Little Bang Theory

Mood Indigo. June 5, 2012

Well, naked bear encounters hardly comprising a full day’s activity, I eventually did what needed doing around the house (including putting my pants on) and headed out to do the extra-domicular things.  You know, food shopping, banking, job hunting, and taking photos of whatever looked interesting.

As it happened, the weather sucked for kite flying and sun bathing, but for photography, not so much.  I like the tumultuous skies and brooding atmosphere of intermittent storms, so I wasn’t complaining.

My errands took me to Hadley and Northampton, so I scoped out the farmlands down along the Connecticut river.  The crops were just coming up there – tiny corn rows, truck patches of beets and cabbage in their nascent forms, and potatoes.

Potatoes seem to be the commercially viable alternative to tobacco, which used to rule this fertile valley.  We grew legendary tobacco here, used to roll the finest Cuban cigars, big fat consistent leaves perfect for wrappers.  The flood plains of the Connecticut are littered with tobacco barns, now either re-purposed or falling into disrepair.

Here’s a shot from this evening, of a ‘tater field and tobacco barns in Hatfield, with the farm road’s edge swathed in a tangle of cow vetch and bladder campion:

Regulars here will recognize Elliot’s hand, with a crisp foreground leading the eye to a reasonably sharp horizon.  Thanks, Kid.  You’re the best.

And again, I hand held a three stop reverse graduated ND filter to bring the sky into balance with the darker foreground.

If this technical stuff bores those of you who don’t work at photography as I do, please forgive me, but putting words to it helps me to clarify my process in the same way that writing ideas into an essay exposes truths and fallacies.