NEW PRESTON, CONNECTICUT – Lois Conner, a friend and teacher, told me never to photograph in cemeteries. This image exploits the lovely rendering of the out of focus portions of the image possible with the lens that I’m using: the Lecia M 35mm Summicron. Here’s a link to a listing of everyone who is interred in this cemetery: Interred in New Preston
New York, New York – This is where the rubber meets the road. A desperate day from the photo a day blog perspective. A long day in meetings. At 6:55 PM I shot the cityscape out my window to have something to post.
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.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a lovely, clear late fall day today – unseasonably warm. This another installment in a long-term project: shooting iconic places. The challenge is to get past trite. This image is shot in infrared, which I use often in Manhattan. The image of 30 Rock may not be my best image of the day. One of the most difficult challenges in posting every day is self-editing under time pressure. It’s easy enough to find the three best, or the many non-keepers. But the final choice is difficult because it’s hard to sort out what the criteria are. For example, is there a narrative? Is it a problem to have churches on three consecutive days. Anyway, here’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – More work on icons, in this case the Chrysler Building at night. It turns out that this is a little early in the winter to shoot Manhattan at night. It looks best after the end of daylight savings time – it gets dark an hour earlier – so people are in their offices with their lights on.
I have a large ongoing project working with the problems of photographing iconic places. Go to Google Earth – this spot in Manhattan has hundreds of blue squares – images uploaded by Google Earth users. Sometimes point of view helps. I have better and worse days – the image a day discipline has its downsides.
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.
