WARREN CONNECTICUT – I’m suffering under the curse of a long New England autumn. That’s right, I said curse. Since September 25 I’ve posted no fewer than ten images where the main subject is New England autumn. That’s a lot of yellow and orange foliage of really dubious artistic merit. It’s not like I can discern a development of a theme – the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Autumn is a bit like a sunset: it comes around periodically for all to see. It’s unlikely that I’m going to have a deep insight, a personal epiphany or add to the richness of human knowledge and experience by photographing brightly colored leaves. I promise not to do this any more, at least not without more of a theme and purpose. But . . . what I happen to have for October 23 are images of . . . fall foliage. Here you go with number 11:
Yup. It\’s Fall Foliage.
Leica M9 with 90mm Elmarit lens.
On this date one year ago i was shooting in infrared on a dull, rainy day in Oregon: October 23, 2009
LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT – This from a fundraiser for the Litchfield Community Center. Litchfield Community Center. I changed my mind on the image that I originally posted here. On July 23 I replaced it with the following image – I’ve included the original posting in a comment.
Bruce
NEW MILFORD CONNECTICUT – I went to Clamps, a roadside burger stand on route 202, for a burger for lunch, arriving just before the 2:00 PM closing, in time to place an order. By the time that I got my wits together to reach for camera the closed sign had gone up.
Clamps is a dying breed: a roadside hamburger stand that’s seasonal, has limited hours and isn’t part of a chain. The following is from Roadfood: “The business card of Clamp’s Hamburger stand says, NO SIGN, NO ADDRESS, NO PHONE, JUST GOOD FOOD. In fact, there is a sign about the size of a license plate on the side of the wood-frame hut: “Clamp’s Est. 1939.” Despite the lack of a billboard and a street address, you will have no trouble finding this place because there are cars and people crowded around any time it’s open … which is late April to early September every day from 11am to 2pm and from 5pm to 8pm.
“Edwin and Sylvia Clamp started the business sixty-six years ago, and now their great-nephew, Tom Mendell, is the boss. Tom told us that since 1939 Clamp’s has never advertised and never had a phone (and therefore was never in the phone book), and while it did have a prominent sign, when the sign blew down in a windstorm back in the 1960s, it was not replaced.”
NEW PRESTON, CONNECTICUT – There are two Congregational Church buildings in New Preston. For most of the year the congregation meets in a lovely classical New England structure on a hill near the center of the village, which I photographed at sunrise on November 7, 2009. Here’s a link: New Preston Church During the summer months the congregation meets in a stone building a few miles away.
New Preston Stone Church
Taken with a Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron Asph. lens. Three frames stitched with Autopano Pro. Perspective touched up in Photoshop.
SHARON, CONNECTICUT – Back to shooting Litchfield County Churches on Easter Sunday. This is Christ Episcopal Church in Sharon. According to the Church’s history “In April, 1755, the town of Sharon granted the members of the Church of England permission to erect their first church. The congregation rapidly increased and outgrew their church by 1764 when a new “really neat and beautiful” church was built. During the Revolutionary War, the building was desecrated when it was used for military purposes, turned into barracks, and then converted into a stable. In subsequent years, it fell into extreme disrepair and was finally torn down. . . . Circumstances shifted for the Parish in 1809 when the town’s Episcopalians officially organized as a parish and formally established themselves as part of the Protestant Episcopal Church on May 27th. With a clergy and vestry of their own, the members began construction on the existing brick building that was consecrated on November 24, 1819.”
Congregational churches built in he 1820s were most often federal style. See my blog entries for November 21, 22 and 29, 2009. The gothic revival came later to the Congregational churches. Interestingly the Episcopalians built gothic revival structures from the late 1700s onward. See my entries for January 2 and February 14, 2010.
MORRIS, CONNECTICUT – This is the old Town Hall of Morris Connecticut, a tiny town a few minutes drive from us. This building now serves as the town’s Historical Society.
LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT – Back to Litchfield to photograph the First Congregational Church at sunrise. The congregation first met in 1721. The story of the building is a bit complex. Here’s a quote from “Historic Buildings of Connecticut”:
“Litchfield’s first meeting house was built on the Green in 1723, the second in 1761 and the third in 1829. In 1873, a fourth church, in the High Victorian Gothic style, was built and the 1829 Federal-style structure, with its steeple removed as was typically done with deconsecrated churches, was moved around the corner. In the coming years it would serve as a community center and theater, known as Amory Hall or Colonial Hall. In the early twentieth century, tastes had shifted back from favoring the Gothic to an interest in the Colonial Revival. In 1929, the Gothic church was demolished and the 1828 church returned to its original site on Torrington Road and restored, complete with a new steeple (1929-30). Reconsecrated, it continues today as the First Congregational Church of Litchfield.”
I’ve taken the liberty of presenting this image in both color and black and white. The black and white version demonstrates the power of abstraction of this medium.
This images was captured with a Leica M9 digital camera, and a fifty-year old Leitz lens, a 50mm dual range Summicron modified to mount on the M9. The finished image was stitched together from four overlapping frames, which provides resolution similar to a medium format digital camera or 4×5 film.
The time on the clock on the steeple could either be an hour slow or perpetually 6:30 – it’s actually the latter.
First Congregational Church Litchfield Connecticut
