Tag: sunset

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All Things Connecticut Featured New Print Releases The American Northeast

Have a Seat Beside the Housatonic

I Dreamt of the Housatonic (West Cornwall Covered Bridge, Cornwall, Connecticut)
“I Dreamt of the Housatonic”
West Cornwall Covered Bridge over the Housatonic River, Cornwall, Connecticut
© 2018 J. G. Coleman

When I’m out shooting in the field, I don’t always know for certain how well a given image is going to “work” once I get it back home and start developing it and reflecting upon how well it does or doesn’t fulfill my creative vision. There are times when I find myself in beautiful environments which simply prove too difficult to commit to a two-dimensional composition in a way that’s faithful to my creative expectations. After all, there are all sorts of sensory experiences that contribute to our experience in the outdoors: birds chirping, changing light, clouds drifting overhead, the sound of breeze rushing through the forest canopy, maybe a brisk autumn chill in the early morning or the impressive quietude during a snowfall. Now, there are techniques that can be leveraged to suggest some these qualities in a purely visual, flat image, but there’s no way to truly reproduce them. And sometimes, when those supporting elements are lost, the visual impression that remains just doesn’t quite convey what I’d hoped it would.

But then again, there are also some outings during which everything comes together beautifully and I know the moment I release the shutter that the imagery I’m producing resonates decisively with my creative vision. “I Dreamt of the Housatonic”, my latest release which I produced last autumn, was created under just those sort of circumstances. When I came by this weathered bench overlooking the Housatonic River and West Cornwall Covered Bridge with soft morning light imparting a gentle glow, it immediately struck me as a golden opportunity.

Having meditated over what drew me so strongly to the scene, it’s tough to pin down any one facet. The image, to me, has a timeless feel that is largely removed from immediate associations with modern life. No cars, no houses with satellite dishes, no joggers in Under Armor, no power lines lazily draped across the river. Putting aside the fact that it’s clearly a modern color photograph, the scene could just as easily have looked almost identical to an observer in 1900 as it did in 2017 (okay, okay… maybe metal road signs weren’t as common back then, but you get my point). And to my sensibilities, that timeless quality also contributes to a somewhat dream-like feel: as if we might find ourselves whisked away in a blissful dream to this quiet bench in the countryside, enjoying the amaranthine solitude of a peaceful, rustic riverscape.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “I Dreamt of the Housatonic” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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Categories
All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Greylock’s Beacon to the Fallen

Faithful Even Unto Death (Veterans War Memorial Tower atop Mount Greylock, Adams, Massachusetts)
“Faithful Even Unto Death”
Veterans War Memorial Tower atop Mount Greylock, Adams, Massachusetts

Tucked away in the far northwestern corner of Massachusetts, Mount Greylock State Reservation deserves special acclaim. For one thing, the park encompasses nearly 20 square miles of territory in Berkshire County, ranking it among the largest parks in Southern New England. And for that matter, Mount Greylock itself is the highest mountaintop in Massachusetts at 3,489 feet. Visitors can take in views of five states from its summit or hike any of the 70 miles of trails that weave up and around the mountain slopes. Everything about this park exists on a much larger scale than what we’re generally accustomed to in New England’s relatively crowded southern states.

Greylock Summit (Veterans War Memorial Tower atop Mount Greylock, Adams, Massachusetts)
“Greylock Summit”
Veterans War Memorial Tower atop Mount Greylock, Adams, Massachusetts

I could go on and on about Mount Greylock in general, but my focus in introducing my piece, “Faithful Even Unto Death”, is the Veterans War Memorial which stands atop the mountain summit. Built in 1933 to honor the soldiers of World War I, the beautiful 93-foot granite tower looks like some ancient, mythologized lighthouse that you might awe over in a history book. Indeed, just like a maritime lighthouse, a large globe at the monument’s peak glows throughout the night and is said to be visible from the surrounding hills up to 70 miles away. And for the curious minds out there, the name of my image is excerpted from an inscription on one of the memorial plaques which says of the fallen soldiers that “they were faithful even unto death”.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Faithful Even Unto Death” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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Categories
All Things Connecticut Featured New Print Releases The American Northeast

Bristol’s Forgotten Ice Pond

Becalming Birge Pond (Hoppers Birge Pond Nature Preserve, Bristol, Connecticut)
“Becalming Birge Pond”
Hoppers Birge Pond Nature Preserve, Bristol, Connecticut

In my piece, “Becalming Birge Pond”, colors streak across a sunset sky over Central Connecticut as the first day of summer comes to a close on the mirror-like waters of Birge Pond.

Centuries-old ponds and waterfalls that once powered streamside mills are quite prevalent in my work, especially because most have long-since been retired from serving industrial purposes and blossomed into places of natural beauty. Birge Pond may have had similar origins and enjoys a similar golden era in its “retirement”, but its final stint of commercial use in the early 1900s was of a sort that has largely been forgotten in modern times. Consider that, prior to electric refrigerators becoming a widespread appliance, cooling food or drink during the warmer months of the year meant storing it in an insulated icebox beside a brick of ice. But if there weren’t refrigerators in homes, and if ice couldn’t be produced using industrial freezers, then how in the world did folks find ice for their iceboxes in the middle of the summer?

Birge Pond was one of many long-standing “ice ponds” across Connecticut which, once naturally frozen in the wintertime, would be harvested of its ice. The large, quarried ice blocks would then be tucked away in spacious barns to be stored and eventually sold throughout the coming year. Proper ventilation and generous packings of hay for insulation were actually so effective that some ice houses, such as the Southern New England Ice House that operated on Birge Pond, could reportedly keep ice for up to a couple years after harvest!

The industry of harvesting and selling ice was so essential and so ubiquitous in those earlier days that it probably seemed as if it’d be around forever. But as innovators worked through various ways to incorporate refrigerants into early designs of “electric iceboxes”, everything began to change. The Southern New England Ice House on Birge Pond was shuttered in 1933 and torn down shortly afterwards. Refrigerators became commonplace by the 1940s and ice harvesting, a widespread and commonplace industry just a few decades earlier, was relegated to the history books.

Purchase a Fine Art Print or Inquire About Licensing

Click here to visit my landing page for “Becalming Birge Pond” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

Want to See More?

Be sure to check out more of my work from Bristol, Connecticut.