Spring At Last

Golden May Dummerston Vermont

West Guilford Valley Vermont

It was a long, cold and snowy winter, but happily spring has arrived with its spectacular explosion of wildly varied color. It always seems unfair that the best seasons for natural beauty in New England are the shortest. The period of maximal color in both spring and fall last for only a couple of weeks. In autumn the vibrant leaves crash to the ground burdening photographers with the torment of the long dull “stick season”. During spring, the leaves hang on, but the wonderful variety of colors that explode as the foliage arrives quickly transforms to the monochromatic shade of deep green that predominates for most of its photosynthetic life span. 

Black Mountain Cascade Brattleboro Vt

Spring Flow Dummerston Vermont

Ferns Uncoil Brattleboro Vermont

I love the colors of early spring that vary from glowing yellows to rich browns. The hillsides always take on a patchwork array of hues that I think rival the more garish colors of fall foliage. Also, as the fresh buds first open there are often bizarre forms of unfolding greenery to study with macro photography. It all pushes me to get out as often as possible to capture the brief sublime symphony of color. Included here are several of the images that I was able to collect during this year's special season. 

 

Spring Bloom Brattleboro Vt

This year my ability explore was limited by the fact that I was committed to participation in the spring concert of Keene Choral. We performed Mozart’s Requiem, a challenging piece that required intensive rehearsal and time taken up by practice at home. It was painful watching colors evolve from my studio, but I did get out shooting several times over the course of the season. We had I great concert on May first supported by a wonderful orchestra and soloist and since then I have had more time to devote to the remainder of the fresh color. 

Country Club Rainbow Keene NH

Partridge Brook Dam Spofford NH

 

Westmoreland NH

Early in the season I spent time exploring my local area, checking out some of my favorite locations including one of my favorite hilltop barns and the cascades of Partridge Brook as it flow through my village. I also was able to catch a lovely rainbow that predictably appeared as a spring storm passed over as we were having dinner at the Country Club in Keene NH. The shot shows again that, with care, great images can be obtained with the improved cameras in today’s iPhones. 

Against the Drop Brattleboro Vt

Stickney Drop Brattleboro Vt

Hillside spring Dummerston Vermont

Later in the season I was able to spend much of a day exploring many of my favorite spots in Southwestern Vermont, accompanied by Benji our very patient Golden Doodle. Benjamin loves to go for drives and on many of the quiet back roads I was ale to let him loose to explore, sniff and collect his allotment of ticks. We wandered through Dummerston, Brattleboro and Guilford. The weather varied from overcast to bright sun as I found views including overlooking the West River Valley, Stickney Brook Falls, and Guilford's Green River. Truly, even though it was a bit late, the colors were spectacular every where I looked.

Green River Bridge Guilford Vt

Green River Falls Guilford Vt

Miniwawa Gold Roxbury NH

Although the colors are calming down, just the other day when I had some time to kill in Keene, I was able to catch some nice sparkling backlit views along the upper Miniwawa Brook in Roxbury and finally the obligatory vista of Monadnock still framed by the spring gold. 

 

Monadnock in Shadow Keene NH

Ancient Cemetery Granite Spofford NH

Bonnyvale Vista Brattleboro Vt

The foliage is now rapidly settling into its mature hues, but I still have many images to work on and I must reconcile myself to enjoying the building warmth. Of course the spring rains are still filling the local waterfalls. That should keep me busy for awhile and I’m sure I’ll find something to shoot throughout the summer. Autumn will be here before you know it. 

Spring Home Spofford NH

Jeff Newcomer

 www.partridgebrookreflections.com

Spring Collection Without Purpose

Pasture Island, Spring Green

Producing a weekly photography blog means that I am always looking for 

West River Light

new topics.  It also means that I spend much of my shooting time trying to find images which will illustrate my topic of the week and the images that I post on social media usually reflect the same topic.  This week has been about my up-coming classes and workshops, but, beside my shameless self-promotion,  my posts frequently center on photographic and editing techniques, equipment, and special locations throughout New England.  While I am doing all this “purposeful” shooting and publishing, I get frustrated that I don’t give myself time to share all the random photographs that I capture as I wander through the seasons.  

Purple Flowers 1

We are quickly emerging from another glorious New England spring.  Although I have been busy preparing for a jumble of exhibitions, finishing a large order of pictures for a local bank, and completing another Introduction to Digital Photography Course and my Spring Waterfall Workshop, this seemed like a good time to take a quiet breath and show a few of my “Spring Photographs Without Purpose”.

Of course spring is all about growing things, flowers and green stuff, but since I am a hopeless categorizer, let me see if I can impose order on the photosynthetic chaos.  

New Growth

Maple Bud Spofford NH

I am always excited to see the first appearances of growth.  The shoots and buds burst forth with such bizarre exuberance.  The bud season lasts for only a week or two, but it is worth capturing every day.  This year spring seemed delayed, but when it arrived it arrived with an explosion.

Fern Attack, Spofford NH

Variety of the Forest’s New growth.

I say this every spring, but the early spring greens tend to come with a remarkable variety of hues.  To me the colors are every bit as beautiful as the more garish tones of autumn.

Pasture Lane, Chesterfield NH

Green's Edge

Evening Light, Westmoreland NH

Spring Flowers

New England gardens are home to a lovely array of color throughout the spring and summer, but the naturally occurring blooms in our fields and forests can be equally lovely.

Flowers on Purpose

Daffodil Fence

I am always amazed at the beautiful flowers and greenery that I can find as I take my my walks around my little village of Spofford New Hampshire.  Of course, every spring, I travel with Susan to Walker Farm in Dummerston Vermont.  Susan selects plants for our gardens while I roam among the carefully cultivated flowers and shrubs.  It is a great place to capture images of perfect flowers in a wonderfully controlled environment.  My only problem is that I always forget to photograph the identifying name tags.  That is why you will again see many titles like “Purple Flower 1”.  

Purple Flowers 1

New England in Spring

Central Square Bloom

Every New England seasons has to be seen in the context of the classic village and rolling hills.  It is a reminder to me to put away my macro lens and revel in the glorious mix of spring colors and our natural landscape.   This year my April and May collection included everything from the traditional view of Keene’s Central Square in full bloom to sunset on Brattleboro’s West River and the Full Flower moon rising over Mount Monadnock. 

West River Sunset

Community Church Harrisville NH 

May Flower Moon and  Mount Monadnock

Factory Birch, Harrisville NH

I've had a great time wandering through my random spring images.  Photography is about storytelling, but it's nice to just kick back and let the pictures speak for themselves.

For me, summer begins with the first of June.  I’m looking forward to a busy few months, but the end of Spring is always a sad time.  After all, November’s stick season is only five months away.  It’s all downhill from here.

Jeffrey Newcomer

www.partridgebrookreflections.com

Photography Calendars

2015 Cover

Assembling the Right Stuff
I will ask forgiveness in advance for devoting this weeks blog to my experience designing my yearly New England Reflections Calendar. With the deadline for the 2015 calendar coming up next week, I have little time to think of much else. I have been publishing my calendar of New England photography to benefit the Cheshire Medical Center Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program for more than a decade and I hope my experiences will be of some interest to those who publish their own calendars or those who are considering taking on the challenge. 

Last year, and for the first time, I actually got my calendar out on a reasonable date. Our goal has been to have the thing in stores by

The Cover is Critical

the time the students return to Keene State College for the fall semester. This year it means that I need to get the files and my rough layout to the designer by July 25th. In the early years, I had to design the calendar in Microsoft Publisher and then work with the lovely people in the hospital print shop to try to get the images to look something like I had seen on the screen. The results were remarkably good considering that they were coming off of a laser printer that was intended to produce large volumes of hospital forms and not fine art images. The calendars sold well, but they were not of professional quality. 


Beginning in 2010 we made the jump to a professional printer and the differences have been amazing. Not only are the images sharper and more brilliant, but the process for me has been much easier. I now do

May, Peacham, Vt

the initial selection of images and set the rough design in Publisher, but from that point I hand off the images and layout to a designer who prepares the final files in InDesign.  The calendars come back in a couple of weeks all bound and shrink wrapped with a piece of cardboard in the middle to avoid curling. It is wonderful that I don't have to collate, punch and bind hundred of calendars. The calendars are more expensive to produce, but we get a reasonable deal from Silver Direct, Inc, a local printer who does a nice job and is a pleasure to work with. The bottom line is that we get a lovely calendar and most importantly we can still make money for the Rehab Program.

While the process is all painfully fresh in my mind, I thought it might be helpful for those considering putting together a calendar of their own work, to provide a short list of the resources I need to assemble for my yearly project and it all starts with the painful chore of selecting the images.

The Big Pictures
My first step is to assemble a collection of potential images for the large monthly calendars and , of course, for the all important cover

October, Green River, Vt

shot. The first basic criterion is that all the images must be in landscape orientation. Someday I will put together a calendar using portrait oriented images and that year I will have a ton of pictures available that I have been desperate to use.  Although what I do is called "landscape" photography, I love images which feature a wide depth of field and that, more often than not, means shooting in portrait orientation.  Knowing that the

April, Winchester, NH

calendar is coming every year reminds me of an important photographic axiom; "The best time to take a landscape oriented picture is right after you have taken the portrait oriented image". After shooting a portrait image, I always try to remember to flip my camera and look for a composition that will work in landscape mode. This not only works for the calendar but also gives me important options for future clients who may need the landscape view.




Location, Location

March, Rye Beach, NH

My calendar is titled "New England" Reflection, so I can't use any of my spectacular pictures of Prague or the amazing wildlife of the Galapagos Islands, and, to satisfy my audience, I try to include a selection of images from both New Hampshire and Vermont. Traditionally I try to add one sea coast picture and, to provide a break from the endless trees and mountains, I look for at least one wildlife image. This year I knew what my wildlife picture would be even before I clicked the shutter on this year's remarkable Snowy Owls. 




The Seasons
Of course it is tradition that the images should match the season,

January, Spofford, NH - Why Not in July?

but it has always been a source of wonder to me that, in the middle of the nose numbing cold of winter, people would rebel at seeing anything other than a winter scene on the January calendar. I swear that someday my calendar will switch the seasons. Why not a warm summer pasture in February and a refreshingly cold snow covered village to offset the steamy heat of August. I swear, I'm going to do it! I'm retired now and I can do anything I want, I think. Anyway, I digress, you can check out my selections for this year in the Calendar Gallery on my partridgebrookreflections.com web site.



The Little Stuff
After the agony, of picking my twelve images from all those I would like to include, I move on to the other graphics in the calendar. I have to switch my vision to look for complementary banners and thumbnails.




Banners
Finding banner images that will complement the main pictures both visually and contextually is often a more difficult task than picking the primary images themselves. I have to scan looking for a slice that will work, understanding that even my least favorite image may contain a sliver that will work perfectly. I move candidates into photoshop and, after setting my crop ratio to the needed 11.25" x 8", I move the crop window up and down to see if something clicks. 






 
Thumbnails

August, Port Clyde, Me

Finally I get to pick images for thumbnail, those little pictures that fill some of the open blocks in the calendar. This is where I get to honor some of the images I would have liked to have included as main monthly pictures. Some of these occasionally show up as big pictures in future calendars.

Thumbs

Once I have selected all my images I have to go back to the original full resolution files and adjust the size, color and sharpness to fit into the calendar. I keep my monitor calibrated and I haven't found a need to apply a separate printer profile to get reasonable color balance. 



The Text
I have always tried to include helpful information in my calendars. 

After the images are ready, I start by writing short informational blurbs" for each image. I try to write a short story which describes something about the location or the process that went into capturing the image. Some picture come with great stories to share, but for others this can be a challenge,  when the only thing I can come up with is "Red Barn".  I do my best, but sometimes I will sacrifice a great image just because I can't find an interesting story to tell.  This year, where appropriate, I've decided to supplement my "Blurbs" with links to complementary articles in my Blog archive. Next, I update the information for the back of the calendar that describes the work and honors all the great things that Pulmonary Rehab does to help our patients who struggle with the challenges of living with chronic lung disease. Finally I have to decide on which holidays to include

My One Portrait for 2015

in the calendar. Federal Holidays are obvious, but which Christian, Jewish or Moslem holidays, AND how exactly do you spell
"(C)Hanukah".  I throw in Groundhog Day, Fathers, Mothers Day and Valentines day (to help out Hallmark), and, sadly for our Native American readers, Columbus Day. Google "holidays" sometime and you will see that it is impossible to include everything and I am bound to piss off lots of very earnest celebrants of National Explosive Ordnance Disposal Day (May 3rd). I do my best. All that is left to add are the phases of the moon and I'm done.






 



Letting Go
I package all the files onto one or two disks and drop them off at Silver Direct. It usually only takes a week or two to get the PDF

July, Winchester, NH

proof back for review. I have learned to get as many people as possible to proof read the calendar.  I do this to catch the inevitable mistakes and to involve as many critics as possible in the blame for the one or two gaffs that always slip through. One year the printer actually left out a day, just skipped it!, and no one caught the mistake until the calendars were distributed to stores throughout the region. I had to chase down every calendar and insert a sticker strip to correct the offending week. The flawed calendars that I missed are still out there and are undoubtedly valuable collectors items.

So that's my process. If you want to produce your own calendar, I hope this description will be helpful, and not horrifying. I would only add that the best decision I ever made was to donate the profits from my calendar to a worthy cause. It makes the marketing much easier and benefits some very lovely and needy people.  So if you get a chance, buy one (or 10) of my calendars, they make great gifts for a GREAT cause.  I could say more, but I am only half way through my banner images and that deadline is freight training its way to my door. 


Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com