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The Grrrlz Of Summer. June 17, 2012

Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.
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Summer brings the wildflowers out of the woods and into the meadows.  There, they face the reaper’s blade, as most of the grasslands in these parts get cut and baled several times during the warm season.

So it falls to me to be attentive to the rhythms of the seasons, and of the farmers who wring a living from them; a week early and the blooms aren’t happening, a week late and they’re in the feed.

Today saw me taking the long way to everywhere, snaking my way across the Eastern Front of the Berkshires in convoluted lines, connecting every reflecting pool and flowered meadow I could think of that was remotely in between me and Mount Greylock, my intended destination for the afternoon.  I was hunting, you see, for something to share with you.

Up in Windsor, I got lucky.

Good Old Windsor, high and wide and starkly beautiful, a no-bullshit place of wind and sky and visual gems tucked amidst the casually unremarkable vastness.  This is one of the places where I first learned to get down on my belly and look harder.

Today, I beat the reaper, though just barely; every field I passed on the approach had either been hayed or had a tractor taking it down as I passed.

So I was pleased to top out on Windsor Mountain and find the meadows along Route 8A to be flush with flowers.  At the Moran Wildlife Management Area I pulled over and suited up prior to wading out into the waist-high grass, donning a Tyvek coverall duct-taped at the ankles and dosed with DEET.  I’ve been treated twice so far this year for Lyme disease, and now that I’m without health insurance, another go-around isn’t an option.

The sky wasn’t dramatic, but rather a patchwork of cotton-ball clouds in a deep blue firmament.  Still, it provided a passable foil for the flowers below.  Here blue flag irises and ragged robin punctuate a field of buttercups stretching over the horizon:

Across Route 8A hawkweed and clover held sway, barely contained by a stockade of spruces:

I love this place.  Wildflowers in Spring, meteorological drama in Summer, and some of the wildest Winter scenes I’ve seen in the East.

Both of these are from Elliot, with my tripod splayed low to the ground in an effort to Freeze the Breeze.  Between three and five degrees of tilt gave me acceptable depth of field without the longer exposures necessitated by smaller apertures, thereby mitigating the wind problem.  And I brought the skies down with a two-stop hard-step ND graduated filter.

Then it was onward to Mt. Greylock, which I’ll save for another post.

 

 

 

 

Mood Indigo. June 5, 2012

Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.
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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.