So what have I been doing for the past month? Futzing with my new iphone. These devices are distracting. I end up playing a session of angry birds rather than work on my latest book design – which is a reworking of the asylum photographs into a larger 13″x11″ book design.
But the newness of the iphone is wearing off finally (it’s my first smart phone), and I’m getting back to work on important projects. And occasionally playing with the phone. It has a decent 5 megapixel camera, and there are some good photo apps available. My current favorite is the ShakeItPhoto app, which does a good job of capturing the look of a polaroid.
I’ve also been enjoying summer, spending time swimming and hiking, canoeing.
I took a few days for a hiking trip to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. It is one of my favorite places to go. I love hiking and the beauty of the mountains, and the adks are a great place to get both in large doses.
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I do a fair amount of hiking. Rather than head to the gym, I go for a hike. Year round, even in the darkest days of winter I’ll strap on a head light and head out for a hike a couple times a week. One of my favorite local places to hike is Mt. Greylock. There are over 50 miles of trails on the mountain, and there is a variety of terrain and trail difficulty.
There are some good hikes linked here on the state website. On Sunday I hiked the Hopper Trail on the Williamstown side of the mountain. It’s a beautiful area, the Hopper is a designated national natural landmark, there are old growth trees, and the unique topography makes for great hiking. The Hopper forms a natural bowl on the west facing side of Greylock, the surrounding peaks of Stoney Ledge, and Mt Prospect make excellent hikes in themselves. I wrote a hike review some years ago on an excellent loop hike that starts in the Hopper, and goes to the summit of Greylock via the Money Brook and the Appalachian trails. A hard all day hike, but one of the best in area.
But Sunday I did a shorter hike up the Hopper Trail to the Sperry Road campround and back down. There are alternate routes that can make this a loop hike by walking down Sperry Road to Stoney Ledge, then down the Haley Farm trail. But I was short on time, so did an up and back. It had been raining, and the cloud cover was low, so some beautiful fog through the trees.
Hopper Trail
Hopper Trail
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Fish in Tank
I’m apparently attracted to aquatic subjects lately, this shot appeals to me because of the rich color and movement, and the shape of the fish. I recently renamed this blog Fresh Fish, inspired in large part by the shot of the Sardines (see below) at a Chinatown fish market. So I might as well keep it going. This is another shot from the Central Park Zoo visit last weekend.
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Penguin House - Central Park Zoo
Penguin House in the Central Park Zoo. Another stop in our visit to NYC this past weekend. This is another place in NYC which I hadn’t visited until now. You discover a different New York when traveling with children. A slower pace, less distance covered, and a more relaxed time. We visited places that were off the map when I was living in the city and going to school. It was a really enjoyable couple of days. New York on a nice day in the spring is hard to beat.
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Deer Lake Drive-in
After seeing Carl Weese’s beautiful shot of the Pike Drive-in, I went digging for some of my drive-in photographs. This is from Deer Lake PA, an area where I photographed extensively for my Anthracite Region essay. I find this area of Pennsylvania to be fascinating, it preserves something that has been lost in many areas. It is a coal mining region, so until recently the economy in these areas has been flat, with high enemployment. Not much development - and that is what interests me. It’s like traveling in a time warp when in the area, the towns and patches (small clusters of houses), haven’t changed much in 50 years. The area preserves a unique architecture and I will be posting on that soon.
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Sardines
Chinatown fish market, NYC.
Check out this deal on platinum paladium prints over at The Online Photographer. Carl Weese is offering prints at a very reasonable price. My favorite is the Pike Drive-in print, and I have one on order. BTW, The Online Photographer is one of my most frequent stops on the web, great posts every day, highly recommended.
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we have shoes
This side alley caught my eye while walking down Canal Street in New York yesterday. The scene on Canal has changed quite a bit since I lived in the city. If anything, there is a more frenetic pace to the stretch between Broadway and Mott. I miss the weekend flea market that was a mainstay for years, no sign of it now. The unfortunate part of this walk was that my wife Wendy had her pocketbook picked sometime around when this photo was snapped, and the bum relieved us of over $100. First time this happened to us in our many visits to the city, and all the time I lived here. I don’t think it’s an indication of crime getting worse in the city, since the 80′s the place has become down right family friendly. Just bad luck, and a very crowded Canal street, perfect for pickpockets.
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Liberty for all
A weekend trip to NYC, my 7 year old daughters first visit. So we hit the places she wanted to see, Central Park Zoo, and Liberty Island. Once your a parent, you find yourself doing things you swore you would never do – and actually enjoying them.
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On a recent trip to the USVI, I discovered some interesting – although dark – history. Large sugar and cotton plantations existed in the 1700\’s and 1800\’s on what was then the Danish West Indies. Some of those plantation ruins are still there today, hidden in the thick jungle overgrowth. These were slave holding plantations, most of the labor was provided by slaves brought directly from Accra to the slave market on St Thomas. There were several slave rebellions that were severly repressed, mutiny\’s, mass slave suicides, and many escapes to the British islands across the channel. I intend to explore what little literature there is of this period of the West Indies to get a better sense of what life was like on these plantations. There are some interesting stories here, two kings from the rival Aquambo and Adampes tribes ended up as slaves on the same island. They met in personal combat to avenge their honor, and in the end joined forces to organize a revolt against the plantation owners and took over the island for 6 months. More to follow.
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A recent visit to the civil war battlefield at Gettysburg Pennsylvania has me thinking about the way landscapes are able to contain memory, how they are able to preserve and convey past events. The idea of preserving the battlefield as a memorial to the fallen soldiers is an appropriate one. But does the landscape itself tell us anything about those distant events?
As a photographer I am interested in how visual signs convey meaning, how the landscape and objects in the landscape can tell the story of the battle. If I were to rely on visual clues alone, would I be able to get a sense of the events that occurred at Gettysburg?
On my first visit I came cold, no research, no reading about the battle beforehand, I just showed up and started driving around taking photographs. I was able to understand the site on one level, the present landscape. But I didn’t understand the significance of the landmarks and topography. Prior to my second visit I read up on the war, and the Gettysburg battle in particular, so that the landmarks were familiar, names recalled events, places had meaning beyond their physical appearance.
I found that the landscape itself does not convey much about the battle. The trees, even the largest oak trees, were saplings when the battle occurred 146 years ago. There is little to differentiate this group of fields from many other farm fields in Pennsylvania, aside from the hundreds of monuments that have been added to the battlefield. I kept looking for a reference point on the battlefield which would connect me to the event, some physical evidence that a battle had occurred here. There are no earth works from the battle, there are no bunkers, no shell craters, no bullet holes to give a direct visual link to the battle. The only direct sign I saw was a canon ball hole in Trostle\’s barn, a site of terrible fighting on the second day of the battle. The landscape is scrutinized and puzzled over by visitors. It is observed from a hundred points around its circumference.
The topography has not changed much since the battle, some of the stone walls are still there, and key points in the battle occurred near significant landmarks, like the round tops, the angle, devil\’s den, the wheat fields, peach orchards, and a few of the houses and barns that existed during the battle.
What becomes obvious is that a narrative about the battle is necessary, that the landscape itself is fairly mute about the battle until you understand the story. People who are visiting are telling each other the stories about what happened at important landmarks. It becomes a landscape upon which stories are projected. The battlefield is largely empty, a void, a beautiful landscape of fence lines, wheat fields, wooded areas, and unique rocky outcrops. It is an empty slate on which to imagine the events of the battle.
Gettysburg is an important place to visit. But do some reading before you go, and spend time at the visitors center watching the introduction film and seeing the cyclorama before visiting the battlefield. Then the topography will become familiar, and the landscape will release the terrible memories that lie just below the surface.
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