When I was a kid, going to the city took two hours and included a stop at Boston’s Alewife T station. Alewife was newish back then and felt like a cathedral to the urban experience. Now it is dirty and gross. It is still beautiful though and because of its amazing light makes a great shooting location for portraits or wedding.

Berlin with The Kath.

After a wonderful holiday party at the Town & Country, I awoke to a rumbling in my tummy and a breakfast date with The Kath. We ate downtown where I had amazing eggs benedict and a run-in with some incredible Quebcois design concepts. Ouch!

The Kath took me on an amazing tour of some beautifully rusticated industrial ruins around Berlin, NH. Combined with the river they form a wonderful English landscape garden with various parts of the factory standing in for proper garden follies. I shot neopan with my bessa and there is an intensity to the images that I like but make me reticent to share. In addition, I have been asking myself with these images, do I remove the dust and correct them or is the intensity and otherworldliness of the imperfect image really what I’m trying to say?

I love trees.

As luck would have it, the college town I had long ago written off as being ugly and ill-landscaped is actually full of some incredible trees. Some of the trees have even been placed in beautiful locations.

So you just bought a wide angle camera and now what to do with it?

Follow Ken Rockwell’s advice and get close. With a very wide angle lens, a few feet is like a few miles.

Omg, the ocean is like 50 miles away.

You won’t believe how close I am to this really awful smelling pool of water seen below. Too close. But due to the nature of the 15mm lens, it almost looks like I’m not close enough.

And get down. The image below is not an epic cave or other gigantic form but rather two rocks about 24 inches tall. I had to lay down on a bunch of rocks to get this shot. It was fun but I found the barnacles a little too exfoliating.

Watch out for your knee, fingers, etc. Part of the joy of going wide is that it is very easy to put yourself in the photo even if you don’t want to be in it.

However, on the other hand this pretty awesome.

People are interesting in wide angle. You have to be careful where a person is within the frame or their body will distorted and grotesque.

My sister says she looks like an alien in this picture.

However, as seen bellow, you can very easily use a person to show scale.

Width a very wide angle lens you can also use a much slower shutter speed without having to worry about camera shake. You can usually go to 1/(focal length) so with my Heliar 15mm I’m safe to shoot at 1/15. This is pretty awesome because it allows you to blur water without using a tripod.

I tried my darndest to make my own super hip special effects film. I took a roll of Fuji Superia into my basement and briefly shined a cool multi colored light onto it. Then I exposed it. In the end, the results were not very hot, but I think I did a good job.

Love it.

I’m not a fan of the Northern Pass which is a project to drag a gigantic power line through the most beautiful and poorest part of New Hampshire. The idea is that by targeting an area with little resources other than beauty, that the region won’t fight back. I don’t think they knew what they were up against.

I’m working on an anti-northern pass project that has me photographing beautiful parts of the White Mountains with either imaginary power lines or electrical discharges superimposed on the landscape. Here are two from what will probably be an awesome series.

because you can really see the ice cave.

I should have walked there but it was a very unsafe thing to do at that moment. I also think I was craving donuts.

However.

This is Rebecca and it is hard to imagine a woman more beautiful.

Ok…

Maybe, Margot.