Seasons
This trope has been done to death, but……
I blame it all on end of the year editing/review. It does help to remind me that it will eventually be warm and green again.
Posts tagged ‘landscapes’
Landscapes
I haven’t posted in a while the weather and my stomach have been against me. But here’s a small offering of landscapes taken during a post snow temperature rise, roughly 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) over 12 hours, ugh. It does however cause awesome fog to go with the mud and the traumatic drop back down to below freezing.
My favorite allee on route 32 in Rosendale.
The hay field beside the allee.
South of New Paltz, near the Phillies Bridge road.
Just a little down the road.
Hope to return to some regularity in posting despite the cold. Wish me luck.
Heat…..
The recent heat has put a giant kink in my photography output. I have been trying to wrap my brain around how to photograph the things that interest me, but the hazy, humid light just renders them all dull and flat. Forcing me once again to realize how much I depend on ‘beautiful’ light. It finally occurred to me that instead of banging my head against the wall working on my existing projects (which were completely stalled anyway) that I should just try and photograph the heat……I’m not sure I succeeded, but here’s the attempt.
I have the feeling I will be able to address this theme again and again this summer. I tweaked the saturation a bit, not much and more to correct for the auto exposure than change the image.
Seasons……
When I think of the four season motif my mind usually travels to wall scrolls, brush and ink and mass produced ‘Asian’ culture, though I have seen beautiful examples in museums, books and little shops in Vietnam. Here in the states the motif is certainly common enough, showing the seasons in heroic landscapes or scenes of country living, but I’ve always felt that four seasons really make no sense. In Maine for example they joke that there is a fifth season called Mud and I have lived on enough farms to agree. So here I offer an extended version of the seasons…..winter, first growth, full spring, first cutting/high summer, second cutting/late summer/first fall, high fall, there should be one more for end of fall/beginning of winter, but I couldn’t find one that suited. These were taken at the same location as the allee photos I posted yesterday. The trees are Pin Oaks, a good solid working man’s tree.
Seasons……An Allee on rt 32
There is something about an allee – a tree lined path/road – that always makes me want to photograph it. I am in part pursuing a classic photograph I can only partially recall – black and white, grand old trees, trunks painted white, a narrow curving road, it must have been Europe and taken before 1970. But it is entirely possible that the photo doesn’t exist and I have combined several images in my mind to create the iconic photograph of an allee. These below are an example of my ruminating on allees and a bit of a poke at the classic four seasons images.
Spring trees
The flowering trees have been fantastic this year, both abundant and long lasting. The weather seems to have combined the right amount of moisture and temperatures to keep the flowers on the trees, no sharp hard frosts, no sudden heat waves. In fact we had a rather glorious stretch of spring weather, though now we seem stuck in the proverbial spring rains.
Some trees just take your breath away, you catch this one out of the corner of your eye as you drive past a turn onto a shady lane. I think it’s a Magnolia kobus, because its too big to be a Magnolia stellata, it’s at least 35′ tall (the tarmac in front of it is a driveway not a foot path) and the star magnolias really don’t want to be that big. I wish the photo did it more justice, but like many of the trees I tried to photograph this spring it was hard to get enough distance.
I have trouble with the varieties of cherries, so I won’t hazard a guess, but you would think a tree this pretty would deserve a more attractive location.
This is what people hope to get when they buy a weeping cherry, they won’t. I have no idea how old this tree is but I don’t think those trees people buy for 69 dollars at Lowe’s will ever get this big. I thought it was a weeping willow until I drove buy it it bloom, I bet it’s 40 or 50 years old.
Cornus Florida our native dogwood, I like them best as understory trees in the forest all scraggly and elegant with brilliant white flowers before everything else leafs out. It doesn’t hurt that they turn beautiful colors in the fall either.
Ornamental trees are going to be an on going project, they are very difficult. It is way to easy to make postcards instead of portraits.
Orchards and Empty Houses
Sunday was a rare sunny day, so I went to have another go at orchard photography….yeah well. I am hoping that if I go back just as the trees start to leaf out the image will be there. It wasn’t a complete loss, though I went up and down the road so many times that people must have thought I was lost or casing a house for a future robbery. This is one of the three empty houses I photographed instead of the orchards, nothing much came of the other two.
There are so many empty houses around here in varying states of decay and disuse that I’ve become rather fascinated with them.
This one is just up the road from me and you can still see the nick knacks in the window, but I haven’t seen any signs of habitation for a couple of years.
Signs of Spring
Some early signs of spring in Ulster county, New York…… the Blackbirds are back – Starlings mostly, but they are defiantly moving in big flocks…..the Willow branches are turning yellow…..there are buckets on the Maples…..there have been Red Maple flowers on the driveway….I only have photos of the orchards, but the branches changing color as the sap runs is always my best hope that winter is almost over…..
We mostly have apples up here, but these are so much redder and earlier than the rest of the trees that they might be something else, possibly cherries. It’s hard to id plants without leaves, fruit or flowers.
Another version… I continue to try and photograph the orchards with far more failures than successes….irritating beyond belief. I understand the problem….the impossibility of separating out the individual parts….I need grad students with backdrops, beautiful studio portraits of individual apple trees, I can see it all in my head. If I could paint it I would, but then the absurdity and the irony would be lost. So I will continue to try to isolate elements by other means…..
Shades of grey
I was completely smitten with these shades of grey, especially in a landscape where I expected only a pallet of warm tones, endless variations of reds and yellows and browns. These are just a few of the variations of grey.
They are all variations on a theme, but I find that I can’t chose a favorite. Unfortunately for a final edit I will have to chose, I am open to suggestions if anyone would like to venture an opinion.
cheech 297 