WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Washington for a food policy conference. I spent the morning exploring the Lincoln Memorial end of the Mall, including an emotional hour at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Captured in infrared.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Madison Square at night.
Madison Square and the Shake Shack
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Sunrise on a much warmer day. Just two weeks to March with its hope for Spring. Luke Tanner’s cornfield.
Warren sunrise
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Infrared, outside of the Ferrari dealer on Park Avenue.
Ferrari
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Same subjects as yesterday, but a different angle and in color.
Racquet and Tennis Club
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Back to a favorite subject: New York in infrared. There were many interesting images from today. Here’s a sample.
Racquet and Tennis Club
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A perfect winter day. I spent a good part of the day in the 30s and 40s in Manhattan with my Leica M8 and infrared filters. This was an opportunity to stalk one of my favorite subjects: the Chrylser Building. A very productive day with some interesting experiments with out of focus images. I’ve taken the liberty of posting two outtakes in a comment.
Chrysler Building
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – After a snowfall. This is shot in infrared and stitched from four separate exposures.
Warren, after a snowfall
DALLAS FORT WORTH AIRPORT – A travel day back to New York. Francesca on the shuttle train at DFW.
DFW
NEAR TLALPUJAHUA, MEXICO = We witnessed a remarkable phenomenon in the mountains above this lovely colonial town. There is huge annual migration of Monarch butterflies from Canada and the Northeastern United States to this mountainous region of Mexico, about a three hour drive from Mexico City. The Monarchs arrive in early November, which coincides with the Day of the Dead – the pre-Spanish people resident in the area believed that Monarchs were the souls of their ancestors. They cluster in very high density (estimated at about 20 million butterflies per hectare) at very high altitude. It’s possible to visit them by driving deeply into the the mountains and riding a horse for about a half hour from a nomadic base camp. It’s possible to walk, but not advised because the elevation is very high, 11,200 feet (3,400 meters) and the half day one is there is too short a time to become acclimatized to the altitude. The Monarchs cluster quietly on every surface until the temperature goes above 50 degrees F at which point they take to the air in breathtaking density, The Monarchs we see in Connecticut take part in this migration.
Monarch butterflies
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE – We’re spending Christmas week in this ancient high dessert city in central Mexico. There are post card images in every direction. This is from an arts center out of the center of town.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This is a good time of the year to photograph New York in the dark – it gets dark early, around 5:00 PM. Buildings are fully illuminated because workers are still at their desks at this hour. Today we walked in the Lincoln Center to Columbus Circle area.
Traffic - Columbus Circle
LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT – Back to Litchfield to photograph the First Congregational Church at sunrise. The congregation first met in 1721. The story of the building is a bit complex. Here’s a quote from “Historic Buildings of Connecticut”:
“Litchfield’s first meeting house was built on the Green in 1723, the second in 1761 and the third in 1829. In 1873, a fourth church, in the High Victorian Gothic style, was built and the 1829 Federal-style structure, with its steeple removed as was typically done with deconsecrated churches, was moved around the corner. In the coming years it would serve as a community center and theater, known as Amory Hall or Colonial Hall. In the early twentieth century, tastes had shifted back from favoring the Gothic to an interest in the Colonial Revival. In 1929, the Gothic church was demolished and the 1828 church returned to its original site on Torrington Road and restored, complete with a new steeple (1929-30). Reconsecrated, it continues today as the First Congregational Church of Litchfield.”
I’ve taken the liberty of presenting this image in both color and black and white. The black and white version demonstrates the power of abstraction of this medium.
This images was captured with a Leica M9 digital camera, and a fifty-year old Leitz lens, a 50mm dual range Summicron modified to mount on the M9. The finished image was stitched together from four overlapping frames, which provides resolution similar to a medium format digital camera or 4×5 film.
The time on the clock on the steeple could either be an hour slow or perpetually 6:30 – it’s actually the latter.
First Congregational Church Litchfield Connecticut
Black and white version
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – The Congregational Meeting House in Warren, Connecticut. Warren was carved out of Kent Connecticut in the 1780s.
The Warren town website provides the following history: “Warren was settled in 1737 as part of the Town of Kent. In 1750 a separate ecclesiastical society called the Society of East Greenwich was established and a church was founded in 1756. In 1786 Warren was incorporated as a separate town.
Even though for most of its history Warren has been an agricultural community, by 1810 Warren became known as an educational center with five private schools and an academy which produced 15 ministers and educators. Over the last two and a half centuries Warren’s population has fluctuated widely. By 1810 the town’s population had increased to 1100, but with the decline of agriculture and the local iron industry it reached an all-time low in 1930 with only 303 inhabitants.”
Wikipedia furnishes the following information on Warren: “As of the census[6] of 2000, there were 1,254 people, 497 households, and 353 families residing in the town. The population density was 47.7 people per square mile (18.4/km²). There were 650 housing units at an average density of 24.7/sq mi (9.5/km²).”
Warren, Connecticut
WASHINGTON, CONNECTICUT – Washington was established by the General Assembly of Connecticut in 1742 as “Judea”. Biblical names are common in Litchfield County – Bethlehem Connecticut is a neighboring town. The Congregational Church in Judea had its first meeting in 1741 in a log shed. A meeting house was subsequently built on the town green, completed in 1784; it was destroyed by fire; the present building was finished in 1800. In the late 17th century the name of the town was changed to Washington. The town cemetery is still named the Judea Hill Cemetery.
This is part of my plan to photograph every church in Litchfield County. I’ve selected an image for today that highlights the meeting house’s neoclassical detailing. I’m continuing to explore the quality of out-of-focus rendering.
Congregational Meeting House, Washington CT
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Looking back at the past week’s work I kept coming back to the cemetery in New Preston. I decided to try more images with large out-of-focus areas. Returning to Grand Central Terminal I reshot the phones with a Leica M9 and a 35mm Summicron pre-aspheric version IV lens – I’ll be using this for the next several days. This lens is known as the “bokeh king” – bokeh being a subjective view of the quality of the out of focus portions of the image.
Grand Central Terminal - lower level
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – Another day with the M9 and 35mm Summicron. I took the shuttle to Boston in the early morning and managed a walk around for an hour or two before a day of meetings. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Dorchester Street and the Dorchester Street Bridge:
The Boston South Bridge over Fort Point Channel, on the site of today’s West Fourth Street Bridge, opened on October 1, 1805 as the first bridge connecting downtown to South Boston. Until it was sold to the city of Boston on April 19, 1832, it was a toll bridge. The Dorchester Turnpike Corporation (sometimes called the South Boston Turnpike) was created by the state legislature on March 4, 1805, to build a turnpike from the east end of the Boston South Bridge (Nook Point) to Milton Bridge over the Neponset River, on the other side of which the Blue Hill Turnpike later continued. Construction cost more than expected, and thus high tolls were charged, so many travelers took the old longer route through Roxbury. Despite that, the Dorchester Turnpike was one of the most profitable turnpikes, with earnings steadily climbing to a peak in 1838. When the parallel Old Colony Railroad opened in 1844, earnings quickly fell. The North Free Bridge, on the site of today’s Dorchester Avenue Bridge, opened in 1826, providing a more direct route form the north end of the turnpike to Dewey Square downtown.[1] On April 22, 1854, the turnpike became a free public road, named Dorchester Avenue. The name was changed to Federal Street in 1856, as it provided a continuation of that street from downtown Boston (via the North Free Bridge), but it became Dorchester Avenue again in 1870.”
Summer Street Boston
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – 919 Third Avenue, where my office is located. Got this walking to the office this morning in brilliant, encompassing late fail light. For the week of November 14 through 21 I’m using a single camera and lens: a Leica M9 with a 35mm Summicron Asph. This is a wonderfully flexible combination. When I need wider I shoot to stitch multiple frames together. I rarely need longer. 919 Third Avenue is a Skidmore Owings & Merrill building completed in 1970. It closely resembles an earlier Mies van der Rohe design.
919 Third Avenue
NEW PRESTON, CONNECTICUT – I’ve decided to photograph all of the churches in Litchfield County, Connecticut, very much working in the shadow of Walker Evans. The approach is frontal. You can see a similar esthetic in the “Small Town” images on my landscape gallery, and for that matter in 30 Rock taken on November 6. This is one of two Congregational churches in New Preston that serve the same parish (the other is the Stone Church). Captured at sunrise.
DRAIN, OREGON – We left the Oregon coast early, driving back up the Umpqua River. The light was beautiful at about 10:00 so I stopped and photographed. Another small town: Drain, Oregon. No kidding on the name. Dale Allyn informed me that his dad was at one point the oldest living resident of Drain; that Drain, Oregon is the only town named Drain in North America; and that it’s named after Charles and Anna Drain, not the lowest point in a bathtub.
This is the Pacific Gateway Medical Clinic.
Pacific Gateway Medical Clinic
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