Pods

Naugatuck, Connecticut

Safety 1st

Waterbury, Connecticut

Wall

Waterbury, Connecticut

The west side of the river valley is so steep that there are many retaining walls to keep the land, and houses and streets, from sliding down into the river.

Ultra Light

Waterbury, Connecticut

Yesterday afternoon I was wandering around the Town Plot section of Waterbury, thinking about a series of urban landscape pictures I'd like to make. There was a sound like a lawnmower overhead, and it turned out to be a very small airplane circling around, low, over the city.

Bricks

Naugatuck, Connecticut

This sort of brickwork is ubiquitous up and down the Naugatuck River valley. Few of the buildings are still used for their original purpose. Manufacturing for the most part left the valley many decades ago, headed for Southern states, and then on to the other side of the world. Some of the buildings simply decay. Others are transformed into warehouse space. Some even get refurbished as office or residential urban renewal.

Waterbury, Connecticut

Reel Obsession/DO NOT TAKE WOOD

Naugatuck (Union City), Connecticut

There seems to be a shared critical opinion, maybe something like a meme, claiming that photographs  shouldn't include text because, I don't know, visual art, or something. Bits of text are a universal part of our surroundings unless we're really deep in the woods or way out in the desert. Not including these elements of the world around us seems to me just as weird as going to great lengths to pretend that a photograph is portraying wilderness when in fact it's done in a place—a park, reservation, preserve—where the natural world remains only because of strenuous human intervention. Or making landscape pictures while somehow avoiding, or retouching out, utility poles and powerlines. So, here's a shot with various bits of text, along with pieces of a flag, a phone pole, and utility lines.

Leaves

Washington, Connecticut

This cluster of trees at the edge of the steep river bank above the Shepaug, at the start of its "clamshell" section in the main area of Steep Rock Preserve, was backlit and glowing in the hazy mid afternoon light yesterday. I wanted to get a sense of being surrounded by the bright leaves and as I looked for the right camera position I found that it was easiest to get by shooting with the GX7 at waist level, Rollie-style, using the LCD flipped up 90° for viewing. Almost all the other hardwoods are bare at this point, very close to the end of the autumn picture season.

City Shadows

 Waterbury, Connecticut

Count the TV satellite dishes. I find an even dozen, but maybe there are more I'm overlooking. A lot of the large old houses in Waterbury have been divided up into apartments, but here it's clear that the buildings were meant as multi-family buildings from the outset.

Late Fall

Washington, Connecticut

Earlier this afternoon at Steep Rock Preserve. It looks as though we're pretty close to the end of the fall season, although the forecast is for unusually mild weather over the next few days.

HOLIDAY BAZAAR!

Waterbury, Connecticut