During my (then) rather lengthy daily commute, I always opted for the scenic route, which, albeit 10-15 minutes longer, was much more relaxing than using the highways. And it had the added benefit of providing some interesting scenery to enjoy!
The Cows are Hamming it up!
One of the points of interest is a set of farms near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border, one of which literally had a road right through the property of the farm. This did make for slower travel and the occasional scent of true farm life, such as organic fertilization; from time to time, I would stop here and capture something or other.
On this fine day in April, I wanted to get a bit of a wider image of the cows feeding in the very New England farmland (read: large rocks intersperse grass and mud). However, the cows had a completely different idea!
As soon as the cows saw that I had pulled over, they decided to come over and find out what I was up to…after all, there may have been food involved! So rather than getting the wide shot, I got this wonderful close-up of the cows vying for attention.
I hope you enjoyed visiting page 11 and feel free to take a look at the entire book at the following link for the softcover versionInstant Grammar 2013 by Frank Jansen.
The interest to capture this image came to me, as I was looking to get some nice sunlight reflected in the pond that is right next to this little building. One of those nice, quiet October mornings when you feel like it might still be Summer.
Beauty and Otherwise.
I didn’t really like the reflection that I could get, given the (self-imposed) constraint of using my iPhone for every shot during the year, and I had already photographed the nicely restored mill building across the road (you can see part of it in the “Instant Grammar – page 3” post and another part later).
So I started looking for something different and my eye was caught by the splash of red from the somewhat dilapidated berries in front of the very dilapidated building. Putting the graffiti in the frame behind the berries allowed for a bit of juxtaposition of nature’s beauty against what can otherwise be created by humankind.
I hope you enjoyed visiting page 34 and feel free to take a look at the entire book at the following link for the softcover versionInstant Grammar 2013 by Frank Jansen.
On August 13th, we had just finished a very nice dinner at one of our favorite Worcester, MA, restaurants: Bocado (highly recommended). As we were leaving, I had this gnawing thought that something was missing…
What Lies Between Buildings.
Of course! I hadn’t captured my image yet that day!! As we walked out the door at Bocado’s, I noticed that there was a small hole in the wooden fence between the two buildings and took a peek!
What I saw, intrigued me for the lines that were formed by the various surfaces, pipes, bricks, and the buildings, only to be broken by the pure organic texture of nature coming in to play. Luckily, a small hole is enough for an iPhone’s lens, so we get to see the result here.
I still enjoy looking into this image and wondering what lies beyond the fence and who will use the plywood, or what is in the blue container…
I hope you enjoyed visiting page 21 and feel free to take a look at the entire book at the following link for the softcover versionInstant Grammar 2013 by Frank Jansen.
On page 4, we find ourselves in the cold of Winter with Thoughts of Spring.
Thoughts of Spring
Of course, one may think that those thoughts are a bit premature, given that the image was captured on January 7th and plenty of cold and snow could reasonably be expected… While that is certainly the case, seeing the farm tractor catching glorious sunlight got me thinking of Spring well before its arrival!
In an instant, I knew that the farmer was prepared for the next season to arrive and take on the tasks to get his fields ready for whatever their purpose was to be. It was almost as if Winter allowed me to peek into a diorama of things to come…
The image on page 6 was shot on September 5, while I was waiting for my car to be serviced. It had just rained and I sauntered over to the Panera close to the dealership to get a bit of breakfast.
A Sunny Flower on a Rainy Day
After a (somewhat) healthy power breakfast with a cup of hot green tea, I was walking back and rather liked the sky that presented itself, so was looking for an opportunity to photograph it in some fashion.
As it happened, the dealership had planted a nice row of sunflowers along the edge of their lot to dress things up a bit. I liked the idea of juxtaposing the sunflower against the doughnut shop and the sky; a bit of a 3-way contrast between sun and rain, as well as healthy sunflower seeds vs killer doughnuts. A bit of finding the position to line up flower, shop and sky, and you see the result here.
Page 8 displays an image that was captured on April 7 in East Haddam, Connecticut. The location is in Devil’s Hopyard State Park, which is a great spot for hiking and interacting with nature; the small cascade is called Chapman Falls.
Chapman Falls in Devil’s Hopyard State Park, East Haddam, CT.
I was visiting friends in East Haddam for the weekend to explore some photography opportunities, help with a web-site and do some off-roading with my newly acquired FJ Cruiser. On this beautiful Sunday, a bit of exploration along a tricky bit of trails (great boulders and such) led us to the vicinity of Devil’s Hopyard State Park.
As we were all ready to stretch our legs a bit and new there would be a bit of scenery, I parked and we started following trails. The trail that took us down to Chapman Falls provided access to a bit of clambering over a couple of rocks to get a seat right across from the falls. The falls feature potholes that have been created by stones that were caught in eddies and spun to wear holes into the rock; as these holes formed, larger stones would get stuck in them and continue the process by carving a deeper hole.
The origin of the name ‘Devil’s Hopyard’ is not entirely clear, but there is folklore surrounding it. One of the more believable accounts is that hops were grown in the area by a man named Dibble; maybe not as fun as a supernatural dance location, possibly.
This image is a bit unique in the collection resulting from the 365 Day Instagram project: shots of trash are pretty rare among my images, unless I see something unusual about the particular trash item. On July 22nd, something caught my eye about this little tableau, as I was driving along my morning commute.
A Couch Alone.
It is not every day, that I see a red couch, albeit dilapidated, framed by a bit of greenery next to the road. The couch looked a bit forlorn and disheveled, as if it was having a rough morning following a long night of rowdy partying at the local fraternity. To add insult to injury, trash was stuffed under the cushions in a futile attempt to make the most of this act of brazen dumping.
What adds a little bit of irony to this situation is the fact that just to the left is the entrance to the local town transfer station (aka dump); the couch almost made it, but was left in clear violation of local rules: the transfer station fence bears a sign that expressly forbids dumping!
During this past week I spent a good amount of time going through all the images from last year’s 365 Project that I described in a previous post (365 Projects – What’s Next? ). After gathering all the images, the task of culling them to a number that would produce a reasonably priced book was harder than I expected, but nonetheless gratifying even in some unexpected ways.
The Cows are Hamming it Up!
There may be some good reasons for all of us to go through a process like this once in a while. It’s healthy to go back through a body of work and make decisions about what we’re going to include for publication in print (I gently put forth the concept that having photography in print is a different level of visceral connection to a work than on a computer screen; I may have to write a blog post about that concept). It certainly felt like a cleansing to me with a much more positive outlook on my work as a result.
Fingall’s Cave on the Island of Staffa.
First to describe the process that I used. I took the 365+ candidate images (there were some days, where I had several interesting images, so I included these for this process rather than prejudging). I assigned rating stars to all of the potentially publishable images, which wound up ranging from 3 to 5 stars. Including all the extra images, this resulted in 229 images at 3+ stars: too many! At this point, I did a quick re-scan to ensure that non of the 3-star images should have a change in rating and set the cut-off at 4+ stars: 164 images! Still way too many, as my target was slight less than 60, so that I could publish it in a 60 page book.
Dunkin’ Donuts and the Weather
Another quick scan allowed me to get the number of potential images down to about 130, which was moving in the right direction.
Rather than continuing to pare down the number of images through this methodology, I decided to start formatting the book, which gave me the opportunity to get a sense of how the various images would work together on facing pages. As I did this, a sense of flow and story was developing, which resulted in a very satisfying end product (I’m still writing the afterword, but that’s a matter of another 30 minutes max) that will go out later today for production. I’m psyched!
Oh, almost forgot: go out and do something likes this for one of your projects and you’ll appreciate your own work a lot more!
A week or so back, I wrote about this year’s 365 Instagram project, which focuses on capturing skies on a daily basis; it is still going strong, as I captured Sky #42 today for the year. In that blog post I also mentioned that I completed a 365 Instagram project in 2013.
The big question after completing a project is what to do with that completion? My decision around the end of 2013 was to pull together a book of the images and publish it (at least electronically, and possibly, if there is enough interest, in print format).
Farm Landscape
With a wealth of new images, albeit in Instagram format and size, I figured there would at least be some among them that are worth sharing with the general public. Therefore, I have started the process of pulling all the images together in LightRoom and picking my favorites from among them.
Looking Down the Old Railroad
Of course, it is easier said than done to cull the entire year’s worth of images to the top 60 or so that will fit nicely in an 8×8 Blurb book and provide a reasonable representation of the year’s catch.
As I also mentioned in the prior post, there was clearly a bit of development in my Instagram skills, as the year progressed, which, when coupled with an increasing amount of inspiration resulted in some very acceptable images (acceptable is a high level of self-praise among photographers 🙂 ).
There were also some themes that evolved, some of which shouldn’t be a surprise to me, if I took the time to listen to my own skills: lots of rather cool landscapes and the odd bit of dramatic sky. A new area of interest that snuck in somewhat unanticipated was that of graveyards; there are lots of interesting graveyards in the New England area and some were clearly worth capturing on days that I passed them during my commute or other travels.
Yogic Tree
More than anything else, last year’s project taught me to keep my eyes open at all times and be aware of my environment with a keen sense of curiosity. It is rewarding to see a subject, such as a tree, on different days with varying light and atmospheric conditions and capture some of this variety during the year. Trees have always had a lot of power for me, as they remind me of endurance and perseverance despite the best efforts of the elements and time. Some of their shapes can be nothing short of spectacular, such as the ‘Yogic Tree’ in this post (expect more about this tree, as I have visited her many times).
Work on the book is progressing nicely and will complete within the next week or two; I will provide an update with a link to the electronic version when complete. I know that finishing the book will give me a sense of accomplishment and closure on last year’s endeavor.
