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:
