Still Spring

Litchfield, Connecticut

On Monday, summer still seemed a long way off, especially first thing on a misty morning. Then Tuesday and Wednesday the temperature went up past 80° F.

E

Torrington, Connecticut

Memorial Day Amid Pandemic—More Signs along Main Street

Litchfield, Connecticut

Memorial Day, without a Parade

Torrington, Connecticut

This morning I went up to Torrington around the time that, in any ordinary year, a large Memorial Day Parade would be forming to move north on Main Street, circle around a couple blocks to the west and return to Main at The Five Corners intersection. Around the residential streets pandemic and support signs have become ubiquitous.

In from of City Hall there were flags and on the lawn a lot of what appeared to be knitted or crocheted veterans poppies. Other years, a big reviewing stand of metal bleachers would fill the sidewalk here.

There were very few cars on the street, but a lot of honking was coming from the Five Corners where a small group of pro-Trump (judging from their signs) demonstrators were gathered. Almost none of them were wearing masks.

There was little traffic but quite a few of the cars and trucks honked their horns.

Click on any picture for a larger, more legible view of the set.

Looking north up Main at Five Corners—a far cry from the usual parade.

PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

Torrington, Connecticut

To reopen, sometime.

Disappointment/Hope

Torrington, Connecticut

Message in a shop window on Main Street.

Early (for me) Digital Capture

Burlington, West Virginia

We all need to find things to do during this period of restricted activity and travel. This past week I decided to revisit the first personal work I did using color digital capture. It was 2004-2006 and I was really excited about what I was seeing on screen and from my first photo quality digital printer. I decided to make a set of intimate (almost exactly the size of classic whole plate) prints that are what you get from native Olympus E1 files at 300 ppi. I liked the results and decided to put up a web gallery on my site, with this introductory note on the Web Galleries page:

In 2004 I acquired my first digital SLR camera, for a large assignment that the publisher required be shot digitally. I quickly found that I loved many aspects of working this way. I’d always worked in color as well as black and white for both personal projects and assignments, but was never really happy with darkroom color prints. Over the next couple of years I made a lot of pictures with this Olympus E1 outfit on shooting trips that centered on my Drive-in Theater and White Churches large format b&w projects. Recently I decided to revisit the archive of this work and select thirty or so pictures for printing. Hardware (the printer) materials (baryta style photo paper) and software (the current version of Adobe Camera Raw) have vastly improved since 2005, so I found I could make  better prints than 15 years ago. Since the E1 files are so small, they still look best as modest size prints, around 6.5x8.5 inches. Next I assembled this web gallery to make the work available here on my site.

The "early" needs a couple qualifiers. The projects on my site go back to 1969, so pictures made mostly in 2005 aren't exactly early in that context. Also, digital capture in 2005 isn't necessarily "early" for anyone but me. I'm really pleased with this new edit, in two ways. First, I'm very fond of a lot of these pictures because they exploded in a burst of enthusiasm for a new aspect of my medium, offering all sorts of new possibilities.

Second, to go techy-doo for a moment, I have to hand it to Adobe. Back fifteen years ago, I ended up shooting RAW+JPEG because while the advantages of raw capture are obvious, many of the personal project pictures had higher resolution and better color in the Olympus jpg files than in the ACR interpretation. I was fascinated to find that this is no longer true. I had to update ACR's understanding of the raw files to it's current state. Each time, the file improved enormously. I found the jpg files and made comparisons. Current ACR digs out more resolution than the original jpg files that had more than ACR could find back then, and the color in the ACR interpretation has all the "magic" that Olympus fanboys rave about (with good reason).

If you'd like to look, the direct link is: http://www.carlweese.com/earlyE1color/index.html

HURT AT WORK?

Waterbury, Connecticut

The text reads, "Meet the next generation of Personal Injury Lawyer."

Click on the picture for a larger, more legible view.

More Spring

Warren, Connecticut

Some Waterbury Trees

Waterbury, Connecticut

Yesterday was May 20th, but many of the decorative small trees I saw around the city were still just barely leafing out.

Some were further ahead. Most were past blooming but not in their summer look yet.

There aren't a lot of big, mature trees in the center of town, but you can't go a block without seeing small ones trying to hang in there.