WARREN, CONNECTICUT – We’re having our first snow storm of the season. We’re on a high point, a few hundred feet above Lake Waramaug. The difference in elevation is enough that we have much more snow over the winter season than the lake. There are many, many more churches to photograph in Litchfield County but I felt that I should give you a break.
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.
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – At last a crisp, clear late fall day. This is the sort of day that gives seasonal weather changes a good reputation. After struggling against against murky light for most of the week. I spent the afternoon in Litchfield having lunch and photographing the town. Tomorrow is supposed to be clear so I’ll come back for sunrise. Today’s posting is from a walk in the woods a little latter in the day.
NEW MILFORD, CONNECTICUT – Another grim, overcast day. While driving on back roads from New Milford to Kent, Connecticut. I spotted an odd structure: a run-down wooden ziggurat. I stopped to photograph it (despite the poor light). As I was working a woman stopped her car and told me its story. It was built by a man named J. Pol in the mid-1960s. His teenage daughter became pregnant; the State of Connecticut alleged that he was the father and took custody of the daughter away from him; he denied it and built the ziggurat as a memorial to is life with her.
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – A family Thanksgiving dinner at home in Connecticut.
Thanksgiving is a busy time for me. I’m the cook in the family so Thanksgiving takes a fair amount of effort on my part. You can be assured that I actually do capture each image on the date indicated – at least one each day, but during this busy time I got behind up uploading. Henceforth I’ll make every effort to post pictures within a day or two of the date they were taken.
BETHLEHEM, CONNECTICUT – We drove to Warren, Connecticut, dropped groceries off and went to a pre-holiday party in Bethlehem. The light at the party was much lower than I had remembered from last year – I had expected to shoot available light but fought a mostly loosing battle against darkness.
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).”
