It occurred to me after the fact that I could have worked the nest building (see below) into this wider perspective, where more of the habitat is revealed. Consider it one that got away. It’s not the first, and won’t be the last. Two important lessons here: 1) the skill set that photography requires can get rusty, especially in the ability to see beyond formulaic approaches, and 2) ALWAYS try different perspectives. Doing the second helps with the first.
Tagged as:
animals,
CT,
rivers,
spring,
water
The wind was steady at about 15 MPH left to right at the time, which made this osprey’s efforts all the more amazing. This was taken some seventy yards out with a Canon 100-400mm rental about an hour before it went back.
Tagged as:
animals,
at work,
CT,
spring,
water
A colony of great egrets has discovered the marsh out behind our neighbor’s house. There’s usually at least one out there all day, and sometimes as many as twenty, two thirds of them juveniles. Initially skittish on approach, they seem to be OK now, particularly with a fence and brush and phragmites between us.
Tagged as:
animals,
at work,
book,
CT,
north cove,
spring,
water
A wonderfully strange confluence today of one of the great Holy Days in Christianity as well as one of the most interesting secular “holidays”, Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day ….
Tagged as:
book,
current favorites,
myth,
spring,
vertical,
VT
The first – and probably only – draft of a panoramic stitch of four 35mm film images from two decades ago.
I had a thought about heading north to revisit (but first find) this scene and shoot it again with my current digital equipment – but that seems to have passed.
BTW, the rooflines of the barn were really that lopsided (which may mean that it is no longer there). Also, shooting this scene with a 35mm digital might require only one shot – and cropped at that – to match the quality of this entire 35mm film sequence.
Tagged as:
farms and fields,
spring,
VT,
water,
yankee structures
The term “freakism” was probably coined by the man jumping off the building here in 1970, Bart Howe. It was mostly a name we used for each other, a nod to those parts of us not in the mainstream. It grew to be a genuine “ism”, and also: a mantra, a rebel yell and outright babble at times.
Three decades have passed since we spent any time together; the last being a midwinter hike to the summit of Camel’s Hump, and an overnight stay under a Wolf Moon, where we fed the fire – literal and metaphorical – all night long.
Fast forward: I play music in nursing homes, and after one performance I emailed this little anecdote to a friend of mine:
“As I was packing up, this old gal with a rolling walker comes by, smiles and says ‘… nostalgic..’ and walks on. Inscrutable Zen Master, throwing down a koan !!! Yikes !!!”
And so I say there is more to nostalgia than first meets the mind’s eye.
Tagged as:
at play,
book,
current favorites,
film,
friends,
VT,
winter,
yankee structures