Steeple in the Mist

 

Waterbury, Connecticut

IGLESIA NEW LIFE, A/D

 

Waterbury, Connecticut

Creche

Waterbury, Connecticut 

Dawn, Brooklyn District

Waterbury, Connecticut

Around Waterbury, 6/26/23

 

Waterbury, Connecticut

The Labyrinth at St. John's

 

Waterbury, Connecticut

BLUE DOVE MINISTRIES, INC.

Waterbury, Connecticut

St. Anne's church, Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession, 4/15/22, full set

Waterbury, Connecticut

Friday I went to several places in the Naugatuck River Valley looking for pictures of the early spring flowering trees. Leaving my car in a Waterbury strip mall and heading for a long block of South Main Street where I knew there was a decorative row of pink flowering trees, I found something far more interesting. A Good Friday, Stations of the Cross procession, described in yesterday's post. As I expected yesterday, I've found some more pictures of the activities that I think are worth showing.

Click on any of the pictures to see them all with much more detail and information.

Shinto Shrine

Utopian Community in Japan, 1969 (I don't have immediate access to my notes with better ID) 

These were part of my 'schoolwork' project on religious ritual.

BASILICA

 

Waterbury, Connecticut

9/17/21, 7:06 AM

RIVER VALLEY

 

Ansonia, Connecticut

THE CITY OF LIFE CHURCH

 

Waterbury, Connecticut

The key and padlock shapes in the windows are reflections of neon signs in the windows of a locksmith business across the street.

GROVE

 Waterbury, Connecticut, 11/9/20

PRAYING FOR YOU

 Naugatuck, Connecticut, 11/6/20

Church Parking Lot

 Waterbury, Connecticut

A sign said it's the Holy Spirit Ministry, and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019.

Two Churches

Jennings, Florida, 2012

The churches were set on opposite corners of a country road intersection.

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

SAVE A DYING WORLD

Ansonia, Connecticut

This church occupies a building in a commercial strip along Main Street. Having walked by countless times, I don't recall seeing these signs before, so I guess they refer specifically to the current pandemic.

WORSHIP ONLINE

Thomaston, Connecticut

Social Distancing: Parking Lot Easter Service

Waterbury, Connecticut

Driving north after shooting in a nearly deserted Waterbury city center Easter Sunday morning, I passed a small strip mall with a nearly full parking lot. Car horns were blowing and out of the corner of my eye I saw that someone was speaking with a microphone. Then I remembered there's a storefront church in the little shopping center. I found a place to turn around and parked the car.

Restoration Springs Interdenominational Church was in full swing with a drive-in parking lot service. Most people were in their cars, others were out of or on top of the cars but staying in family groups with good distance between them.

The preacher was animated and dynamic. Amens and hallelujahs rang out, and were reinforced by car horns. He also kept interrupting himself to remind everyone that while they were following the decrees of the mayor and the governor to maintain social distancing today at church, everyone must be sure to keep it up all day, every day. "Praise the Lord!" "Hallelujah!" "Honk Honk Honk!"

There was a DJ to substitute for Hammond organ and choir. I realized the reason I knew the church was there was that I'd walked past during services and heard, or rather felt, the thunderous music, back in normal times.

(Note: the very essence of what's going on here makes it difficult to read the pictures small. I've uploaded larger than usual files and hope that, if you click on one of the pictures to see the set in the much larger view you'll get a better idea of what's going on.) UPDATE: that backfired. I've changed the files and now you will get a much bigger view by clicking on any of the pictures, big enough to really see what's going on.