Children Of The Corn. January 31, 2013
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: birds, cornfields, flock, Hadley
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A flock of birds forages for food in the fields of Hadley, MA:
Their precision flying was fun to watch but difficult to capture; this shot was at 1/2500 sec and still lacks clarity!
Long Hollow Bison Farm. January 20, 2013
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, Dinner with TCR.Tags: American bison, bison, bison in snow, carnivores, Hadley, Long Hollow Bison Farm, MA
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Down in Hadley there’s a place I like to check out once in a while, a farm where American Bison are raised. They’re impressive beasts:
They’re big. In fact, the old bulls are HUGE.
And they take the job of protecting their calves seriously – don’t expect to sneak up on them unnoticed:
They’re majestic in the snow, and look totally at home in the winter weather.
These animals area raised for meat, and if you’re an omnivore, it would be hard to get better meat than this – grass-fed, roaming big fields, protected from predators (other than us.) I know some people object to the practice of people eating animals, but since it’s more common than not with people world-wide who can afford it, I have to conclude that there’s something of nature in it.
I’ve been trying to get a more blizzard-y photo of them, but they’re an hour’s drive away, and while that’s close for us “hill-town people,” it’s still a dicey drive in a heavy snow.
Time will tell if I succeed.
Faux February. February 15, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Canon L-Series lenses, cattle, corn stubble, Elliot, February, Hadley, Mount Holyoke, Ollie, tilt-shift photography
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This ain’t February.
I mean, the calendar says it is, but it really isn’t.
Cattle don’t forage on snowless ground here in February:
Bulls don’t paw and grub through the rattling corn stubble:
Mount Holyoke doesn’t watch over fallow fields of flattened grasses as the sun sets:
No, this isn’t February – it’s something else.
It ain’t right, I tell ya.
The top two were reeled in by Ollie, the last one is the work of that scoundrel Elliot. That boy gets around.
A Rainy Afternoon… September 5, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Canon 24mm TS-EII L IS USM, Canon 5D, corn fields, farmland, Hadley, Massachusetts, tilt-shift photography, Western
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…down in Hadley, where the recent storms amounted to lots of rain and localized flooding, nothing particularly destructive. I needed to get down there to run some errands and snapped off a few shots with Elliot and the 5D. Here they are.
A pasture expecting rain:
Barns awaiting the harvest:
…and a great oak supervising the ripening of corn:
The current unsettled weather spells trouble for the rain-soaked flood regions north and west of here, but will be entirely survivable in the lower Connecticut river valley.
And it makes for interesting photos, so here they are, courtesy of Elliot.
Tilt-Shift World. May 23, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Canon L-series 24mm TS-EII, Elliot, Hadley, irrigation ditch, thunderheads, tilt-shift photography, wild mustard
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Here are a couple of shots I snagged on Saturday, down in the Connecticut river valley. The weather was unsettled, with passing thunderheads and intermittent winds, but toward evening the air grew still enough to break out Elliot and my big rubber boots and head out into the wet fields of Hadley.
Here’s some wild mustard beneath a big cumulus cloud:
It wasn’t really planar enough for a great tilt-shift composition, but I took it anyway and cropped it square.
I know, that’s cheating, but hey. I’m a cheater.
And this one I really like, and will probably make a print of; it came out crisp front to back, and the composition, albeit not classical, appeals to me:
The light was getting low, and I thought the shadowed foreground lent a measure of symmetry to the sky.
Both of these involved hand-holding a reverse-grad filter to get the balance the way I wanted it, the latter one with very limited polarizing to get the irrigation ditch to light up.
Anyway, I hope you like them.
G’night, now.
The Great Plains Of Hadley! April 22, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Uncategorized.Tags: American Exceptionalism, buffalo, Hadley, tobacco barn
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It’s an image we’ve all seen before, but with a twist.
Shaggy, massive, notoriously poor of eyesight and arguably dim of wit:
…but nonetheless an iconic figure on the American Plains….
Buffalo!
…and a tobacco barn??
These bad boys are bound for burgers, sad to say. Such is the fate of this great symbol of America’s Exceptional Plenty.
The Hitchcocks. March 27, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Hadley, Lake Hitchcock, Mount Hitchcock, Northampton, Pleistocene epoch, South Hadley, varves.
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That would be Mount Hitchcock, straddling the border between Hadley and South Hadley, Massachusetts, and here seen presiding over the flood plains along the Connecticut River:
The foreground puddle is a remnant of melting snow; these fields will be plowed for corn when they’re dry enough.
…and Lake Hitchcock: The plains of Northampton and Hadley are vestiges of the lake-bottom varves, or seasonally deposited sediments, laid down by the Pleistocene-era Lake Hitchcock, which stretched about two hundred miles from northern Vermont to southern Connecticut between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago. The lake eventually found a path around its terminal moraine dam down by present-day Rocky Hill, CT and the lake drained, leaving only the current Connecticut River in its place, here seen passing beneath the Cooley-Dickenson Bridge between Northampton and Hadley:
This is another example of a failed sunset foray producing something else worth looking at, at least for me!
More Valley Shots. March 4, 2011
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Connecticut River, corn fields, Hadley, Northampton, sunset, Tilt-Shify photography
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Here are a few shots from a recent evening down by the Connecticut river.
First, a view from a corn field near the Northampton Airport:
…with the Seven Sisters range receding into the distance. Courtesy of Elliot, my 24mm Canon TS-EII lens.
This expanse of flood plain is broken only by widely spaced tree rows…
…and the occasional farm out-building:
Here’s a view of the sun setting over that same area, from across the river in Hadley:
By the end of the month there’s a strong possibility that much of what’s in these photos will be at least partially under water – the plains of Northampton are outside of the levee system which protects the town proper.
More on this as the waters rise.
Back To Black. January 22, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: black and white, Hadley, tobacco barns
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I’m playing with my capabilities here, mostly because I can, but partly because it just does me.
Tobacco barns on the plains of Hadley:
I hope that looks to you at least a little like it looks to me, which is pretty cool.
But, whatever. It’s a photograph, for you to take or leave as you see fit.
Namaste.
Another Black and White. January 21, 2010
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: barn, black and white, Hadley, MA, tractor
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A barn in Hadley, with the requisite collection of dead trucks and resting tractors:
Doubtless better full-sized, as most things are.
Little Bang Theory 