WARREN CONNECTICUT – It snowed yesterday and last night, for the first time in a long while. I put on my snow shoes and spent a couple of hours out in the fields around our house in poor, overcast light. This with my Alpa TC and 35mm Schneider lens.

Hay bale

On this day last year: Flying SVG, a not-quite-scheduled “airline” operating between Barbados and Mustique.

SVG

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – Last month I set my Alpa Max up to demonstrate its “tilt” capacity (the ability to tilt the focus plane to increase the appearance of depth of field) and got an somewhat poorly visualized image of our sundial. It’s snowing today (at last) so I set up trying to do a better of seeing and imagining the image:

Sundial redux

On this day one year ago: a long skinny Third Avenue from my office.

Third Avenue

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – So . . . . still relying on my little bitty Ricoh GRD 4. There was some splendid light this afternoon. This image (and some others) prove that good light trumps poor equipment choice. Three frames stitched.

Good light

On this day one year ago: winter in Warren. Another tree line, no more than 200 yards from where this year’s image was taken, but with a radically different angle and lens choice, and radically different light.

Warren Connecticut

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – I love it when in mostly cloudy weather clear patches illuminate bits of the Connecticut countryside. Here’s an example. It lasted for a few seconds. I was lucky to capture it with my Leica and a 90mm Elmarit lens. One of my best landscapes of the year.

Baby Cloud

On this day last year: Blizzard redux.

Blizzard

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – Boxing Day. Curiously I shot the same subject one year ago. This time I selected a different angle and camera, my Alpa Max with a short-mount 120 mm Schneider lens and a tilt adapter. Tilting is a view camera feature that is available for longer Alpa lenses. It permits tilting the lens and thus the focus plane, to either extend or shorten apparent depth of field. Here I have used it to keep the top of the sundial and the wall and the trees in the background in focus. It can be a tedious iterative process to get focus right with this technique; there are rules of thumb that help; there’s also an iPhone app that gives you a very good starting point. What I don’t like about this image is a mental mistake on my part: cutting off the bottom of the sundial.

Sundial

On this day last year: Sundial.

Blizzard

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – Christmas Day. I went out with my Alpa TC today to capture some winter landscape.

Northeastern winter landscape

Our sign

On this day one year ago: Maria scores a Pucci.

Maria and her new Emilio

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – Still sick, but improving. A very warm day for this time of the year. I managed to drag the Alpa and a tripod outside to capture a detail from the house.

Winter

On this day one year ago: wedding prep.

Francesca and Maria

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – It finally stopped snowing around noon. We got a devastating 21 inches of wet, heavy snow. Most of the trees still had all of their leaves so the snow collected on them, breaking or uprooting trees in absolutely record number. Power, telephone and cable and internet are out over most of the state. This is been called the most damaging storm in Connecticut’s history. We have a backup generator for occasions like this (we loose power several times each winter; without power the heating system doesn’t work; if the house gets below freezing there is massive damage to the plumbing). Anyway, I took my Alpa (with the 35mm Schneider) out after the storm cleared. Here’s what it looked like – a typical January scene on October 30.

These images exploit the amazing dynamic range of the Phase One IQ 180 back.

After the blizzard

Fall colors after the blizzard

It’s me again, this time at 6:03 on February 14, 1999. As I’ve said quite a few times now this is one of a series of hourly self-portraits shot with an Arca Swiss 8×10 view camera.

6:03 AM February 14, 2011

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – I went out hunting for late fall landscape today, mostly in the garden. I used my Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux, which if you follow these posts closely you will have noted is my most used camera/lens combination by far. But I also found a new tool, a new iPhone 4S. The camera is surprisingly good. Dynamic range is only so-so – highlights tend to get blown, and prints are marred by jpeg weirdness (white fringes is the like) but this thing is surprisingly usable and always at hand. It’s quite serviceable for web resolution.

First the Leica and then some iPhones.

Fall is still here

The iPhones, with a little help with post-processing in Lightroom.

Warren fall

Sundial

Finally, what post would be complete without a self-portrait from the 24 hour series. If you think that you’re getting tired of these, image how I felt sitting for them and pushing the cable release, then processing the film, etc. Part of what I’m doing with these ix exploring repetition and the passage of time. Anyway 11:05 PM on February 13, 1999 with an Arca Swiss view camera.

11:05 PM February 13, 1999

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WARREN CONNECTICUT – A friend had a birthday celebration at has house under construction in Warren. There was no heating so we build a large fire in the fireplace. There were no kitchen appliances so we grilled the food. the wine selection was over the top with a 2000 Ch. la Conseillante (one of my favorite Pomerols) and 1996 Pichon and Latour. Not bad. Pictures taken with my Leica M9 and 24mm Summicron lens.

Construction site party

The wines are ok

Here’s my boring self, from my hourly series, at 10:03 PM on February 13, 1999. Again taken with an Arca Swiss 8×10. This is the only image in the series where I’m wearing glasses, which we will see as we display some of the variants on these pictures (probably in mid-November at the pace we are moving at) has odd consequences.

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