Tag: Connecticut

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All Things Connecticut Featured New Print Releases The American Northeast

Nor’easter on the Hollenbeck

Hollenbeck Bend (Hollenbeck River, Canaan, Connecticut)
“Hollenbeck Beck”
Hollenbeck River, Canaan, Connecticut

The Hollenbeck River winds lazily through peaceful woodlands clothed in the heavy snow left by a vicious March Nor’easter.

Historians and linguists have debated the origin of the term “Nor’easter” for decades. All can agree that Nor’easters are storms which usually arise during winter and rake the Eastern seaboard with winds gusting from the northeast. But what can be said about the peculiar spelling of this term?

“Nor’easter” may seem, at face value, to be a phonetic spelling of “Northeaster” as it would be spoken with some New England accent. Indeed, the implication is that this spelling is an authentic product of New England society. But it is the omission of ‘r’ sounds that really characterizes coastal accents of Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island, so that doesn’t quite add up.

Surprisingly, research suggests that this bizarre spelling predates New England altogether, with “noreast” being found in English texts dating back as far as the late 1500s!

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All Things Connecticut Featured New Print Releases The American Northeast

Serenity on Union Pond

Day's End at Old Union Millpond (Union Pond, Manchester, Connecticut)
“Day’s End at Old Union Millpond”
Union Pond, Manchester, Connecticut

As the sun sinks low on the horizon during a balmy October evening, Union Pond grows hushed and geese drift about upon scintillant reflections.

In his 1830 book, Connecticut Historical Collections, author J. W. Barber said of Manchester that the “first cotton mill … successfully put in operation in Connecticut, was erected within the present limits of this town in 1794, and owned by Messrs. Samuel Pitkin & Co.” By the 1860s, the millworks had been renamed the Union Manufacturing Company and the operation of its machinery demanded an ever greater volume of waterpower. That meant damming the Hockanum River in 1866, creating a millpond that we know today as Union Pond, after the company it once served.

The mill was shuttered by the turn of the century and Union Pond was repurposed in 1901 to feed a hydropower plant nearby. In time, though, even that endeavor grew obsolete with the rise of the modern power grid. What we’re left with today is a Union Pond which has been appointed to a more relaxed post: serving as the centerpiece of a scenic park in what has now become the Union Village Historic District.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Hammonasset Winter… or Summer?

Winchester Lately (Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, Connecticut)
“Winchester Lately”
Hammonasset Beach State Park, Madison, Connecticut

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s hard to beat shooting the Connecticut coast during wintertime. Many of the coastal elements that I’m interested in working with as a landscape photographer are unchanged whether it’s 35° F or 85° F, whether I’m shooting in short sleeves or bundled beneath three layers. There’s one big difference, though: when those cold winds are blowing I usually have the place to myself… an opportunity which is rare at most of Connecticut’s popular state park seashores during warmer weather!

I produced this piece, “Winchester Lately”, just this past weekend during a cold January morning. But let’s face it: if I told you this had been taken in August, you’d have no reason believe otherwise, right?

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Seeking Bunnell’s Falls

Old Hotchkiss Riverscape (Upper Burlington Falls, Burlington, Connecticut)
“Old Hotchkiss Riverscape”
Upper Burlington Falls on Bunnell Brook, Burlington, Connecticut

Bunnell Brook crashes over a waterfall in the distance, roiling itself into a whitewater frenzy and charging forth through the verdant woodlands in the hills of Burlington.

Many of Connecticut’s waterfalls were named long ago when they were at the heart of streamside mills driven by waterwheels or turbines. Some folks may have appreciated the natural beauty back then, but most probably knew them as busy places of industry where goods were churned out and livings were made. And in some cases, once those mills vanished and the waterfalls ceased to be places where livelihoods were earned, the names and stories behind each could become quite jumbled and obscure in just a generation or two.

Take the case of Bunnell Brook in Burlington, where there are two distinct waterfalls found about 600 feet apart. We know that one of the two waterfalls was historically called “Bunnell’s Falls”, but which one? An 1895 publication suggests it was the lower falls, though more recent publications tend to apply that name to the upper falls (which are seen in this piece). I don’t know who’s right, but in the meantime, I’ll just stick to Upper and Lower Burlington Falls.

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All Things Connecticut Featured New Print Releases The American Northeast

Southford Falls, Autumn Morning

An Eightmile Rhapsody (Southford Falls State Park, Southbury, Connecticut)
“An Eightmile Rhapsody”
Eightmile Brook at Southford Falls State Park, Southbury, Connecticut

Cold shadows and the warmth of dawn coalesce at Southford Falls, where Eightmile Brook leaps from an old mill pond and stages a vigorous charge through the dark gorge below.

Although I produced this image back in late October of 2017, just as autumn colors were reaching their modest peak last year, it wasn’t until yesterday evening that I managed to process all of my work from that shoot. That’s pretty typical of my autumn imagery each year, the bulk of which tends to be processed only after colder weather takes hold. Why such a long turnaround? Well, the colorful stretch of autumn that we all hold dear generally spans just 5 or 6 weeks; it’s gone just as fast as it arrives, so I need to work quickly. That leaves scant time for sitting in front of a computer tweaking development controls.

I generally dedicate my time during autumn almost exclusively to field work right up until “stick season” sets in. Not familiar with “stick season”? It’s basically the second half of autumn -after the trees have lost their leaves but before winter snows have arrived- when the entire landscape looks like a mess of bare sticks reaching into the sky.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

The Lights at West Hartford

Christmas Lights at West Hartford, 2017 (Christmas Tree at West Hartford Town Hall, West Hartford, Connecticut)
“Christmas Lights at West Hartford, 2017”
Christmas Tree at West Hartford Town Hall, West Hartford, Connecticut

A little bit of Christmas spirit seems in order this weekend and the fine tree out front of West Hartford’s Town Hall certainly does the trick. Though this particular piece prompts me to draw attention to an element of some landscapes that perhaps the casual observer rarely notices.

Power lines tend to be strung up without any regard to how they impact aesthetics. I get it; it’s about practicality and we all need electricity and cable. But sometimes you get a scene like this where visual appeal isn’t marred by a thousand draped wires and it offers insight into why it might be useful to put a bit of extra thought into exactly where we hang lines. I’ve tussled with a number of different landscapes across Connecticut that are negatively impacted by the presence of a poorly-positioned power line. Oftentimes the aesthetics could’ve been preserved if the line had simply been run on the other side of the road, for example.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Bradley Point and a Beat Hero

Savin Dawning (Bradley Point Park, West Haven, Connecticut)
“Savin Dawning”
Bradley Point Park, West Haven, Connecticut

Beach grasses are deathly still with snow at their stems and frigid winter air creeping forth from Long Island Sound. But the incendiary spectacle upon the horizon, where the sun is just beginning to shine forth through the clouds, offers at least the prospect of some warmth come late morning.

Connecticut’s municipal beaches are usually not exceptionally well-known in the state outside of their host town or county, but owing to hundreds of years of recorded history along the coast, almost all of them were the backdrop for at least a couple interesting stories.

Southwest Ledge from Afar (Southwest Ledge Light, New Haven, Connecticut)
“Southwest Ledge from Afar”
Southwest Ledge Lighthouse as seen from the shores of Bradley Point Park, New Haven, Connecticut

Bradley Point, for example, was for a short time the home of famous Beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac. His father had moved the family from Massachusetts to West Haven, Connecticut after securing work. Though their first dwelling in the city proved deplorably unfit, they finally settled on renting a cottage on the West Haven shoreline at Bradley Point. Biographer Paul Maher says of Kerouac’s time there that “he swam in the Sound, labored over his writings, and prepared for his sophomore year of college while his mother worked hard to make her new house a home.”

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Eightmile Crossing

Eightmile Crossing (Covered Bridge at Southford Falls State Park, Southbury & Oxford, Connecticut)
“Eightmile Crossing”
Covered bridge at Southford Falls State Park, Southbury & Oxford, Connecticut

Even as woodlands along Eightmile Brook grow increasingly bare by late October, the river gorge remains lively as ever with exuberant cascades singing away in the shadow of a covered bridge above.

Although dozens of covered bridges could be found throughout Connecticut during the 19th-century, most have long since been lost to floods, fires, wear and tear and changing technology that had rendered the venerable timber bridges largely obsolete more than a century ago. Only three covered bridges built before 1900 are left in Connecticut these days, each of which has become a beloved icon in its host town. But while historical covered bridges may be few and far between in Connecticut, there’s also a handful of covered bridges dotting the state which were built later, from the 1950s and onward.

Unlike their antique forebears, these relatively new covered bridges were never really intended to be trafficked crossings, but rather carefully crafted replicas that recall New England’s early days. Take the covered bridge in “Eightmile Crossing”, for example: although it uses the authentic Burr Arch truss design patented in 1817, it wasn’t actually built over Southford Falls until 1972.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

A Golden View of the Silver City

Daybreak at Chauncey Cliffs (Chauncey Peak, Giuffrida Park, Meriden, Connecticut)
“Daybreak at Chauncey Cliffs”
Chauncey Peak at Giuffrida Park, Meriden, Connecticut

Gusting winds rock a cluster of cedars dauntlessly perched atop an ancient traprock cliff in the Metacomet Range. In the valley below, the outskirts of Meriden are eased from their twilight slumber as dawn banishes a blanket of morning fog.

Originally known as Meriden Farm when it was settled by hard-scrabble pioneers from the Connecticut Colony in the mid-1600s, Meriden has managed over the intervening centuries to swell from a remote, agrarian outpost to a city of more than 60,000. Industry flourished there during the Gilded Age and beyond, especially in the form of silver manufacturing, earning Meriden the nickname “Silver City”. The handle persists to this day, even long after the old factories were shuttered.

But if The Silver City isn’t really notable for its silver any longer, it’s certainly a veritable gold mine of municipal parkland. Almost 18% of Meriden’s landscape is contained within city parks and, as the literature explains, “no other city in New England can match that percentage!” Central among those parks are Meriden’s traprock ridges, characterized by precipitous cliffs which tower over the surrounding valleys and dominate the city’s horizon. I produced “Daybreak at Chauncey Cliffs” from the summit of the 700-foot Chauncey Peak which rises from woodlands in the northeastern reaches of the city.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

A Serpent Awakened

A Serpent Awakened (Gorge Cascade Falls, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut)
“A Serpent Awakened”
Gorge Cascade Falls, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut

In the autumn forests of Hamden along the flank of the Sleeping Giant hills, a cascading stream boils fiercely with whitewater as it surges around a bend at the bottom of a leaf-scattered gorge.

When a client asked me last year about Gorge Cascade Falls, a mingling of waterfalls and cascades along a nameless brook at Sleeping Giant State Park, I gave my honest answer: Sleeping Giant is an incredible state park for its extensive trails and mountaintop vistas, but it’s just not a waterfall destination.

I still stand by that assessment, as the stream is starved for water most of the year and the “falls” can nearly dry up during summertime droughts. But in those rare cases when, for example, an October Nor’easter dumps 5 inches of rain in a day, even this little kitten of a waterfall enjoys a few days of roaring like a lion.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Wigwam Blue

Wigwam Blue (Wigwam Reservoir, Thomaston, Connecticut)
“Wigwam Blue”
Wigwam Reservoir, Thomaston, Connecticut

A grove of pines stand shrouded with morning mist on the tranquil shores of Wigwam Reservoir, their towering trunks inverted in a mirror-like reflection upon the still water below.

While the Greater Hartford region and its thirst for water spawned such magnificent creations as the Barkhamsted Reservoir, several other cities elsewhere in Connecticut were similarly tasked around the turn of the 19th century with determining how they would bring sufficient water to their burgeoning populations. Waterbury, for example, is supplied by a system of five generous reservoirs, the first of which was Wigwam Reservoir up north in Thomaston on a tributary of the Naugatuck River.

Construction of Wigwam Reservoir began in 1893 with the clearing of land and preliminary dam work. A pipeline measuring three feet in diameter was routed about 10 miles to Waterbury the next year and, by 1896, water was flowing. It wasn’t until 1901 that the dam was finally built up to its full height, inundating the hundred-acre basin of Wigwam Reservoir with more than 700 million gallons of water.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Remembering Alice

Woodland Remembrance (Alice Newton Street Memorial Park, Woodbridge, Connecticut)
“Woodland Remembrance”
Alice Newton Street Memorial Park, Woodbridge, Connecticut

In my newly-released piece, “Woodland Remembrance”, sunlight pierces the forest canopy in the heart of Woodbridge, transforming the understory into a blissfully verdant landscape fit for a fairytale.

Although Connecticut began building its state park system in the mid-1910s and town-owned parks had existed far earlier, nature preserves owned for the public good outside the realm of government were generally a slightly later phenomenon.

The Woodbridge Park Association, operating independently of Woodbridge’s town government, was among the earliest organizations in Connecticut to acquire and manage preserved land on a not-for-profit basis. The Association got its start back in 1928 when it was founded in order to fulfill the vision of philanphropist Newton Street who had decided to forever preserve over 80 acres of land in memory of his mother, Alice Street. The result, featured in this latest piece of mine, was the Alice Newton Street Memorial Park.

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