Police Station, Summersville, West Virginia

Meadow Bridge, West Virginia

Customer Parking

But it's been a long time since there were any customers here.

Shrine, Church of the Sacred Heart, Torrington, Connecticut

Summersville, West Virginia

Free Pictures

Sometimes it takes an enormous amount of work to make a picture—travel, advance planning, multiple returns to a location to find exactly the right conditions. Sometimes though, they come out of nowhere. Here, I'd just pulled out of the Mountain State Motel before dawn to head twenty miles north to Beam's farm to try for pictures with my banquet cameras. It was my fifth or sixth return to that spot, more than five hundred miles from home. I pulled into the convenience store to get coffee and when I got back into my truck, this scene was staring at me. Just roll down the window and take a picture that I really like.

Flieg & Newbury, Torrington, Connecticut

Another Wall

Brick Wall, Torrington, Connecticut

Pale Blue Wall, Torrington, Connecticut

Walls

Something about walls fascinates me. At least old walls with some history behind them. Almost anywhere I go there seem to be walls standing around, asking to be made into pictures.

Red Leaves, Roxbury, Connecticut, 10/23/06

Autumn in New England

...is such a cliche that I'm almost tempted to stop taking pictures in the fall. But not really. In fact spring and fall are my favorite times to do landscape pictures of the heavily forested east coast, working with large and ultra-large cameras for monochrome. In winter the forests are barren. That lets the shapes of the land, the hills and valleys, reveal themselves, but the sense of forested territory is lost. In summer you can't really see anything but dense masses of dark green leaves. Many of the galleries on my web site are pictures made for platinum printing, shot in the spring and fall here in New England and along the Appalachian ridge from West Virginia down to Georgia. I don't often find a color photograph I want to make at this season. But this is something I saw yesterday while doing errands.

Elder Housing, Torrington, Connecticut

Fishers of Men, Lizemores, West Virginia

Self-Portrait, Ansonia, Connecticut

Church Wall and Graffiti, Ansonia, Connecticut

Wall and Shadow, Ansonia, Connecticut

Specialty Store, Derby, Connecticut

Exhaust Fan, Derby, Connecticut, 10/16/06

Two From Torrington, Connecticut, 10/15/06

Keyser, West Virginia

Moose Lodge, St. Albans, Vermont

Road in Rain, Canton de Hatley, Quebec

Landscape in Color

I almost always do landscape photographs in black and white. In this one instance though, color seemed essential. So much so that I regret not having had materials with me to do it as an 8x10-inch color negative.

Morning Commute, Rock Island, Quebec

Backs and Fronts

When looking around a town I often spend as much time in the alleys and parking lots, behind the buildings, as out in the main street looking at the fronts. Not that backs are always more intersting, but the backs may hint at which buildings will be interesting from the street. Anything called "The Homer Fitts Co." has promise. Also, as a kid I spent a lot of time in mid-town Manhattan, where many of the small stores had permanent "going out of business sale" signs that remained unchanged year in and year out. Locals weren't fooled by the sale signs. Any similar sign tends to get my attention even today.

Out front on Main Street, the display windows are filled with dress forms, with no dresses, for the simple reason that it's the forms themselves that are for sale.

Barre, Vermont, 10/2/06

Park, Hardwick, Vermont

Painted Walls

For some reason I'm seeing more and more painted walls around. Decoration in parks, or downtowns. Here the low wall surrounding the little park is inset with panels of mosaic, but then there's the weird wash of pale pastel purple fading to white on the big wall at the back. One thing I wonder is whether at some point this section of wall was used as a downtown outdoor movie theater. The proportion of the finished section is perfect for 'scope projection, if it was originally painted flat white.

Craftsbury, VT, 10/2/06

Newport, VT, 10/2/06

Organic Farming, and...

The town of Craftsbury lies in a valley surrounded by beautiful hills. The whole valley is under cultivation for specialty dairy and vegetable production. There are small, carefully tended miniature truck farms growing produce to organic standards. This truck somehow seemed perfect for such a farm, even if the thing is temporarily stuck in the mud.

To the north, in Newport, another shop window with another elegantly posed manikin, but what in the world have they done with her hands?

St. Isadore-De-Clifton, Quebec

St. Johnsbury, VT 10/4/06

River City



This small city in northern Vermont clings to the side of a steep hill on the west bank of the Connecticut River. Old industrial buildings line the riverbank, some of them in the process of conversion to a modern shopping district. Up on the hill there are well-preserved mansions from a former era and big, stately brick apartment houses. The picture possibilities seem endless.

Sherbrooke, Quebec, 10/3/06

Le Drug Store

Rock Island, Quebec, 10/3/06

Another Beauty Shop

Back from three days in northern Vermont and southern Quebec. This was just over the border, in view of the customs station.

Wholesale Only, New York, NY

Body Art, Torrington, Connecticut

More Beauty

This is a storefront tatoo parlour. You have to wonder if the tatoo artist is the same person who made the window painting.

Hyde Park, New York

Accoutrements for a Mansion

We're at the edge of the Rose Garden, near the adjacent Lily Pond, at a former Vanderbilt estate, now a New York state park. I don't guess anyone can claim that this is a great piece of sculpture. But isn't she wonderful?

Richwood, West Virginia

Faithlifts

It seems that a lot of churches have begun to put catchy slogans on their signs, so I've begun to collect them.