Composition

The world is sweet, mysterious, and beautiful. Sometimes.

Middelbury, VT.

Here's a second take on the image... I'm trying to find a 1920's feeling here in the stillness.

Next October

SUMMER'S CHAIRS ARE EMPTY

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I'm sitting here on the last Sunday morning in September hearing the hourglass sand drop away. It's flowing inexorably toward October. So my fingers work to remember the future. Each time we wish that this time we'll hold this glory forever. Each time we hope that it all won't die. Each time it does.

We are the only species in history who expect that we are entitled to a Fall, and a climate, that never changes.

Fall would be the finest time of year except... it lacks a happy ending.


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Here's the virgin Middlebury, Vermont image from my FlashCard... Comments?

Enhancement

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A visual idea often has a moment of life then dies, you know what I mean? Look, how often have you snapped a score of pictures but when processing time comes.... YUCK! What were you thinking when your finger twitched the shutter? It was even worse when you'd send away film and it took a week until two, three, even five rolls of slides came in the mail. You'd pull them out and always... always... always... your heart would drop. Oh there'd be a keeper or two, but overwhelmingly the idea died when the lens chute swallowed that burst of light.

Now we have tools to find what idea or feeling that other guy... the one who took the picture... the younger you... wanted to send to you when he clicked the shot. Look at this image for example. It was sunrise in the center of Middlebury, Connecticut. I'd never been there before and this mill race called me. It seemed so photogenic. And yet, when I looked at the images of the ruins of the old mill... There was so little there. Before. Now, after an hour of teasing the hues and textures here's the image the younger me filled the frame with. Now I can hear the roar of that water. I can feel the rumble under foot. I'm squinting again as the low morning sun gleams into my eyes. Is this really the scene as it was? Or is this image fiction? Know what? I don't care. You?

Describing It

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We can't feel, hear, or even see everything that is. We write musical notes so that melodies can be molded. Imagine managing time without a calendar or a watch. Then there are sometimes things we can feel and yet not represent. Someone once pointed out that if we don't have a name for something... well it doesn't exist. Don't believe it? How about cyberspace? As far as our minds were concerned, was there such a thing until it was described and named? The name actually made it a thing.

So I walked around Middlebury to watch the way a Saturday morning sunrise described this place I'd never before visited. And I rounded a corner and abruptly there was this. I wanted to capture the way it felt in the sweet dewey light of dawn. But tonight as I pulled up that memory from the captures my camera gave me... I found that there were a magical quality that went beyond what the lens had caught. My camera, sharp as it is failed to replicate the aura of those moments.

But now - I've teased something more from the vista ... like a watch or a musical score... I can now better feel something that was. Can you see it? Huh? Huh? Can you see an emotion? Has my excursion beyond the photo described it to you? Is it real now?

Naked Image

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So a guy, calls himself, "Lurker", sends me an email. And he asks, "Okay Ted, so I see that you need to pimp up your images in PP (um, that's Post Production techniques, for those of you new to the jargon). In fact, you seem addicted. Fine. That's what you do and you do it really good. But, what do your naked images look like? Take that Middlebury, Vermont series. Can you show us a virtually untouched image... or does everything you take need assistance? I dare you. Double dare you. Show us even one naked!"

Whoa... a double dare! I mean what self respecting boy ever welched out on a double dare? Um... alright... except for adjusting the basic values in this one... and of course cropping it for composition... And adding just one teeny touch. How'z this? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Can I go naked, or what?

1st Congo

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A pity, but some things have to be pictured - the visitor lacks a choice. Middlebury, Vt. is built all around its First Congregational Church which sits atop the highest hill in town. And they've built this atop that. Unfortunately I had only six hours in the area to take pictures, and no research. So from sunrise to about 1:30 in the afternoon, I drove, walked and let the hamlet's major features attract my camera's lenses. But unless you rode well out of Middlebury, the shadow of the First Congo's magnificent steeple drew down.

As many of you recall, I have often photographed the steeples of Lancaster, which meant that a novel approach to Middlebury's greatest tower was hard, particularly with such little time. So... here's the obligatory snapshot of their most prominent feature. I'd really like some suggestions. This is a conventional, "Wow!" image, but it just doesn't make me wonder. Doesn't appear to be a metaphor for anything larger. It's merely pretty.

Is that enough for anything beyond a calendar or postcard? Let me know, huh?

Mid Day Light

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The line read...

"The only way she had

Not to be amazed was to be dead."

And it recalled last Saturday

Nearby Middlebury, Vt.

And how its memory

Resolved a poem.

Burble In The Air

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There are still trails that meander through woods down to fishing holes at sunrise.

Middlebury, Vermont exudes a preposterous credibility. It's a place where you expect Norman Rockwell to scurry out from behind a bush to fidget a leaf or a twig just so. It's the land that tacky forgot. Perhaps it's the ice which preserves it through so many of the months from spoiling?

Dunno, but even in the blue shift of first light the hard scrabble brush seems romantically nostalgic. And the stark grit of big city snarl feels as far away as... it is.