photography

Slow and Steady

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131016 Moonrise

I arrived late to Rowe on Wednesday to see that the shed was being worked on.  Most of the paint was removed and there was a window in the west wall.  The opening has always been there – there was a screen in that spot in need of repair.  A hinged shutter, a door of sorts, covered the hole year round and has been there as long as I can remember.  It’s always interesting to walk into an interior space where there is light that has never been there before, you feel like you’ve been missing something.

It was still light out as I unloaded my car but fairly clouded over.  I started cooking a little supper on the stove and walked into the living room where the light coming into the east windows was this amazing color, and bright for sunset.  I looked out, grabbed a camera and this is what I saw.  The light reflecting off of the clouds from the west with the moon rising in the east.  It was stunning and there for less that 10 minutes.  Of course Mr. Photobomb was in every shot.

I woke up out of a half sleep Thursday morning to Chester growling – softly (he’s kind of chicken).  I got up to see Mike , my brother-in-law and Jim, his work partner working on the shed wall.  The dogs went out to happily greet them and we took a walk to the back forty.  When I returned Mike and I talked about the condition of the clapboards and where we were going to go with this.  He also told me Jim had found the window at the dump.  Jim works at the dump part-time which gives him access to the good stuff.  He’s always thinking ahead to where he might recycle something.  A bonus for both of us.  I left them to their work and assume that it will look wonderful in the next week or so.  They do really good work.

131017 Paint

Exterior painting is not something Bill and I are interested in doing.  We have done it at the house in Enfield but the house in Rowe is just too tall.  Mike has been painting for years.  When he paints you know he will do whatever he can to get the paint to stay on for years to come.  He repairs, replaces and caulks where needed then primes and paints.  He is meticulous.

We haven’t been able to do more than a side a year because of the size of the job and the expense.  It will be another two years probably before the house it completely painted so for the time being I just photograph the good sides.  They finished the front a few weeks ago and I have to say the house is looking quite beautiful. I am hoping to build a new storm door before winter.  The strap hinges and thumb latch were made at Williamsburg Blacksmith quite some time ago and that aluminum door really needs to go.

131013 Front of House

Of course when you look at the photographs there are more things to add to the to do list.  Antennas and dishes have to be removed, lightning rods reattached.  Every once in a while I look at a photograph like this and in my head just pretend it’s all done.

Weaving Wednesday – Round Robin 4

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131015 Braided TwillNext up on my twill weaving tour is a Braided Twill.  This was done in 10/2 unmercerized cotton on an 8-shaft loom.  My first 8 shaft experience.  The treddling is quite simple and progressive in a way that makes it easy to weave. The results are impressive I think.

Like many of the towels I have woven in this series the pattern isn’t that obvious as you are weaving it.  You need to stand away from the loom or lean back while you are sitting so you can see it at an angle.  This is where photography really comes into play.  For some reason no matter what angle you photograph textiles you always see much more detail than if you are looking at the textile itself.  I’m not sure if it’s the contrast or the fact that a photo is 2 dimensional.  I know if I can’t see what’s going on I take a photo and get my ah ha moment.  That’s the beauty of the instant gratification of digital.

131015 Braided Twill (2)This was difficult to weave evenly.  You really can only weave in the center third of your warp otherwise you can see where your beat is uneven, it breaks up the pattern.  Another problem for little perfectionist me.  I finished up my 27″ in about three hours then toured the studio to see what I wanted to weave next week.  This is so much fun.

Breathe

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131008 Sunset in Brimfield

After spending some time in Boston on Tuesday dealing with family health issues I returned home by way of Brimfield.  I wanted to get my weaving done in a timely manner but have to say my mind wasn’t all there when I arrived.  Usually weaving is a calming meditative experience for me and I can only surmise that what had transpired inside of my little world over the past week conspired to keep my mind preoccupied with other matters.

As evening progressed into night I was madly trying to get my little project finish when Pam said, “Come see this sunset.”  I got up and looked out at the view from the upper deck and went right back in to get my phone (the camera of the day).  I took a few shots, playing with the settings and pretending I could make a photograph with a phone as good as one with an SLR.  Satisfied with what I could get I went back in and wove some more.

It wasn’t until later that I realized what calmed me more than anything was the simple act of taking those photographs.  That was the true meditative moment.  I had to breathe, hold still, absorb and observe what was going on around me.  As usual it was the healing power of the natural world that helped me settle.  Taking a photograph makes me focus, zone right in on what is before my eyes at that moment.   It’s a narrow view yet somehow bigger that anything in the periphery.  Here I thought that the weaving was what would bring me down to a tolerable level of stress when in reality it was those few moments of focus on nature, breathing it in and standing still.

Little Gifts

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131007 Mill Pond

 

The leaves this year are spectacular.  The past few years have been less so, a muddled brown mess, a disappointment to the people who travel hours to gawk at them.

Yesterday was a rainy, cold day.  I looked out the window often, the color in the back forty at its peak.  The grasses have all turned a golden brown with the rust colored ferns mixed in.  The maples are wearing their scarlet jackets now, more brilliant with each passing day.  The birches a bright yellow.  Another week and it will all be gone for the most part, especially if the rain keeps up.

I have seen the leaves change every year for my entire life.  Many years ago I was working as a photographer in North Carolina during foliage season and I flew home for a weekend so I wouldn’t miss it.

I have to tell you that I rarely photograph the foliage as it changes.  I observe it, soak it in but I’ve found that photographs I’ve taken just blend in year after year.  As I left the house in Rowe last evening I drove right past this.  The pond is right in the center of town (of course the center of town is just a few buildings).  There is a gazebo just to the left out of the photograph.  The light was going fast, there was a heavy mist and the fog was pretty dense.  I notice the tree right away and thought wow, how beautiful.  I kept on driving but the tree was stuck in my head.  As I continued down the road I first thought “I’ll take it during the week, next time up.”  I then realized this was it – the only moment this would look like this.  If it was still in my head a mile down the road I had to turn back.  I did.

As I walked around the green I thought about the house that was once in this spot, abutting the road.  I thought about learning to fish in that pond and doing it often from the shore with other friends all having ridden our bikes with our poles.  I remembered Helen and Ray, creators and guardians of the the Rowe Historical Society spending their retirement years in the house on the pond.

Walking back to my car, my feet completely soaked, I wondered why I never really noticed that maple before.  I think it’s just a little gift you get every once in a while.  That tree flagged me down, told me to look at the exquisite beauty all around me, stop taking it for granted.

Little gifts, you just have to slow down long enough to accept them.  The bonus is I got back into my car, scrolled through the images I had just taken and thought “Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted.”  A rare feeling indeed.

Phone As Camera

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Peach Lily

 

Yesterday I took a series of photographs of some of the flowers in my garden.  They were pretty nice if I do say so myself.  I took them all with my phone.  Whenever I do this I always feel like this is a little bit of a cheat, or that I’m just too lazy to go get my camera.  Many times I use my phone because it’s just easier to upload the shots to the internet if I want to share them and there are a lot of choices in how to share.

Lately the change in my attitude has happened because the photographs are as good as anything I would take with my camera.  So here’s the old school photographer embracing the new technology and really loving the results.  The most important part of photography is actually taking the picture – if you don’t take it you don’t have it.  My phone is almost always with me, my camera not as much.  So when the shot is there so is the means.

There are photographers I know that seem to think the better, more expensive the equipment the better your images will be.  I’m here to tell you that you need to be able to see the image before any equipment comes into play.  The most important photographs to me are when I know that I am seeing through the eyes of the photographer, that little window to the soul.

Chrome

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Kodachrome gradient

 

I was watching a news show this morning and as they faded to advertising they were playing Kodachrome in the background.  We talk about the soundtrack of our lives and this is one of those songs.  It was released in 1973 by Paul Simon.  Three years later I went to photography school, not because of the song. At the time we played that song to death.

“Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s
A sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to a photograph
So mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away”

This started me thinking (another rabbit hole) about my history with film.  I think Ektachrome was the first color film I exposed in school, probably after months of working with b&w.  The line went if you could shoot chrome you could shoot anything.  You had to pay attention to exposure.  Not long out of school I worked at a small lab processing Ektachrome and color negative films as well as black and white.  I have to say that even though I was the only lab tech there and after running hundreds of rolls of film and printing thousands of b&w prints I never lost my love of the darkroom.  It was quiet and meditative.  For me there was always magic in a darkroom – even knowing how it all worked, it was still magic.

It’s been many, many years since I’ve been in a darkroom.  I often lament the fact that my daughters will never experience processing their own film and making their own prints.  They are the digital generation.  I must admit if I am honest with myself that so much of the frustration of being a photographer was relieved by the digital age.  How many times did I return prints to a lab to be reprinted because they were too magenta or cropped improperly?  Now you have complete control over every image.  If you have something printed and it doesn’t look the way you expected it to then you have no one to blame but yourself.  How many proof albums did I put together and then take apart for brides to create their wedding albums?  Does anyone even have a wedding album anymore?  Now they have it playing with the dissolve and music as their screen saver on their computer.  That’s not a bad thing.  It used to take anywhere from 6 months to a year to get a couple their finished album, hours of work on the part of the photographer.

Maybe that’s what I’m really lamenting, the loss of the long process from beginning to end.  The light meter, the framing, the deliberate shot.  Not knowing what you have on that roll of color film until a week or more after it was exposed.  Now that I think of it it’s a wonder that half of the photographers I know didn’t die an early death due to the stress in their lives.  Shooting 300 shots at a wedding with equipment malfunctions requiring some pretty creative exposures. Using your flash manually (can you even do that anymore?) knowing the distance by eye and setting your exposure instantly. Then waiting to see if you get that phone call from the lab saying “Uhm, you have 3 rolls (90 shots for me) underexposed and not printable.”  That’ll wreck your day, week, month.  I had the good fortune to have what few horror stories I can tell happen on someone else’s dime.  It was his crappy equipment and he had to clean up the mess.  You had such an intimate knowledge of your equipment and your film, you knew what you could do with it and when you were pushing the envelope.

Today my go to camera is often my phone.  I am still a deliberate photographer.  I compose every shot.  I don’t load hundreds of photographs onto my computer with edit in mind.  I don’t think you should have to do that.  I think you should see that shot in your mind and strive for it.  Of course there is still the edit of that one shot but now I have complete control and that too happens in an instant.  I will never be making little cardboard vignettes or tools with wire to print that special print again.  Although I have to say when it took me hours to make that perfect b&w print it meant so much more to me.