Gosh I loved shooting around Gov't Center in Boston. Just a block or so off the Common, but such a different world.
 Don't really know what to say about this happy accident. A couple of hours after yesterday's shot I saw the snow had started. My wife arrived back home with the boy and her sister from a day of shopping. After greeting them and helping with the resettlement I realized I'd waited too long and missed a great photo opportunity...the storm was too far along, the flakes no longer random and fluffy. Ah well. With encouragement I jumped in the trusty AWD SUV anyway. In a few minutes I was back at the lake, and looking through the viewfinder I saw only white. In fact the snow was so thick that autofocus simply couldn't cope. This frame is one of the last of the few I took...the subject closer to me to minimize the massive number of flakes. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again I've heard. Guess it's true.
 I love the deep, dark woods up here. This image was taken just before the first snowfall of the year. Peaceful.
I drive past this spot many times in a week and glance at the far shoreline. Today it looked so inviting and, rarely, I was alone and in no hurry to be anywhere. What a luxury to just pull over, haul out the camera I'd luckily packed, and spend some time looking. The light before snow can be very dramatic, but you can't really tell in this tight shot why that would be. On the drive home I reflected on how difficult this shot would have been if I were still shooting film. At ASA [yes, that's how I still say it] at ASA 400, wide open, something like 1/60th would have been required at best, and the image quality of 400 speed 35mm film was nowhere near what we see here. Hand-holding a 400mm lens would have been out of the question image stabilization or not, had it even been available. Hauling out the Gitzo Reporter inherited from my dear departed mate Chris Warman would have been a requirement. Not that there's anything wrong with that...but I might not have packed it for my trip to the dump is all. Just another example of how my quote in the local paper when I closed my color lab was so far off...."they'll pry my Hasselblad out of my cold dead fingers" my butt. [edit: it was actually more like "I'll keep shooting film until they stop making it.", but you get the dramatic intent.] We held a house warming/holiday party over the weekend. What fun. The house was blessed with new neighbors who walked up the road, and friends and family who drove and flew great distances to join us. Sounds like this will be an annual event. Folks who stayed over took the short hike to our 'water front' on Sunday morning.
 We had a tremendous wind storm up here on the coast of Maine last month. Many outages, including power here for a week. This tree could have come down across our driveway pinning us in for who know how long. Instead it followed the south wind and fell to the north, away from the drive. Whew.
I do wish my blogging platform here supported a 'click to enlarge' function...there is so much great detail in the black&white image. Shame. I'd look for another blogging tool but I feel it's too late to start over...and I know the only alternative supported by my hosting company will be WordPress, which I despise. I was on Concrete5 many years ago, but too old to learn new tricks I suspect. Enjoy. Some recent landscapes made within minutes of my home
 A nice rainy saturated day. Amazing what it does for the colors, if not the expressions. :)
This was a my best impression of Garry Winogrand's style of obfuscation street photography. [copyright me, now]. If you've never seen Garry in action start here: http://bit.ly/2jTIShN I love, and thought I came up with, his strategy of looking around aimlessly or fiddling with my camera when a potential subject noticed me. Ha. This lady was having none of it, but I didn't know that until I opened the images from the day. I'd lowered the camera as if having lost interest, but kept it pointed in her direction as I fired off one last shot. I think she knew. What makes a photograph successful? This is one of the biggest questions we photographers face, and the answer is often different from one person to the next.
For myself, B&W photos are the only 'real' photos. Wow, a pretty reckless and irresponsible statement, right? Yes, and of course color has its place...just look at Eric Meisel, Steve McCurry, Pete Turner, et al. Color can be great and I use it very often. That said, in my opinion, B&W photos are unique in their ability to transport the viewer into another world. To me, this image of a frozen lake in RI is an interesting. There is some depth and drama to it., while the next one of a guy named Dave, which was taken in a very photogenic spot on a blustery morning, isn't really interesting...unless perhps you know Dave or I had included more compelling elements from the area. And then again, this third image of friend Jeff is very visually interesting to me, to the point that I'd include it in a portrait portfolio. So, what do you think? Never a big fan of long-running 'site under construction' messages that simply mask delays11/14/2017  But in this case it's true. Redesigning a site's layout [to a lesser degree in this case] and galleries [to a much larger one] is a big task. And, having just committed to more frequent posts, something had to give. So. The nav links are going to send you to galleries that aren't finely curated yet. Enjoy them while you see 'em, a lot of the mis-filed images you'll come across will actually be retired soon.
Boston, pocket camera, about a dozen years ago. Nothing like looking back through 100k images now and again.  |
"Sometimes I feel like the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It’s a big show for me as if it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there with a camera."
--Gary Winogrand Some photo sites we enjoy:
Magnum The Online Photographer John Paul Caponigro Onne van der Wal Kirk Tuck By Thom Steve Huff B&W Mag LensRentals DearSusan Archives
January 2026
|
RSS Feed