WARREN CONNECTICUT – Our travel from Quito finally ended this morning after an all night flight with a layover in Miami. I managed to keep a lunch date with my son, and I managed to stay awake during the drive to Warren to arrive in time for dinner with some old friends.
Here is the sign for our house that we put out on Rabbit Hill Road after a number of guests were unable to find us. We used the wild turkey theme because . . . well we have a lot of wild turkeys.
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Perennial boarder. We bought our house in Warren in 1987. It was a split level ranch on a cornfield. We’ve added bits and pieces to the landscape over the years – it’s a delight that our efforts finally look like mature landscape.. It would be an exaggeration to say that we’ve had a master plan, but we have pursued a general direction, leaning toward the use of native plants in naturalized settings. We’ve planted one perennial boarder, however, that’s an exception.
Perennial boarder
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Up early for a lovely sunrise. We’ve controlled the underbrush in a wooded area to create a park-like setting. The over-the-top colors are . . . well . . . what it looked like. Image taken with a Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux – three images stitched.
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Well I’m going to have to apologize for this one. I’ve said that I never shoot sunsets. The problem with them is that they happen every day. It’s hard to find an unusual angle or an edgy point of view. What am I going to add to the lore of sunsets?
A few years ago an artist friend painted a trompe-l’œil sky on the ceiling of our living room in Connecticut. We asked for a Tiepolo sky. Instead he painted an El Greco – a gray, brooding sky – because that’s what the sky looks like in Connecticut. Well the May 8 sunset was pretty much a Tiepolo sky – the light was sensational. Shot with a Leica M9 and a 50mm Summilux lens, four exposures stitched together and cropped to a 2×3 aspect ratio. I desaturated the blues in Photoshop – they were over the top. I’ve pasted a copy of Tiepolo’s Allegory of the Planets and Continents for comparison.
Tiepolo sunset
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - Allegory of the Planets and Continents
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Another gray, rainy day. But at the end of the day something amazing happened. Just as the sun set it briefly broke through the clouds. It was as if the landscape had been bathed in a red spotlight – one of those “It’s remarkable to be alive” moments.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – So now it’s really spring. Not much going on here from a photographic standpoint. Flowering trees seem to rob my work of its vitality. I’ve rented a Nikon and a few lenses as an experiment. I don’t care for the “jittery” quality of the out of focus portions of the image.
