Mt Tom: A hike at night…

Last night after we saw how the moon was making its appearance. Big, orange, and bright, we had to find a high altitude place to photograph it from. Mt. Tom was a seemingly good choice. The next question, where to go to get to the highest point. We parked and walked up the rd that leads from the Mt. Tom Reservation area off of RT 5. It was a fun walk. It took about 45 minutes till we made it to the tower. Here are the photos from up there.

This is the town of Easthampton, Ma being lit up by the city lights and the cars passing through. This was a very long exposure, roughly 8 minutes in duration. 

The next two photographs are about 2.5 minutes long in terms of exposures. That is 2.5 minutes of standing still while the camera was recording the image.

 

30 Second exposure with a flash light projecting light.

Rain, Lightning, Down Trees and more…

While looking at a building on the Canal walk last evening, we saw the storm come into the city. 2 hours later, the storms passing left the city covered in trees, debris, and a few cars driving through the trees. For some reason, the operates of the vehicles were not paying full attention as they were ramming through the trees in the road. One person with a very low car managed to go through the top half of a tree that came down on High st. Subsequently their blatant disregard for their safety had them pulled over by Holyoke’s finest.

This tree came down on High st.

 

For whatever reason, this man decided to stand there against the wind getting soaked by the water pouring down instead of seeking shelter.

 

This tree collapsed over near Nontuck st.

Pulling on to my street in Chicopee, on my way home, this is the scene we came across. This is a former neighbors house, which is/was for sale. I think the tree is going to now affect the asking price, just a smidge.

This past Sunday I was given a tour of a very interesting building. It gave me the chance to make some rather unique photographs.

 

Photographs and a story

On Sunday I met up with friend and fellow shooter Bob G. You might remember the article I wrote a few weeks back about Bob’s photographs from Parson Paper. While giving Bob a few quick lessons and some tips about photography we stumbled into local business owner. He was gracious enough to give us an underbelly tour of very essence of what comprised Holyoke’s once well know mode of production. We spent the better part of two hours talking, walking, and making photographs of some of the most private parts of Holyoke’s rich history. We were pretty blessed to get into the locations we were in. I learned quite a bit more about the vast history and the importance Holyoke used to serve. Holyoke is growing again, in more ways than one. And, in more ways than completely visible to the average person. While my photographs are completely subjective and more artistic in nature, you can still get a sense of what we were seeing.

One thing we did learn of, there is a huge market for a certain type of brick. A common brick that was used and stuffed on the inside of the walls of a lot of the buildings in Holyoke. The term for these bricks are called, clinkers. They are miss shaped, deformed, warped, out of character bricks that still retain their strength and can very much be used in constructing buildings. The Halfway House, a local bar, in South Hadley is made out of this type of brick. Very interesting to know. It kind of makes me want to buy enough of these bricks to build an un-aesthetically pleasing house.

Take notice how the brick has separated from the rest of the wall.

These pipes make for a great composition. The quality of light is what drew me towards them. Plus the contrast with the dark background.

This is very interesting. These are 120 Film negatives hanging in an apt window.

 

These two photographs of the chair are my favorite. The way they are just posing in the room and how the light is coming in from one broken window really pulled this composition together.

These two photographs area visual metaphore and poem all in one composition. The stairs leading towards and empty exit.

FIN