Last summer I had a bit of time on my hands while in South Woodstock Vermont, and they were haying across the road from where I was. The sky was a mix of space, summer cumulus clouds, and some cirrus — of course in rapid flux. I made a fair number of exposures, but so far this is the only one I’ve come to publish, I think because of the combination of clouds and also the object in the foreground. It’s mundane, no doubt a bit of farm flotsam, but the way it looks like a bed-frame in that space causes a bit of a nice extra jolt. Since this was put together as a panorama from vertical exposures, it has nice high resolution.

I have some new winter work to publish, but oh, right now, for a sky with summer clouds and the smell of fresh cut hay. Right now we’ve got real cold and wind, like in the old days, and it’s too cold, even for me, to be out with a camera. Time in photography can be spent combing past exposures and photographing the ice on the inside of the windows in the morning.

This photo is for sale and can be viewed a bit larger at this link.

Rust Scraps by Pasture Trail, Hartland VT 2014

rust scraps by pasture trail

Maybe the best aspect of photography is saying YES to phenomenon and experience.

When I had to carry around sheet film, a limited supply of expensive stuff that then required time in the darkroom to process each sheet, it was a big commitment to say Yes to an exposure. There was pleasure, but also some torture in the decision. I figured that every hour I spent with the view camera meant several hours in the darkroom. Yes came with a high cost. A paradox of Yes is that in the physical sense, in the relative world, it is so often tied with a flip side that is a burden. Say yes to an ice cream cone, and you carry some extra fat on your waist. But then Yes on a mental level, yes to our life and experience, is liberation. Funny those two sides.

Easy or hard, It’s good to say yes to experience, to phenomena, whatever side of any spectrum it falls on. The world isn’t always pretty, our experience isn’t always happy. But the funny thing is that when we look closely at it and accept it, it’s interesting. It’s amazing. That Yes helps us get close to the core of our experience, our actual life, this actual world. The opposite is rejecting our experience, our situation, our world. It is like death creeping into our life. So I think even old age (or at least middle age as I can see from here) could have the bouncing wonder of a young child if we can stop rejecting what is, and say yes to it.

I don’t mean this to advocate tossing aside all discrimination. It’s part of the paradox. Connecting with the world and experiencing it profoundly requires not being aggressive toward it and rejecting it, but going hand in hand with that YES is increasing discrimination. The more deeply we go into experience the more important that discrimination is. Lugging that big box of sheet film holders was good for me as a photographer, even if there was less Yes. A very odd paradox.

It’s a blessing to see whatever is, to take it in and accept it without aggression or wishing the world were otherwise. But then we don’t want to eat a scorpion or walk in front of a bus, pick a fight. Tricky business.

So now with digital photography we can all say Yes all the time, which is nice, but at the price of less cultivation of our discernment. We still get to work on it. There are levels of it beyond the initial exposure. What do we keep? What do we show? What to print? (I’m thinking of this image for my upcoming show on Impermanence.)

I took some months to get to Yes with this photo to publish it, but I’m glad I’m here now.

Wabi Sabi White Peony and Dew

Well, yesterday I wrote about how it’s not good to post something very fresh. Also, while it’s usually a week or more between these posts, it’s only been a day. Well, things change, and in this space I can do pretty much what I want.

Early this morning I tweeted to my sister with the wikipedia link to Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese aesthetic and world view based on imperfection within perfection, as well as some Buddhist concepts such as impermanence. My paraphrase of the gist, or at least the observable outcome, of wabi-sabi is that it’s actually good to have a bit of imperfection within something otherwise rather perfect.

A little while after that tweet I was out in the garden photographing peonies in morning dew. This is something I’ve done quite a lot of over the years, but my equipment and technique are better than ever, now. I liked a lot of what I did today, but this one rather knocked my socks off. So, two photo-of-the-weeks in a week. So far!

This print is for sale here.

Single Lady’s Slipper, and Presence

Showy Lady's slipper Vermont after rain

Unfortunately this photo only illustrates a small part of my discussion, but that’s the way photos are. They’re a very small slice of reality.

I’ve wanted to write this for a few weeks, from the time I was on my recent meditation retreat, I wanted to write about Presence, as in being present. It’s a universal capacity, and we all think we want more of it. We at least want more of the good part. It seems to be limited, and we regret that. Or we might think it’s a simple choice, that we can simply decide to be present. Not so easy.

First, our ability to be present is quite large, we could say nearly infinite. We have good senses, and the world is right here for us. The problem, I think, is in our capacity to be present, not our ability. This capacity decreases though childhood; the decrease accelerates in adolescence; by adulthood most of us are quite dull. Our senses our good, but we can’t stand to really be present. Why?

I think it’s in large part because being present is rather a double edged sword, and we learn to back away from it. Being present means being there with pain as well as beauty and joy. In fact, without a great deal of emotional maturity and equanimity, to be present would mean being overwhelmed by a lot of anxiety, fear, grief, and general suffering. I think The Buddha pretty well nailed this a long time ago. It is of course important to immediately mention the counterpoint, what we long for: being present is the only way we can experience joy, happiness, and all of this human life. It is our life, the goodness of our life.

The good news is that we can re-develop this capacity to be present. I think the main way to do it is to meditate, but also any form of emotional courage will start on this path — really facing the facts of life. (Meditation is about being present with whatever arises with equanimity. To practice it means we see our limitations in this regard very quickly, and it means we practice, like learning scales on an instrument — we practice and develop this capacity) If we develop this capacity because we are strong enough to be present, we can experience the joy and beauty of the present, while our strength and equanimity mean that we are not overwhelmed by the more challenging aspects of it.

To take the step of emotional courage, we have to turn away from numbness and the things that we do to make us numb. Then we can start to see and feel again. For some this will be very tricky. Our defenses are strong, established, automatic, and wrapped in denial.

The other thing about presence that this photo brings to mind, is that we often project a lot into the experience of presence, the experience we all have from time to time. We are present in the moment; it is just our ordinary mind encountering itself and the world. But we think that there is something special about the world at that moment, or we might even project some sense of a deity into it, as if we are feeling some divine being in that special moment we inhabit. I don’t know about that, but I do know my own mind and senses some. We might think it’s because a special person we are with has done this — but it’s just us stepping out of our cocoon to meet the world. We might feel another person has taken this away from us and blame them for our loss — but it is just us withdrawing from what we fear. We might think the presence in the moment is a quality of the wild flower in the woods in the morning sun with raindrops on it, but that flower has just invited us to step out from behind our shields.

Go ahead. Be brave.

This print is for sale here.

Two Lifeguards in a Boat, Ocean Grove NJ 2013

two lifeguards in a boat at dawn nj

There was some timeless time this summer; beach time with loved ones; Cape Cod and then NJ.

As usual, there is a big backlog of material I want to post, but I thought I would post something pretty fresh.

That week in August in Ocean Grove NJ was a mix of so much that is New Jersey — there is a rich and vibrant ecosystem, and then there is the bustle and bluster, the Chris Christy, the opposite of a sane and harmonious landscape.

There is always timelessness, always space. Just as the atoms that build us are almost entirely empty space, just so, spaciousness of mind permeates even the densest sense that we are caught-in-time. This is good for me to remember as it is about to get cold in Vermont, and I am behind in my chores and also some photographic work.

In my sense of life being too dense, I have to remember that it’s not really. I make it dense with my thinking, but the thoughts themselves have no substance, no density, no reality.

This print is for sale here.

Fuzzy Yellow Caterpillar Between Leaves

fuzzy Yellow Caterpillar in Vermont

I just finished a great trip, with a lot of photography. I’ve been through all those images, and there are some good ones for sure. I spent a long time trying to choose between them, but I ducked back to home, to the day before leaving on the trip.

This caterpillar was on my back porch, crawling on a houseplant that is summering out there. The afternoon light was just so — no added light on my part. I’d been playing quite obsessively with the micro-four-thirds Olympus with the super superb 60 mm macro lens recently added to that set of gear. I stopped my chores to make several exposures of the caterpillar. I think this is my favorite, but that may be subject to revision.

Next week, maybe some infrared panoramas of last week’s trip to the cape, or maybe something even newer.

Pale Pink Peony After Rain, 2006

There are lots of wet peonies around Vermont today, though probably not any with sun shining through like this. It’s been a fantastic opportunity to photograph wet peonies these last days, but not so good for the plants. In this hotter and wetter than normal weather we’ve been having lately, the botrytis fungus is attacking worse than I’ve ever seen. Every day I have to clip off rotting buds. Oh well.

This is from some years ago, while standing around at my old house waiting for my daughter. This is an old favorite peony of mine, and I don’t know what it is called. I’ve never seen it in commerce.

Besides the very pale pink color, one characteristic seems to be the slit in the petals.

If anyone knows what variety this is, please let me know!

This print is for sale here.

Showy Lady’s Slipper After Rain, Vermont, 2013

Another brand new one.

Kate and I went to the bog where we know these plants are, last Sunday, Father’s Day. We know they usually bloom around then, or the summer solstice. They were beautiful, and we photographed and hung out with them. Then it poured on the way home, and it kept raining through the night. I had a chance to take the time in the morning, when the sun came out, so I got there before the light got too strong. It was a good hunch. I had a really hard time picking one to post, so there may be more of them coming.

This print is for sale here.

7 Hay Bales, Canaan NH, 2006


I haven’t done this yet, in this photo-blog, but here’s a variation on the exposures from the last post. The last was done with the infrared camera; this is the regular-light camera, with the image as a black and white. In rendering this panorama I tried to bring to bear the sensibilities of a good darkroom silver print — good rich blacks but lots of silvery grays in between. Though usually I like infrared best for the hay bale images, I like this one a lot. Though of course it’s far from many aspects of ukiyo-e aesthetics, there is something very floating-world about it to me, an energy-of-the-land.

This print is for sale here.