Happy Halloween

So in the spirit of Halloween I thought I should post a picture taken from the past week. This was taken around the Clark neighborhood. I have always been intrigued by houses that have signs out on Halloween instructing you to go to the back of the house when the front door is easily accessible. It always kind of creeped me out when I was trick or treating myself which was probably good for the overall Halloween experience. It has been interesting to see how Worcester neighborhoods decorate for Halloween in comparison to the small suburban town I grew up in. I don't know how to explain the difference but it just feels strange. Maybe it's because I'm older now and see it differently. Anyways, your never too old for candy and I'm about to chow down on some so Happy Halloween everybody!

Back From Bermuda II

So I am almost completely caught up from the week I spent in Bermuda with my Ecology class and my internal clock has switched back to college schedule, but the memories of the beautiful water and weather are still fresh in my mind (especially with the cold weather finally approaching). I edited some of the pictures from Bermuda (the few that I was able to take) and I think they came out okay for tourist pictures. I am really glad to have them as a remembrance of the trip but I want to go back so that I can have more time to slow down and take some more artistic, thoughtful photos. There are so many back alleys and incredible overlooks to explore in Bermuda that I feel like I could spend weeks there and not see it all even though it is a fairly small island. The three pictures I have posted here are a few of the better shots I think from the trip. They are definitely touristy and the high ISO that I forgot to set back down are two things that annoy me greatly in these shots, but they are what they are.

The top picture is one that is seen a lot in Bermuda. Especially in the town of Hamilton there are tons of souvenir shops and it seems that the word Bermuda overwhelms every display. In this shot alone I think there are at least nine places that have Bermuda on them. And of course if you turn over everything you find an equally prevalent word on the back: China. This picture drew me in too because of the colors. Everywhere you look in Bermuda there are all these bright colors. All of the houses are painted in different shades of blue, pink, yellow, orange, red, and green. Anywhere else this would look tacky but in Bermuda it makes even ordinary places incredibly bright and beautiful. Such was the case with the bottom picture which was an alley in Hamilton. I was intrigued by the intense blues in the buildings and the blue barrels in the background. Then the fact that there was a random sneaker left in the middle made me take this picture. I have always been kind of interested in alleys because even though they are often dark and unwelcoming they contain so much activity and sometimes the most interesting locations. While I was in Sweden a few years ago, I found a little alley that was very dark and in the afternoon light it seemed a little scary, but within it was an entrance to a restaurant that was in an old wine cellar. It was one of the most memorable places I remember on that trip and I would love to explore for places like that in Bermuda.

The middle picture is just for me to remember how amazing the sunsets are in Bermuda. It was taken the first night we were there from where we were staying. We stayed at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences which is a campus for visiting college students and researchers. I really enjoyed my time there and hope to go back very soon to discover more. I am not able to include my underwater film pictures in this blog post but I had them developed last week and some of them came out pretty good. I got some decent photos of some very colorful fish and coral so hopefully I can upload some of those at some point as well.

Back From Bermuda

Hello everybody!
I have been away from Clark for the last nine days because I was in Bermuda. I was there with my Ecology of Atlantic Shores class so that we could get some hands on experience with marine environments and also to conduct our own research for a semester long project. I really enjoyed my week there, I learned a lot, and I saw some truly incredible things. I will be developing my disposable underwater cameras this week to see what I got for "Jacques Cousteau" pictures. I unfortunately was not able to take as many photos with my digital camera because of time and not leaving it on a beach while snorkeling offshore, but I did get a few that I think I can work with. It also looks like I may have some more junk on the sensor which makes no sense to me and makes me quite aggravated, but I hopefully can edit them out. Anyways, I hope to work on them tomorrow, but in the time being the above picture was shot as we were sadly leaving Bermuda. I love the turquoise water and I will miss the warm weather and water (especially considering today's New England fall freeze). This is more of a snapshot, but I thought I would share a little of the beauty that I saw. Enjoy!

Fall In Central Mass

The temperature is starting to drop, as are the leaves, and that unmistakable smell is in the air that means that it is officially fall and it won't be long until snowflakes start falling. This past weekend I made the annual journey to Doe Orchards in Harvard, Mass with my family to pick the best tasting apples in the world (that is not an understatement). Of course I may be biased because my dad grew up in the house right next the orchard and his childhood friends were the two brothers who now own the orchard. It is so much fun to walk through this orchard with my dad because he knows every rock and path in the whole orchard. As we walk along the paths he points out the place where first base was put to play baseball, the path he and his friends raced their bikes, and the fields where he took his AMC Javelin for a drive (until his friend riding shotgun told him about all the apple tree stumps that hadn't been removed). I have gone to the orchard almost every year since high school so I am now quickly learning all the hidden paths and where the best tasting apples can be found as well.

Taking pictures there this weekend really made me stop and enjoy the place even more. I stopped to see things like the fly sitting defiantly on the dropped apple as if to guard it from me (top picture). I really like the picture of the pumpkins all lined up ready to be picked up and taken to somebody's porch. The picture of the father picking up his son to get the higher apples is one I really enjoyed because it was a very tender moment and had the shot not been in shadow I would like it even more. The shot of the apples hanging down framing the full apple tree in the background is another one that I would not have seen had I not slowed down to shoot and enjoyed the beauty of this place that means so much to my family. I hope to return to the orchard a little later in the fall when the foliage really comes out and since we cut our Christmas trees there I know I will be able to go back when there is a little snow on the ground.

In other news, I will be returning to the car idea and I really like the diptych idea that Annie wrote about so that the differences in the two cars can tell a story. This upcoming week I will be away in Bermuda for a class trip so when I return I should hopefully have some warm tropical pictures to show against the fall shots of New England.

58 Chevys

This week I have started to think more about trying to nail down a subject that I can continue with for awhile. My natural instinct was to go with something that has always interested me and that has increased in the last few years: cars. I have my dad to thank for turning me into the car guy that I am. He too has always had a passion for cars since he grew up in the era of big fins, lots of chrome, hundreds of horses under the hood, and a lifestyle that revolved around who drove what. The OPEC oil embargo and the environmental movement changed that lifestyle and diminished the passion for cars. While this was a good thing due to the increased efficiency or modern cars and much better air to breathe, those cars and that lifestyle is a distinctive era in American history. Some of that passion is coming back as Mustangs, Camaros, Chargers, and Challengers once again (and possibly for the last time) populate the streets. I go to several car shows every year and I think that the car hobby is alive and well. Photographing cars has also long been a passion of mine and so one of my ongoing projects will be to photograph the cars of yesterday and hopefully get pictures of cars that are rusting away in backyards, junkyards, and old Yankee woods as well as freshly restored classics. I feel strongly about the emotions these cars once evoked in their owners and I love to see the "faces" that cars wear as they age.

With that idea in mind, I have included two pictures here of two 1958 Chevys. The black and white image (bottom) is of a very sad, rusting 58 sitting in my next door neighbor's backyard. He once thought he would restore the car and still hopes to do that someday, but in the meantime this car sits forlorn in a leaky shed. I took this picture (in digital) while I was in high school and re shot it (in film) last year for Frank's Intro to Photo class. The top picture is one that I took recently after seeing it in a parking lot. The brightness of the paint and the chrome always draws me in. I love to see how beautiful and how sad these cars can look and I hope this is something that I document for years to come.