Torrington, Connecticut

Green Paint

Woodbury, Connecticut

Winter Trees

Yale Dogwoods, New Haven, Connecticut

A Short Walk in a Small City

Wednesday morning while I was listening to Morning Edition, a public radio non-commercial from a public-spirited supporter of my local public radio station informed me that the Canaletto in London show at the Yale Center for British Art would close on the 31st. Whoops! Tina and I changed our schedules and headed down to New Haven. The show was fascinating. My first reaction to the pictures you encounter on entry was to start giggling. I had to whisper about these large (40x60 inch?) canvases, "oh my goodness, they had oversharpening in the 18th century!" Canaletto's paintings have a count-every-blade-of-grass, realer-than-real rendering that reinforces the adage that if you want to please a client, give 'em detail, detail, detail. Little reproductions in books don't give you the flavor you get from seeing the originals. But he also has a wonderful sense of humor. Huge impressive palace and courtyard, with two servants beating a rug against a wall in the upper right corner. Impressive mansion and grounds, with wash hanging over a balcony. Parade of the Horse Guard in some fancy square, with a cartoonish fat man almost dead center. View of The City through one arch of an under-construction bridge, with a beautifully rendered bucket on a rope hanging, upper right.

And then there are the Cappricio paintings. Titles like "Imaginary Landscape with Palace," which is good enough as is, but the title doesn't hint at half of what's imaginary. I looked for unicorns, and then realized he's too subtle for that. Everything in the pictures is real and possible, or perhaps plausible is a better term, but everything is somehow off-kilter, skewed and crazy. Scholarly curatorial plaques in the last room explained Canaletto's sublime mastery of perspective, which went to the point that he employed multiple vanishing points in some of his panoramic compositions (but made them all converge on the same horizon line) to maintain drawing of buildings while rendering an impossible field of view. But the curator neglected to point out that one of the things that makes the Cappricios so whacky and wonderful is that he plays very fast and loose with vanishing points, disorientingly heading them every which way. Great fun. Wish I could do that with photographs.

On the way back to the parking lot, walking past the Yale living quarters with their faux-medieval castle walls, thinking of Caneletto, I noticed this:

Yale Birds, New Haven, Connecticut

Green Tree, Hidden Valley, Washington, Connecticut

A Walk in the Woods on the Day After Christmas

The winter woods on a cold rainy day strike me as simply wonderful, whether I take pictures or not. These shots were made just for my own entertainment, but also relate to the technical series I'm publishing over at TOP (see link in sidebar at right). Here are some more:

Green Trunks, Hidden Valley

Curvey Trunk and Little Hemlock, Hidden Valley

Along the Shepaug at Hidden Valley

Waterbury, Connecticut

Shadow of a Building

Waterbury, Connecticut

Reflections

I don't think I'll ever get tired of looking at the way late light bounces off the windows of one building to the facade of another. There's a wonderful glowing yellow color to the reflections in the orignal that balances nicely with the cold white and black of the wall, but it will probably be lost in the translation to web viewing.

Union City, Connecticut

Flat Santa

Hidden Valley, Washington, Connecticut

Twisted Trees

I want to keep this web log centered on pictures rather than technique, but viewers who are following my posts at The Online Photographer, centering on my acqusition of a new camera, will be interested to know this was shot, hand held, at 1/8 second exposure. In the full size file (before interpolation down and JPEG compression for the web) the bark is extremely crisp and detailed.

Carmel Hill, Woodbury, Connecticut

Solstice Light

Mid-afternoon of the shortest day in the year.

Union City, Connecticut

Flag and Windows