Lots of Water

Waterfall, Poughkeepsie, 2022, Archival Digital Print

The skies are forever open and water pours on us day after day. Better than the drought in the West.  I was able to get this view from the train last night as we were leaving the station in Poughkeepsie heading home.  All waterfalls make me think of Marsden Hartley’s waterfall.  This one is such a surprise coming as it does straight toward the tracks just north of town.

 

Snow, Snow, Snow, Birds, Birds, Birds

Blackbirds, 2022, Archival Digital Print

Blackbirds rate among my most favorite: their silhouettes, their size, their song and seeing them in flocks on white snow is like nothing else.

The black-oiled sunflower seeds were the great attractor in this current snow.

There were seeds on the porch table, too, but that space belongs to the Juncos.

The Camera’s Moment

Dogs in Night Snow, 2021, Archival Digital Print

A brief snowfall last night during our last walk gave a Holiday Card Moment. The camera converts the flakes to darting sticks implying an experience of mean sleet rather than soft snow.  The reality was the sweet slow fall of soft flakes.  The marvel of the camera and its ability to create a different reality from fact effects so much in our world now.  It also points out in high relief how incapable viewers are of perceiving the difference.

 

Sleet, Mean, Cold but Who Cares?

Kool and The Gang, Archival Digital Photo, 2021

It’s miserable outside, but the flock is tough and takes the weather with a much better attitude than I do. I’m calling Zach, Kool today because he thinks he’s the most important Goose in Columbia Country, maybe even all of New York State.  He’s intruding on my nicely composed photograph and doesn’t care because the world revolves around him. This is Gander Narcissism in its full expression. Ruthie, his wife, is in the foreground blending into the land.

Reverberation

Plane, 2021, Archival Digital Print

Yesterday morning a single-engine plane flew low back and forth overhead.  Its target was the big apple orchard behind my neighbor’s land.  Its insect buzz was alarming even though I knew what it was doing.  Fruit farmers hire these flyers to spread fertilizer or anti-fungal chemicals, but in the very cold weather they are used to stir up the air and bring down the heated air toward the ground.  I was already feeling as if I were channeling the Blitz and tasted the terror of WWII, and the shot I got as it went on a loop over the house confirmed it.  The power of images to set a place and a time — even one I never experienced except through media — is real.

 

Quiet Saturday

Today is a modest Saturday, rain expected and the air conducive to just listening in the quiet.  This countryside induces reverie. Everything becomes important but conjoined in equalities, nothing more important than any other thing, a union of the perfect whole.

The Last Morning Glories

The Last Morning Glories, 2021, Archival Digital Print

The fullness of those Morning Glory leaves has given such pleasure this year. But, the soppy summer, rain every day in July, seemed to prevent many blossoms.  They are deep cobalt blue when they appear.  As the freeze approaches, these last few seem especially precious and important. I wanted to show the velvety quality of all those vines and leaves so they almost seem like the house’s pubic hair.