There's Something About Living in a Small Village ...

When Audrey and I bought our house over 25 years ago, we were really looking forward to raising a family in a small community. Now we're not quite in a neighborhood, we have to walk through two neighbors' backyards to get into the Village, but nor are we in a big development. We live in a village that has it's beginnings back before the Revolution when it was on one of the major routes between New York and Philadelphia. Up until two years ago it had it's own butcher shop [really more of a small general store, without the cracker barrels, in order to be economically possible in the modern world].

The heart beat of this kind of village is the volunteer first aid squad, the volunteer fire company and the ladies auxiliary that supports them both. We also have our very own Post Office which, since the closing of Chester's Market, has become our social center, if you will. That's where you meet your fellow villagers and where you hear about all the goings on about town. It's really not about gossip [although there is some of that], it's the place you go to connect with everyone; who is dealing with health issues [and more importantly if they're in the hospital and need a visit!], who's a new grandparent, whose kids are back from college, who's in need of "care" packages, etc.

It's also the kind of place where you share your bountiful garden harvest, even if you don't have the chance to drop off the produce at someone's house! ;-)

Ya gotta love it!

Nat

Biff Heins

Several years ago, I started to photograph the people who live and work along the D&R Canal [our pristine part of the state!] and the first person I shot was Biff Heins because he was an artist, I already had a good relationship with him and I really saw him as a sweet man. I think about Biff whenever we are having a spell of beautiful weather, the air about him was always calm and radiant and I find his shop wonderfully picturesque!

He grew up living on the Canal and for many years was restoring antiques in the barn that his father had built right across the street from where he lived. He was also an incredible watercolorist working with the glorious palette of colors along the Canal in all of the seasons

Biff passed away three years ago; he came by our house to rototill our garden [he had a big Troy Built rototiller that he owned with his sister and they had a policy of not loaning equipment to friends for fear it would damage relationships]. He had lunch with us after he did our garden and then went back to his shop to paint. That night he died in his sleep , I'm told, with a wonderous smile on his face. I and many others miss him! He was such a kind man, a talented artist and a true craftsman.

So, when we get this kind of weather, and the colors really begin to sing, I head down Canal Road, put on my "Biff glasses" and just work on photographing some of the beauty that he would always see in this area.


Whether it's a box of old tools sitting outside his shop or all of the various vises and clamps that still hang in his shop.


Or maybe just the rain barrel that still sits outside his shop so that he could water his little vegetable garden.....

Nat

This Can't Be NJ!

Since the day we got back from vacation [naturally!], the weather here has been amazing! Usually we get beautifully clear blue skies about twice a year, immediately after a storm front has moved through the area.

It's been looking and feeling more like Iowa or Montana or one of those other states than it looks or feels like New Jersey. Many years ago when I was still in the photojournalism corner of the profession, I would fantasize about getting a job at the Austin American Statesman because every time I visited a close friend from the Navy down there, the weather was so unbelievable gorgeous! I had forgotten how blue the skies could really be.

I guess because we're the most densely populated state, over the last 20 years or so there has been a concerted effort to retain much of the farmland that originally made New Jersey "The Garden State". One of the recent additions to the preservation of the farm land is the Griggstown Native Grasslands Preserve. The majority of this land used to be a horse farm along the D&R Canal and a number of years ago a developer was trying to buy up the land. The township, in coordination and with the help of the NJ Audubon Society, was able to buy up all 600 acres of the land, annex it to other land that is part of the Ten Mile Run Greenway which in turn is part of the East Coast Greenway and turn it into a native grasslands meadow where wildflowers are blooming and the grasslands species of birds have a place to call home. Rght now the Black-eyed Susans, milkweed and Cone flowers are in bloom and it's just a wonderful place to go filled with trails, birds, rabbits and all sorts of other wildlife.

Nat

A Sense of Humor

Afraid that a photo is not going to be appropriate today ...

I was pruning the azaleas we have along our front walk yesterday and I happened to take a tiny bit of the tip off the middle finger of my left hand with one of the shoots from the plant [ note to self: Don't wear bifocal sunglasses when you're pruning bushes! ]

Nothing major, but I created a real bleeder and my wife took me to the MedEmerge facility for the cleanup. Got this great nurse with a wonderfully twisted sense of humor; my kind; someone who will really play with me with a bit of repartee. Because of all the work I do in the healthcare environment, I run across it alot; these people have to have some way of blowing off the tension when they're up to their asses in alligators and seconds count. I'm picking up on it much more quickly now, usually the body language and part of the first sentense will do it.

So I told her that I was in the Witness Protection Program with the Feds and I was trying to alter my fingerprints. Without skipping a beat, she very discreetly took her name badge off and slipped it in her pocket saying "Thank you, 'Mr. Smith' for that piece of information" .

Nothing like livin' in Joisey! [Did I mention that Tony Soprano, in the guise of James Gandolfini, lives acouple of miles away in my town?]

Nat

Summer is REALLY here ...

When I was in elementary school, I knew that it was REALLY summer right after school closed for the summer and my mom would let me stay up late on a weekday night and I could have Cheerios with blueberries as a late night snack. I mean cereal at NIGHT! With fresh blueberries!

In those days I was drinking multiple glasses of whole milk every day [I was a growing boy after all] and I just loved pouring the milk over the "bluebs" and Cheerios and then covering everything with sugar [what we, in our household, now call "white death"]. The absolute best part of that was saving the last "blueb" to have with lots of sweetened milk at the bottom of the bowl.

Well, now it's Rice Dream instead of whole milk [Which I now think tastes much better] and there's no sugar on top and it's a bitch to save one blueberry to have at the end with just the milk.

But I do now know that it's SUMMER!! I finally had the chance to go out and pick some of our berries yesterday and had my first bowl of Cheerios with "bluebs" last night! AAAaaahhh, the simple pleasures of life!

I think we're going to have an unbelievable crop of berries this year; the rainy month of June and now the hot [FINALLY] summer days to plump 'em up! Anyone interested in buying more shares of General Mills?

Nat

What a wonderful office!

Having visited The Cape Cod Lavender Farm last week while on vacation, we got home and realized that if we were going to harvest our lavender at all, we had to do it right away! My wife decided to harvest all of our lavender over the last few days. I haven’t counted, but we probably have 35 plants on two different berms on our property and in her Fairy Garden right outside her office door.


So now I have 75 bunches of lavender hanging upside down from the beams in my office/gallery space on the second floor of our barn. Damn! Does it smell wonderful! Now she’s looking through eBay to see if she can find women’s hankies to use for making sachets. What an amazing mind she has!

I just hope she won’t be taking it all down too soon!

Nat

Joe McNally Workshop

I've been aware of Joe McNally, an amazing photojournalist for National Geographic, Life, SI and many, many other publications for years and have been following his work and his blog for quiet some time. He also has recently published two GREAT books, The Moment It Clicks and The Hot Shoe Diaries. I’ve been wanting to improve my small, multi-strobe work and he and David Hobby are the only two I know of who are teaching it extensively [at least, that's according to Joe's wife, Anne! ;-) ].

Yesterday was the last day of eight days of this workshop that he’s been doing in the building where he used to have his studio in Dobbs Ferry, NY up on the Hudson River north of NYC. I was late in making the decision to sign up for it so I would only be able to go if someone else dropped out. I believe quite firmly that there are no coincidences in the world and if I was intended to go, it would happen. That's a corollary to my belief that in many ways, my creativity is merely a channel for the Muses who surround me; I can't "control" my photography, or what happens in front of my camera, I simply have to trust them [the Muses], the creative process, and my years of experience. The end of last week I heard from his very sweet studio manager, Lynn, that there was a new opening, so I was all set.

The building was a wonderful space [at least for us visuals ;-) ] with all sorts of really interesting nooks and crannies [although I don’t believe I’d want to have ANY those same nooks and crannies in MY English muffins!]. He had five models come up from the city and he demonstrated a number of different lighting scenarios using the models in different parts of the building, mixing ambient light, modified strobes, reflectors, studio strobes and gelled lights. Talking his way through each situation, he really did a great job of explaining his creative process and how he technically “builds” each shot. I imagine in the days of Polaroids he burned through multiple packs of 669 with each set up [as I often did!]!

As he finished putting together each shot, he’d tell everyone what his camera settings were and then he’d hand over his strobe connection to everyone in the workshop so that they could begin to develop some really nice portfolio shots and take “photographic notes” on each set-up. There were fourteen of us attending so, individually, we didn’t have a lot of time to take these shots but I really couldn’t do it anyway. These were Joe's shots, with the lighting that he saw [imagined] for each image in his mind's eye and I really wanted to change things up, move lights around and make them my shots. Obviously, there simply wasn't time for that and I was perfectly fine with that .

I was much quieter than I usually am in such situations for most of the day and really didn't connect with any of the other attendees although I did get a lot of good technical information from his first assistant, Drew Gurian. I was feeling a bit out of sorts [emotionally, not physically] for most of the day, not really sure what I was doing there or how I fit in or what I was going to be taking home with me. On the hour and a half trip home, I was still feeling funky about the day and I simply wasn't sure that the workshop had been good for me. I had the feeling that I hadn't gotten enough of the "nuts & bolts"! Got home and didn't talk much about the day with my wife [after any good day, Audrey usually has to endure at least an hour of my verbal diarrhea! she's so wonderfully patient with me!]. Just went to bed at the usual late hour more and more bummed about the day.

This morning was a totally different experience! I should understand by now, with all these years of life experience, that it takes time for me to process certain events ... dumbshit! Joe had given me an incredible gift!! He had given me permission to experiment again! To play again! I don't know how many times I have to "learn" this lesson, but apparently, I have to keep repeating it! I didn't need the "nuts & bolts", I can get them just from experimenting and playing! From immersing myself in this "work" that I love so very much! My "lesson" for the day was that because of my love and passion for photography, I have to be playing with it each and every day! I have to be feeding that love in the same way we all have to "work" on and "feed" any relationship, any love. It does me absolutely no good to spend my days peering into my own navel!

Thank you so very much Joe, for that wonderful gift!

Nat

PS. Now if you'd just pass on several of those SB-900's !! ;-) I'll send you my shipping address by PM ....