rambling

achieving new heights

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Foregoing the expense of renting one of these, I opted to make a phone call to the building owner across the street, in order to gain access to his roof. It only took about two years to make the call. But the assistance I received was substantial. This allowed me to cross one more county off my list of 93 for the court house project, which leaves me with six unvisited counties, and another three with multiple buildings that haven't all been recorded. I'm going to cross them all off in 2010 - then start reshooting those with technical problems. And maybe rent that towable lift once or twice to see the tops of buildings like Bath, Highland, and Culpeper counties.

on the level

It must have something to do with working as a carpenter and owning various tools that determine if the built world we create is a close approximation of some standard of level. When it comes to photography, many, if not all of my compositions of architecture or elements that are square or level in nature are approached in a way that preserves this “levelosity.” It's really hard for me to compose horizontals out of level. The verticals are ordinarily attended to by the view camera that has become my standard tool. It has a level bubble on it, or in the case of the Sinar, three, to make sure that I get the world captured in a level manner. In many instances there is also a symmetry issue to contend with, which one either has to consciously destroy, or submit to the designer's intent.

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Mike C. at the always provocative Idiotic-Hat blog has recently written about his tendency to try to get grids square with the edges of the frame. He displays an admirable technique in that he prefers not to work with a tripod, and certainly not a view camera or tilt-shift lenses.

This recent photo is definitely a step in a different direction for me. The original concept was to approach the wall in a typical manner: head on. Eventually that's not what seemed to work best. Not that this is a radical departure, but perhaps it will help me become more comfortable with compositions of buildings that are “out of level.”

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An interesting observation after the fact is that normal perspective has been reversed here: near portions of the building are smaller than distant sections. Possibly something to work on in the future.

greetings from Grundy, pt. 2

 

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Despite what may be claimed by John & Margaret Peters in their book Virginia's Historic Courthouses, that Buchanan County became one of the wealthiest in Virginia after the oil "crisis" of the early 1970's, the Wikipedia entry lists the county as the poorest in the state and among the 100 poorest counties in the country. A cursory afternoon drive by viewing from this past weekend also confirms that it is one of the ugliest places in the state. Not the landscape itself, which is a warren of mountains and streams in the eastern Appalachians. As per usual, it's how humans have shaped it that has made it such an atrocity.

With only about 29,000 residents in an area of 504 square miles, there is a population density of about 54 people per square mile. Compare that with Arlington County's 7000 per square mile. The problem appears to be that 90% of those individuals live in mobile homes, surely some of the least attractive housing ever developed for humans. Buchanan County really has no flat land on which to build dwellings, so the housing/trailers are grouped along the stream beds. While there may be a population density of only 54/sm, the ubiquitous trailer and the associated debris of modern life contribute to an environment that is overwhelmingly visually polluted. In the summer it may be less obtrusive, hdden by foliage. But at this time of year, without any snow to hide its ugliness, the intrusion of humans on the land is blatantly obvious.

NOTE TO SELF: spend more time in Buchanan County to see if the above impressions stand up with repeated visits & further photographic exploration

greetings from Grundy, pt. 1

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This just in from the western portion of our great state of Virginia. Much of the damage in Buchanan County was inflicted in the early part of the 20th century. Now I think they are still trying to deal with the damage done by earlier generations. 180 degrees behind me was the site (the large cleared area inside the river bend) for a Super Wally World that was never built. No telling if it ever will be.

Update on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 07:06AM by KMW

An interesting note about the Army Corps of Engineers photo on Wikipedia: compare it with my photo of Grundy in Greetings from Grundy pt. 3. All the buildings between the road through town and the river at the outside of the curve have been removed. That area is now either part of the levee system or outside of it's new boundary. It looks like fully half of the commercial space of Grundy has been removed to protect the other half.

reshoots

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On any project that goes as many places (probably more than 200 buildings) and lasts as long (entering the fourth year, and at least another one to go) as this courthouse project has, it's bound to be necessary to do some reshoots. I'm going through what I've got, and naturally the earliest work has the most problems with conforming to the design of the more recent work. These past two weekends I've spent some time travelling to relatively close courthouses in order to reshoot subjects in better light, and in the case of last week to fill in a slight gap. Yesterday the clouds finally gathered and produced the predicted rain, forcing me to grab a couple of exposures in Cumberland County with precipitation on the camera. Not a desired consequence for the Sinar. The methodology has been refined over time, and I'm seeing what could be improved in the earliest exposures.

on the edges

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While on a trip yesterday in search of the older Henrico County Courthouse, I was lured into this "wasteland" across the river from developed, downtown Richmond. Others may gravitate towards shops and restaraunts and bars and crowds. I am looking for evidence of some wilder aspect of life. Something that shows the natural world still abounds, even when dotted with steel towers and criss crossed by steel rails. It's a fabulous world of imagination, something like the Zone of Tarkovsky's Stalker. Without the resources of a famous Russian film maker, or those evident in the recent Crewdson book Beneath the Roses, I'm left to make pictures of what I saw one afternoon while scouting around an industrial landscape.

33-2-go

 

 
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A day of rather great variety, and many miles. But only two counties yielded exposures of courthouses: Grayson and Wythe. By the time I got to Pulaski, the sun was fully filling the sky, and for the newer facade, it would have been right above the building. The entrance to the older building is 180 degrees from that, so would have been fine except for the abundance of direct sun falling on that elevation. Grayson is questionable, since it was fairly bright there this morning as well, but I couldn't wait the entire day to find out if the light was going to change.

After all these many miles, what do I have to show for it mentally? Not much, that's for certain. A couple of miserable calculations, but nearly no thought given to the project at hand. I'm collecting data at this point. What anyone eventually does with it is beyond me for now. 

Independence

 

 
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Being able to take the entire enterprise on the road is still a remarkable thing - no? At least there is some familiarity to be found in the very act of putting together one of these little entries. Nothing much else is very familiar about the surroundings, other than the ubiquity to be found in modern American motel rooms. I'm not out here for long enough to succumb to the dreariness of it and resort to attempting Stephen Shore type imagery.

It was a fine day today, with another three counties visited, with their various courthouses: Bedford (one large building with one pseudo entrance from the 50's, and one actual entrance from the 90's);  Franklin (where once again I set up on the roof of the van on the main street through town and attracted no attention whatsoever); and Carroll (with one large new building from the 1990's and another older building from the 1870's not far away beside a WiFi hotspot that worked just fine) where I visited last year one Sunday morning and found the light was in the sky right over both the buildings. Today I didn't arrive until later in the day, and it was much more overcast, so the light was nearly perfect.

Where all this is headed is still a big unknown. At least I am beginning to conceive of possibilities for display around the state. But I'm still not willing to relinquish any control over how I photograph the subject matter, so I am not ready to take anyone else's money yet. After talking briefly to Doug Gilpin the other day about his knowledge of courthouse siting around the state, I realized again that it's probably about time to put some kind of portfolio of a few of the images together to show. It's not going to go anywhere until I can show some of it to other people.

can we change?

 

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With probably thirty-six or thirty-seven more courthouses to chase down, it feels like there is a possible end to the driving the back roads of Virginia. Probably not this year, but possibly '09  will see some kind of completion. Finality is a scary thing. There will be the inevitable reshoots of places such as Sunday's encounter with Prince George County.

The day started clear, which was not expected, and I was facing into the sun with it right above the roof of the new court house building. Gave that one up and went a short distance away to work on the older building. It became apparent that it's been a while since I've used the Sinar. It took a while to set up, then I realized the first exposure was aligned incorrectly, the second was still too low, and when I've gotten all exposures for the day back, I see that with the third exposure that my centerlines are aligned, but the rear should have been shifted to the right to include all of one of the peripheral buildings, and exclude the extra space at the left.

What I'm finding, and finding interesting as well, is that specifics such as this are slowly evolving and changing. As I get better with the material, when I'm presented with more unusual symmetry, it's possible to stay basically true to the dead on alignment with the tripod set directly in front of the primary entrance. But the lens can be shifted slightly one way or the other to include ancillary structures.

This worked out quite well in Southampton County where I was able to include the old and the new entrances from one camera position.

Multiple exposure stitches have also worked successfully for structures too large in locations where the camera could not be moved far enough away to include the entire building.

None of this was planned at the outset as I learn what works. The methodology needs to be allowed to evolve. The project was always the goal, not the end product of having the collection. It was to learn along the way. 

Update on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 02:38PM by KMW

What this ultimately means for me is that I need to pay more attention to what I'm doing. Be less mechanical in my approach to the subject. Too often I'm banging through the steps to get another notch on the gunstock, and move on to the next victim (county). After all, this is supposed to be an Art project, not simply a documentation or a trophy hunt.