Saturday evening found me over by the canal on the Princeton/West Windsor border, Sunday afternoon I was back nearby at the Updike Farmstead (previous posts – here and here). Both areas qualify as falling within the remaining buffer and both will remain so since they are protected areas.
Delaware-Raritan Canal, February 27, 2010
Post-sunset, same spot, it was all about the color.
Updike Farmstead on Sunday:
Updike Farmstead, February 28, 2010
Old growth forest, deer tracks.
I brought Bix with me on both outings. On Sunday, there was a large herd of deer watching us. At first they hid in the trees. But then on our way back, the deer, having had enough, darted out across an empty field and back into the woods. I have never seen a herd this large, 2-3 dozen strong. Bix, whose fur is so overgrown he can barely see, missed the action visually but was all too happy to explore the tracks left out in the open.
*This is a 2/26 re-edit of this post. I first published it on 2/24 running the photos in color. Since then I came up with a b&w conversion I am much happier with – so out went the color.*
I rushed last weekend to complete some more work on the buffer project. I know I’ll continue when the weather gets nicer but I wanted to get some more images while the snow was still around. It seemed having the contrast would make the images more graphic and this past Monday onward the forecast called for warmer weather (40’s) and rain. Surely, the snow would be gone within a few days…
Well, we still have 6″-8″ left and now are due for 10″-16″ more, starting tonight and continuing into Friday.
Washington Road Fields
Washington Road Fields
Harrison Street, Millstone River
Harrison Street, Millstone River
Seminary Drive Fields
I have reworked the five images from the previous buffer posts (here and here) with the new b&w conversion.
Seminary Drive Fields
Seminary Drive Fields
Alexander Road Fields
Alexander Road Fields
Alexander Road Fields
Some equipment and software notes:
All of the raw images were processed in Aperture 3, some received additional work in Photoshop.
The b&w conversion was done in Aperture 3. I created a platinum-esque preset which tones the image and alters the tonal curve a bit.
The top five images are composites made with the Canon TS-E 24mm II lens, in each case combining three images into one.
I’ve been testing a new tripod head, the Arca-Swiss C1 Cube. It’s a joy to use – simple, very quick, rock solid, and an engineering marvel. Its built-in levels are quite accurate and negate the need to add a bubble level to the camera’s hot shoe. I’ve come to love the fact that it has two pan controls. One at the bottom and one at the top, above the leveling controls. This way you can orient the head with the bottom control first (a rough line up or if the head needs a different orientation relative to the tripod), level the head, and then fine tune the pan with the topmost pan control. Since the head is already level adjusting the top pan won’t throw it out of alignment.
I live where I grew up, in Princeton, NJ. While the town has changed over time, as any place would over 46 years, it remains essentially the same. What has changed the most is the surrounding area.
Back in the day, as a kid, Princeton was surrounded by a belt of green 10-20 miles thick. Made up of farms and woods, it was a buffer that was as much psychic as it was physical. It kept the rest of the world at bay and it ensured a sense of small town life even though New York and Philadelphia were only 50 miles away.
Once, when probably 13 or 14, I went on a bike ride with a friend. We headed northeast along the canal and then at a certain point veered off. Up and out of the Millstone River basin, hours seemed to go by. Hot and thirsty, lost in every sense of the word, we were rewarded for our efforts when a Stewart’s Drive-in appeared off on its own, inhabiting a space carved out of a cornfield. Where was it? Where were we? We didn’t know and to a large extent it didn’t matter. It was summer, the days lasted forever, and it was hours until sunset. We had enough change for drinks, the owner pointed us back towards town, and after ten miles or so, biking through woods and farms, we were home.
Princeton is no longer isolated in that physical sense. The sod fields which lined Route 1 are gone, replaced by malls, shops, and hotels. There a long lines of traffic headed into town in the morning, out in the evening. Most of the rest of the land has been developed for housing or office parks. But traces of the buffer remain. To the east and the northeast of town, on the other side of the lake and the canal, there are still fields. Decent sized swaths of land, divided by long stretches of evergreens which rise three stories tall.
Princeton, NJ, January 26, 2010 - Click Image for Larger View
This morning, before work, I was in our basement crawl space on leg three of replacing the battery backup sump pump. An odyssey which began two days earlier and required no less than three trips to Lowe’s.
It should have been simple. I already had a battery backup sump pump in place. Swap it out with a new one and move on.
Leg #1 to Lowe’s – get a new sump pump kit to replace the one that was at least ten years old. I already had a relatively new battery to use with it. Leg #2 to Lowe’s – get a new battery because the new kit is not working. Leg #3 – return the new kit because it’s still not working with the new battery and swap it out with another new kit.
This morning’s work went quickly and was a relief on two fronts. The second new kit was working and nothing blew up. Not that anything should blow up but working with a lead-acid battery and all its warnings of dire consequences is not fun. In the midst of this it dawned on me to open the small window in the crawl space. Let in some air as to avoid working with the battery in an unventilated space. I stood up as best I could, hunched over in the 4 foot high space, and opened the window. It pulled in and down, revealing all the grime that a ground level, rarely opened window, can hold. Quite pretty in its own way but instead my attention was drawn to the screen and out the window. The past two days of rain had cleared, a spike of morning sun was raking across the lawn, and a couple of birds flitted about here and there.
Instantly, I was thinking of the movie, The Incredible Shrinking Man. I had seen it on TV as a kid. The great b&w, the oddity of his marriage as he grew smaller, living in the doll house, the fight with the cat, trying to find food, killing the spider, and finally the twist at the end – the imprisonment caused by his size inverting itself to enable his freedom. He became small enough to fit through an opening in the basement window screen and walk out to freedom.
Still from The Incredible Shrinking Man
Maybe it was the window screen and ground-level point of view, the morning light, or the birds outside that sent me flashing back to the movie. Maybe it was sharing one of the movie’s themes, the frustration of feeling out of control. In my case through another hardware store project where I was at the mercy of incredibly bad quality control. Last summer I tried to buy a power washer only to give up after two of them were defective. The summer before it took four trips to two different hardware stores to find a hose which didn’t leak on its first use. Regardless of the reason, it was refreshing to pause and think about something completely different for a moment, to be drawn back to another time, and to see the world anew from the perspective of this forgotten window.
Well, the Jersey Shore must have been getting too much attention lately so the Pinelands decided to reclaim some for themselves. Dateline: Vineland, NJ, 1/21/10 – the police have arrested a man, the lessee-manager of a bowling alley, for contracting the torching of a rival alley a few miles away. The accused’s business has “Family Fun” in its name. I guess we can add arson to the list of family activities.
