Category: Photography

Old New England times

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 24, 2004

From Vermont we moved to Boston, still one of my favorite cities. I like walking towns, and Boston is built for people on foot. It’s a must, only people with an old car or very good insurance drive in Boston.

Ah, Boston, with its images of old New England, and the Big Dig. The photo above is a reflection of Trinity Church in the John Hancock Tower – worst piece of architecture in the world. The building was designed to ‘blend in’ by appearing invisible via the reflective windows.

But they built the thing on land fill. So the building’s not completely stable, windows didn’t fit, several fell out. Additionally, the construction unsettled the land and damaged Trinity.

But Boston survives Towers and Digs. My favorite place is still the Commons, and it was old when our country was new.

Even in the heart of Boston, always places to go for a quiet moment.

Of course, wouldn’t want New Hampshire to feel left out. The following is Howard Dean’s post-Iowa New Hampshire headquarters.

(Just joshin’ the Dean folks. Figured sound jokes were getting a little old about now.)

Photography

Old images old friends

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 24, 2004

My scanner arrived and works a treat. I have about two weeks of old slides and negatives to scan in, but here’s a start.

Lake Champlain is the Great Lake that almost was, nestled between New York and Vermont, home to the Green Mountain boys. Living on Grand Isle in the middle of the lake was a quiet time, made more so because outsiders were not necessarily welcome by the people born and bred.

Still the beauty of the land more than made up for it, especially in the Fall, when we were surrounded by a riot of color.

Quiet as it was, though, we had our share of the wealthy and the famous. And not all were on two legs – the famous Royal Lippizans summered every year on the island, and the Herrmann family would put on shows for the summer visitors.

These horses start out grey and then turn white when they mature. They’re also indulged and pampered, and more or less take a roll in the dirt when the mood suits.

Pretty, but not as pretty as my little girl.

Photography Writing

Duplicating Images

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 19, 2004

Something said to me in comments about Emily Dickinson sent me scrambling online for information, as well as to the library for several books focusing on her life. I expected to find that her life was interesting. I didn’t expect to find such an incredibly sad story.

Oh, not sad if you read this biographer or that, but it is if you read the letters: to her, from her, about her. Eventually I want to write about my impressions, but I have to sort them out into some form of coherency first. Additionally, I’d hoped to have photographs to annotate the story.

I am finding a growing dependency on my photos to fill in where words cannot. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not: shouldn’t words be able to live independent of images? Or images without words?

I don’t know if it was the influence of W.G. Sebald’s books such as the Rings of Saturn or Austerlitz (or that of Emigrants and Vertigo, which I hope to add to my small collection someday) that led to my growing interest in annotating my writing with photos (or perhaps I’m annotating my photos with words). Few writers have impacted on me as much as he has, but I have no interest in duplicating his style of writing (as if I could anyway, it is so uniquely him). But his use of photos and other images in the stories – it was wonderful.

I do know that writing now, without the use of accompanying photos feels incomplete, lifeless. Probably a phase I’m going through. My Photo Period. Next year I’ll write only in stanzas, and you’ll scream for the pictures.

In fact, I don’t have a photo for this writing. How uncomfortable. I suppose I’ll have to find a copy of the one official photo of Emily and paste it at the bottom. Or perhaps I’ll include the newly discovered photo supposedly of Emily, discussed in How I Met and Dated Miss Emily Dickinson. (Ignore the overly cute title, the story is good.)

Eventually, I have a feeling that I will stop all writing without some accompanying image, and vice versa; including my technical writing, which should make it rather unique in form and format.

(I wonder what type of photo one would use to accompany pages of RDF/XML? Something cryptic and complex but rather Important, I’m sure. Giant squid photos come to mind.)

Unfortunately, my photographs are being held up because a film scanner I ordered from B & H in New York didn’t work when I received it. Equally unfortunate, B & H is taking far too long to process the return. In the meantime, I have both slides and negatives I want to digitalize but can’t because of no scanner. I’d kick something in frustration, but this would most likely be inadvisable.

I guess I’ll just have to go out this week with my digital and see what new vistas I can find that don’t require a great deal of walking.

Burningbird Photography

There’s a mountain with my name on it

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 13, 2004

Now, what was there about a mountain and my name, and not pestering nice people?

Oh, yes. I had somewhere else I was supposed to be, now. I have a book to write. I have some friends I’m helping. There’s a hundred hikes with my name on them, and I am not packing my computer when I go. And I dropped my sense of humor somewhere recently, and have to go back to look for it.

Ta Friends.

Photography

Better Things

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date January 13, 2004

Better crumbs to leave behind me than notes on comment spammers.

Two little boys in a square in San Antonio, hiding behind their coats pretending to be pigeons that they chase from the square.

An exercise in light one night when I was playing around.

I walked in the meadows last weekend, a dark day with a cold wind blowing and I stood on top of a hill and looked all around me. There was no other person in sight, not a car nor a plane. Just me and the wind and a storm on the horizen and the desolation of the trees and the meadows in winter.

We should seek to preserve our areas of desolation: in this day of forced cheerfulness and among the bright neon markings of the human animal, desolation is our most endangered beauty.

I wrote a poem. Just be glad I’m not publishing it online.

There is nothing more beautiful than a leafless tree.

Except for the joy of simple things, like putting your coat over your head, pretending to be a bird.

Update:

My deepest thanks to Mark Woods for highlighting the Colonias of Texas, home to children no different than the ones playing as birds shown in this posting.

The desolation of a browned meadow, with a hint of new growth come Spring, or a lonely mountain top or leafless tree is beautiful; the desolation of a people trapped into a disposable worker class for the benefit of companies such as Wal-Mart, or lured into our country to fuel a new military made up of volunteers desperate for citizenship, is not.