An Evening Walk

I should have worked on the Print Crit yesterday, but it was such a gorgeous afternoon I went for a long walk up the hill instead. Welker Hill rises 520 feet in the stretch of a mile, so I take my car up the steepest part and park it on my neighbor Les's field and walk on from there. It's not that I'm scared of walking up the steep part—I've done it many times, and I've actually run up it a time or two—it's that going down is hard on my knees. It's still plenty steep from where I park.

Mike's mailbox. Mike is a retired Kodak engineer who lives in a patch of woods. The year after I graduated from high school, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the United States. When I was in Photo School, it had 145,000 employees worldwide and was described as "the bluest of the blue chips," blue chip being a term for a dependable investment. There are retired Kodak folks sprinkled hither and yon all over the region.

Kodak's peak year was 1996, believe it or not.

The wind blew my hat off. The high yesterday was 66 degrees Fahrenheit (19°C), and the breeze was brisk enough to make the flags wave. As good days in the Finger Lakes often are, it was gloriously clear. The air smelled sweet, earthy and pure. The feel and scent of air are things that are forever beyond the capacity of photographs to describe.

This would have been a "No Trespassing" sign, the sign itself now long since gone the way of all things. Some of its original sky blue paint still clings to it.

Honeybee Dave's house. You can see the house in the Wintertime, but when the trees leaf out, nope. It's in there, though.

Mennonite tractors. You can tell a Mennonite tractor by the steel wheels. I asked a Mennonite farmer why their tractors have steel wheels, and he smiled and said, "So we don't get too comfortable and use them to go to town." There are two sects up here. One uses cars. But the horse-and-buggy Mennonites believe they're supposed to travel that way or by bicycle. Their carriages are rather severe enclosed black boxes, but you'll often see them on nice Summer evenings packed into little un-sprung open carts out for pleasure rides, especially on Sundays.

This fellow barks at me on the way out and not on the way back. I'm old news by then.

By the way, this is one of those pictures that I hoped would be something but isn't. That's something that's been happening to me all my life. You'd think we'd have a word for it. Is it enough to say that the scene was more dramatic in person? The sun was right behind the middle silo and blindingly bright. I should have dodged the doggie a little.

Red-winged blackbird, not that you can tell. That's just like me, trying to take bird pictures with a 50mm lens! I do like watching the red-winged blackbirds, though—they're in about half the pictures I took on my walk. There's one in the picture of Honeybee Dave's house too. They'll divebomb right at you if you get near a nest, but the ones on the hill are more entertaining than aggressive.

Another former No Trespassing sign with the sign gone.

I often take pictures of the sky just for the joy of it. I don't know why—everyone's seen skies, and skies generally are not good subjects for photographs, something Stieglitz taught me with his snooty "Equivalents," all of which are not-very-good pictures. But how can you resist?

Here's where I park. Les lives on the lake, but he has a big mown field up here with a shed with a workshop in it and some fruit trees, and a swinging settee in front of the shed where he and his wife can sit and look out over the lake and the hills on the far side. The road still rises another 250 or so vertical feet from here, but this way I skip the steep part. Some relatives came to visit me, and coming down the steep parts of the roads in a car scared them. It is a little unsettling at first. I'm so used to it I don't notice. People who live in real mountains wouldn't think it's much. When I was young I went up into the Swiss Alps in a bus and I had to move to the front because, on sharp turns, the rear of the bus felt like it was swinging out over dizzying vertical drops.

It was 63°F by the time I got back to the car, but I was comfortable in shirt sleeves. The breeze had no bite and felt friendly and enveloping.

...And then one more for good measure. As always happens, once I get into "picture-taking mode" I have trouble stopping. I made a loop to the grocery store after my walk and took this from the parking lot, resting the camera on the sill of the driver's side window. It's next to the Catholic church and I think it's where the priest lives. Beautiful old Gothic Revival house. Can you see where the shutters used to be?

Thanks for coming on my evening walk with me. Hopefully this was a relaxing respite from all the trouble out in the world. Now, back to work.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Glenn Allenspach: "Gotta say, Mike, I greatly enjoyed these photos. They gave me a real sense of the place where you live, and 'sense of place' is to me one of the great purposes of photography."

Jeroen Pulles: "Remarkable light/contrast on the last photo. The two trees in the front seem to be catching some light from your direction, as if you carry a giant strobe on your walks."

Mike replies: Streetlights from the grocery store parking lot. The balance of lighting was one of the arresting things about the scene.

Gordon: "You live in Eden, Mike. I’m envious."

Mike replies: You know, it really is one of my favorite places of everywhere I've ever lived. The scale of life is just about right: the density of people, the way everybody has potential connections, the Mennonites and Amish maintaining the farmland in good fettle, the casual friendliness of the people, the low crime. I have more friends and acquaintances here than anywhere I've ever lived. The relaxed way people do business can be a little annoying, but that has its advantages too and you get used to it. But there's a reason why it's essentially a Summer resort area: the temperate months are glorious in many ways (weather, wildlife, plant life, the big show in the skies, the halcyon life of the wealthy along the lakeside), but in the Winter months it can be like the slough of despond: grim, gray, bleak, lonely. Ideally one would live here five months out of the year, and someplace else, like a city, the other seven months. I'll work on that, but I'm running out of lifespan in which to imagine a roseate future! 

Mike: "Love that last one. Reminds me of the picture you made years ago of the house in the dark using a D700."

Mike replies: You've got a long memory. That was a long time ago.

Franklyn Hamsher: "This post is lovely.

"I am no longer able to get out an walk for more than a a couple of hundred yards (which I do all within the confines of my back yard). To share your thoughts and pictures of your walk delights me no end.

"What you have done reminds me very much of a project done by the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi: 'Seven Days Walking,' a series of short compositions he wrote while walking near his home over a seven-month period. He would stop in the same spots each day to drink in the feel of each place and compose short pieces of music to reflect his impressions. Seven albums in all. These albums have become real favorites of mine when I am working at the computer or doing my exercises to keep fit. I recommend the albums for you. You can probably find them on Spotify or a similar service.

"They songs remind me of a series of photographs that my father, an avid and talented amateur photographer shot probably 40 years ago. He took one series of four photos of things that interested him in the wild, (a creek bank, a group of trees with entwined trunks, a forested path, the light filtering through tree branches seen from inside a copse of trees, etc). He came back to the exact spot, composing a frame of the exact scene in all four seasons. He sold many sets of these four photos to admirers when he retired and the sales funded his ramblings. Sadly I no longer have copies of any of his photos.

"Please keep doing what you are doing!"

Mike replies: Funny you should mention Einaudi. I just discovered him for the first time recently, while researching the piece "So You Say You Like Everything." I'll go put on "Seven Days Walking" now.

Stephen F Faust: "Sometimes, simply looking at pretty pictures is the best possible use of time. For me, your timing was perfect. Thanks for letting me join you on this walk."

Ray L Hudson: "Thanks for the walk together. I'm feeling pretty trapped indoors these days.

"I will say, being an amateur birder myself, if that bird is on the other side of the wires, as it seems, that's a world record red-winged. Also it has the outline and wing pattern of a soaring hawk. Out here, (Oregon), it would be a red-tailed. Not sure what's back there. Just saying."

Mike replies: He was only a few feet the other side of the wire. I'm reasonably certain it was a red-winged blackbird. There were a bunch of them. But then I'm not a birder so maybe you're right. Here's a detail crop from a different frame:

Comments

[Steve S]

I envy your evening walk. I live in St. Paul, MN and my photos over the last couple nights were of boarded up store fronts.

Your walk also reminded me a bit of the driftless area of Wisconsin where my parents grew up and my relatives still live. A beautiful part of Wisconsin with hills and valleys and nothing like the rest of the midwest that surrounds it.

Photos of skies are mostly a memory device for me to look at during rainy stretches or winter. I like taking them because I have no expectation of taking something better than what I actually experience.

[Robert]

Nice Mitsubishi, Mike. Over here there are more Skodas and Volkswagens. I drive VW camper bus.
Take care, Robert :-)

[Weekes James]

That was great fun. You should do it more often. Gives me a feeling of where you live.

[Artistwithlight]

This is what it’s all about

[Dave Karp]

Thanks. I enjoyed the walk.

"By the way, this is one of those pictures that I hoped would be something but isn't. That's something that's been happening to me all my life. You'd think we'd have a word for it."

I call those "near misses." Sometimes they are not so near!

We used to have a redwing blackbird nest near my house in the Chicago suburbs when I was a kid. They used to dive bomb me when I cut the grass!

[Ricardo Cordeiro]

This should be a weekly post, just a simple collection of pictures documenting an event, and it doesn’t need to be any special event, a simple walk is a good source of material. I do enjoy a lot just seeing some photographs with some context, a simple pleasure, and I think it’s fair to say that photo-watching is something we all enjoy here.
From all the photos, the one with the bird and the moon stands out. I think it would also make a really good B&W image, which leads me to the question of why don’t you show more B&W images, even if snapshots if it’s your preferred medium?

[BH]

"By the way, this is one of those pictures that I hoped would be something but isn't."

I thought it was funny reading this sentence right after I said to myself, "boy, that's one of the best shots I've seen Mike post."

[Xf Mj]

It is really great to see your surroundings and to hear your descriptions. The house I grew up in, just part of a Ryan Homes subdivision in Western PA, happened to be within easy range of some fields and small farmlands, opposite in direction from most of my family's suburban activity. I remember when, as a kid, I first learned it was probably okay for me to climb that mile or so uphill by bike to that area on my own, telling no one. The setting felt like another time and place, before everyone came to grab their quarter acre. The work it took to get there, little guy on too big of a bike, made me think that only I could get to it, that it was a secret place and that my bike was a time machine.

I was lucky to do it, undisturbed and safe.

Many of my photo walks, and photo bikes and photo drives, have been that same escape ride. Going through the pictures I've taken on each just reminds me that I need continue do them for myself, when I can, and to find other seemingly hidden places. Those trips are always self-restoration for return, and I have been grateful to have had them. They've had a profound effect on my actual life, many times over.

Your photos remind me quite a bit of that Brush Run, and they take me back. Thank you for sharing them.

Outside of our own spheres and inner lives, we see that photography and documentation is so important in how it witnesses and reveals things, seemingly hidden things to some, that for others arrived (or were always) in plain sight, though as if from another reality. It is important to share what we see. If those images are confusing, or somehow unclear, it is important to struggle to find words to address and to interpret what the camera has recorded, and also why and how the images came to be. When those words and those pictures fail us, we need to work harder still.

I appreciate the work you do to help us reflect on our hobby in so many different ways. Even when you are just demonstrating the reflective nature of taking a walk with a camera, trying some shots, it can mean quite a bit to your readers. It reminded me to just keep trying, among many other things.

[Hans Muus]

So this is how the artist in you flourishes: adding words to the pictures and pictures to the words ! Two talents, one story. Love it - makes me feel good. (Ten of those stories and you’d have a book!) Thank you.

[John Camp]

You'd almost think you'd never heard of skateboards.

[Andy Munro]

Nice writing Mike. Felt that I was with you on that walk.

[robert e]

Thank you, Mike, for a soothing and pleasant stroll. It's a wonderful sequence; and as individual pictures I really like the last shot of the house, the dog, Honeybee Dave's house and the first "no trespassing" sign. Something painterly about those, especially the last two I mentioned. And of course the priest's house reminds me of Magritte.

These photos may not have literally captured the feel and scent of the air, but they succeeded in stirring up those memories.

No one asked me, but I think "Skies" could be a good, challenging theme for a Baker's Dozen.

[Duke]

That was very nice. I felt like I was walking inside a Robert Frost Poem. Thanks.

[Rob L]

Thanks, Mike, needed a calm walk today. You really can feel the sunlight.

[Nigel Voak]

Documenting my walks is what most of my photography is about. So I enjoyed this post.

I walk in the Apennines and my problem too was coming downhill.

I solved it with a hiking pole, which is like a lightweight walking stick. The pole takes the weight of your knees. Good ones are lightweight and a loop makes them easy to carry.

They are sold in pairs as they are used mostly for Norwegian walking which uses both.

It made a big difference.

[Thomas Walsh]

Mike, that was a very pleasant walk, indeed. The type of thing that all of us particularly need right now. Cheers.

[Patrick]

520 feet in a mile means an average 10 percent grade, which is quite steep. Major highways, interstates, are usually no steeper than 6 percent, that's the sort of hill where you'd see those signs telling trucks to use a lower gear. So your hill is steeper than our hills in CO, but some of them go on for 7 or 8 miles. (quiz time - an 8 mile hill at 5 percent would rise how many feet? My dad was a civil engineer by way of an excuse for this)

[Jason Melancon]

FWIW if I had to determine the pick of the litter I would definitely pick the sky/clouds.

I know what you mean about those Stieglitz photos; I have a meh reaction to them also.

But I think sky photos can be quite rich. That snap you took there, with a different time/different evening with a little color and maybe a more interesting ground/trees edge and it could move up from pick of the litter to be a wonderful photo.

Again, FWIW, but then this is a forum so most all of it is FWIW.

[Kefyn Moss]

Regarding the bus in Switzerland, back in 1991 on one of the first of our many journeys through Latin America, my wife and I took the bus from Lima to Arequipa in Peru along the Pan American "Highway" (I'm pretty sure it wasn't even a sealed road still in parts at that time). Looking out the window in some places, we could occasionally see the front wheel of the bus going beyond the road and into thin air with hundreds of metres drop into the Pacific Ocean below. The road was barely wide enough for two buses to pass which made matters worse and my wife was terrified for most of the journey. At the time, as I had no control over the matter, I just relaxed and trusted that the driver had done the trip many times before, ignoring the fact that the cliff edge had no railings and was interrupted regularly with crosses indicating where vehicles had gone over the edge!

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Lovely images of a walk I’d love to take right now, Mike. As I write this my home is locked into a security zone in downtown Chicago like I’ve never experienced. After three months of pandemic quarantine this is beginning to drive my bolts a bit loose. So your wonderful afternoon images of such a beautiful rural setting hit me way harder than I would have expected.

Thank you for sharing these.

p.s. I could not care less about what camera / lens you used. 😑

[David Drake]

Thanks Mike. I did feel that I had a little visit with you. I appreciate you describing the feel of the air, I felt I was really there for a moment. And you didn’t even tell us which camera you used ;)
David Drake

[John Miller]

What a great story about your walk up the hill with some nice pictures to go along with it.

I remember when the great Yellow Father ruled the shelves at the local photo store. What a pity those times are gone.

Anyway thanks for sharing!

[Reg Feuz]

Liked the Gothic Revival house shot with the cross and human-like shadow. Spooky eh?

[Yonatan Katznelson]

That looks like a lovely walk. Walking is how I get most of my exercise these days too.

And there is nothing wrong with taking bird pictures with a `short' lens (in my opinion, but what do I know).

[sebastian]

equivalents ... wasn't that Minor White?

[Richard Tugwell]

Re: skies. The total absence of vapour trails (contrails) is quite a revelation in our new dystopia. Especially where I live in the UK, close to Heathrow and Gatwick airports

[Gary]

Lovely. Thanks for giving us a look at your neighborhood.

[beuler]

What a nice read. Thank you for sharing.

About the picture that looks good to your eye but fails as a photograph, can we call it mind's eye photo? I get a lot of those.

[Yoram Nevo]

"By the way, this is one of those pictures that I hoped would be something but isn't."
Actually - it is !

[Yoram Nevo]

"skies generally are not good subjects for photographs"
Wrong again :-)

[Guy Perkins]

I really enjoyed going on that walk with you, thank you. These are the sort of photos I have been taking over our lockdown in the UK, together with countless small domestic images. None of them are great or worthy photos, but somehow they mean a great deal to me. Taking photos has certainly helped me so much during this time.

[Simon Taylor]

It was relaxing despite all those troubles. Surfed on to your site by a circuitous route, namely looking for information on whether my father in law’s 50mm f 1.4 Pentax Talkumar lens would be good for astrophotography. One link led to another and here I am.Great photos and a civilised stroll; thank you.

[Matt O'Brien]

Super.....

[Tex Andrews]

"...and skies generally are not good subjects for photographs, something Stieglitz taught me with his snooty "Equivalents," all of which are not-very-good pictures."

Hoo-boy! That's a lulu! Tell you what though: I love these casual shots of yours on your blog. Generally, I couldn't care less about snaps like this. Somehow, here, they are very evocative, and it seems like they possess a hint of melancholic spice.

[Gaspar Heurtley]

About your picture that you “hoped would be something but isn't”, in that famous 1962 interview with Francois Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock tells a lovely story about a man who has writter’s block.
Night after night he dreams amazing stories but he wakes up in the morning and gets frustrated because he can’t remember them. He knows they were great novels, but he simply can’t remember.
One night before going to bed he leaves a tiny notepad on his nightstand, so he wakes up in the middle of the night and writes what he just dreamed.
The next morning, instead of trying to remember, he goes to straight to the notepad.
It simply says “a man falls in love with a woman”.

[I took courses in college from Jay Parini, who has gone on to be quite an accomplished author. He also wanted to record his nighttime epiphanies, so he too employed a pad of paper and pen by his bedside. What he found was that few of his supposedly profound nighttime thoughts translated to daytime. He finally gave up the practice when he woke up to find the following scribbled on his mid-night note pad: "it's cold in here." --Mike]

[Bob johnston]

I really enjoyed your walk Mike. "Skies generally don't make good photographs". I beg to differ. In any case I don't think I have ever seen clouds quite like those in britain, so fascinating to see.

[Michael J. Perini]

Nice walk, and nice pictures. I am a big fan of simple documentary pictures of one's life. It is one of the ways photographs can make your life more enjoyable. Simple pictures can help evoke vivid and pleasant memories of life's mundane and tiny adventures. Like the crisp evening air and the vivid greens of your walk.
I find them almost therapeutic, a place to 'go' , relax , and remember.
Over time they can take on considerably more personal value.
I built my current home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania 35 years ago.
I purchased a few acres of what had been slightly hilly farmland at the top of a hill. There was not a single stick on the property save the row of osage orange trees along the road at the back of the property.
Today it is a forrest of full sized trees, clearings and other mostly native landscaping. Every one sited by us, and most of them planted with our own hands. Having a document of that progress is now a treasure.
So good work on the walk, I could almost smell the air.
Thanks

[Richard Nugent]

Nice interlude, Mike. Timely, considering what is happening in many urban areas.

That cloud formation: its unusual and I think only common in the Northeast? (I grew up near Boston). I cannot remember seeing it during my forty years living in the Southeast. If one is going to photograph clouds, the rare/unusual formations are worth the effort.

Stay well and keep walking.

[James]

A nice post Mike!
It's a bit like hearing from an old friend, which I guess you are although we haven't yet met.

[JimF]

Nice day. Thanks for taking us along.

[Dillan]

This was enjoyable, Mike. Please continue in "picture-taking mode." You live in a beautiful and historic region.

[David Francis]

"I often take pictures of the sky just for the joy of it."
I do too - and trees, and frost patterns. I rarely get anything that recreates the impression of what I saw, except for frost patterns. With these, the camera can reveal intricate designs and fascinating abstracts resulting from the interplay of form, colour, and light - things you don't usually see with the naked eye.
Couldn't agree more about Stieglitz's Equivalents. They are very ordinary images with little impact on their own. Only verbiage and the photographer's pre-existing reputation has raised them to the level of "art."

[MikeR]

I've given up on the idea that I'll take such and such camera and lens out with me and "make art." It has never worked for me. What has worked in the occasional stumble onto a picture I'd like to work on. Those I then print and frame. There are very few.

I think it was in the Phillips, I wandered into the narrow gallery containing a set of Stieglitz "Equivalents." Just clouds, and nothing noteworthy about them. Meh. I said to my wife as we left, "Stieglitz sucks."

Knees hurt going downhill? Sounds what I had, before total knee replacement. I can sympathize.

[Dave_lumb]

Night time note pads are no good. Cassette recorders are the thing. Ask Keef.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/05/the-technology-that-captured-the-greatest-rock-song-ever-recorded/393254/

[Dale]

Thank you for all the donations you have publicly announced you are giving to. One thing that has bothered me since your 5/27/20 post titled, "And Six Things I Did Right" quoting from your posting:

"That was where I got one of my favorite compliments—the late shift entrance guard at the Jefferson Annex was a big friendly black guy who I often chatted with on the way out."

Why must you identify the guard as a "black guy," and not just a guy? The context of your sentence does not require a race or a cultural identification unless entrance guards need to be identified as being black. This is racism.

[No it isn't. It's accuracy. He was a black guy. What, do you think there's something wrong with being black? How about friendly? I identified him as friendly, didn't I? I said he was big. Would that tag me as someone who's bigoted about height? Writers describe as a way of "conjuring," as Stephen King puts it...you paint a picture for the reader, so the reader can imagine herself there. You can't give every detail, so you give some of them. I said he was a guy, too. How dare I? I guess that makes me sexist. --Mike]

[Kenneth Brayton]

About your silo picture, the dog is looking out of the frame. This does have good potential, just needs a bit of TLC. I did like going through the walk with you. Each photo had a little more meaning as a result.

[Jim Arthur]

Some scenes are so big and so alive and so dramatic that the picture will almost always pale in comparison. For those moments, a good picture can at best serve to repaint a memory in our mind’s eye. Perhaps we don’t need a descriptor for the photo that missed the mark but instead a word for the magnificence of those life moments when all our senses are piqued.

[Stephen Scharf]

Regardiing the doggie in the farm silo photo: that is what Luminosity Masking in Capture One 20 is for.

[Stan Greenberg]

Shalom Mike,
I recently upgraded some Photoshop plug-ins and was looking for something to practice on.

So I took 2 of your recent blog pictures and tried "to enhance" them.

Had the hardest time with the dog-and-silos photo. Wasn't sure what you intended to emphasize, so made 3 different versions.

Yes, I know WordPress jpg's are greatly reduced in size and quality, but this was just an exercise.

Stan Greenberg, Kibbutz Kabri, Western Galilee, Israel

PS IMHO your columns are one of the most valuable photography assets on the Internet. Have recently begun to donate via Patreon. Kiddo you don't have anything to regret about your career choice - just keep the columns coming.

[Stan Greenberg]

Sorry forgot to include a link to the "enhanced" photos. Here it is:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/drqwi6u4is8jiw6/AACGDE8y64DuUIIN0RerpEeja?dl=0