Favorite Meeting Houses of the Monadnock Region

 There is little more emblematic of the New England traditions of self-reliance and community as the historic town meeting houses.  This week, in my New England Photography Guild blog I am celebrating a few of my favorite meeting houses from around the Monadnock Region.  In this article I will be showing some of the images that wouldn't fit in the NEPG post.  It should be obvious why the photographic attractions of these classic structures pull me back again and again.  Regardless of the season or light there is always something new to see and, their unique history, adds to the attraction of these venerable monuments.

Check out my Guild article for more general information about New England colonial meeting houses and about my favorite local examples.



Jaffrey Meeting House
The Jaffrey Meeting House was raised on June 17, 1775, the day of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Winter Light

 

Gold Ascending, Jaffrey Meeting House

Evening Spire, Jaffrey NH

 





 

Jaffrey Meeting House: Paul Wainwright

 

Meeting House Windows, Jaffrey NH

 

Jaffrey Center Light

 

Jaffrey Center Moon

Hancock Meeting House
 The Hancock Meeting House was built in 1820 and boasts a Revere Bell which stils rings from its spire.

Distant House,  Hancock NH

 

Trans-Spire, Hancock, NH

 

Meeting House Time, Hancock NH

Winter Frame, Hancock, NH

 

Hancock Spire

Hancock Flag

Park Hill Meeting House
The 1764 Park Hill Meeting House was remodeled in the Greek Revival style in 1824 and is considered one of the most classically beautiful meeting houses in the state

Park Hill, NH

 

 

Park Hill Autumn

Park Hill Lore

 

Reflected Spire, Park Hill, NH

 Rindge Meeting House
The Rindge Meeting House was built in 1797 and remains an integral part of the town center.

Winter Green, Rindge, NH

 

Meeting House Cemetery, Rindge NH

Washington Meeting House
The Washington Meeting house is now called the town hall and is part a town center which, at 1787 feet, is the loftiest in the state.

Washington Autumn

Door of Honor, Washington, NH

Washington Center Color

Washington Center Sky

Lempster Meeting House
The Lempster Meeting House was constructed in 1794.  As was true for many meeting houses the spire was a later addition, added in 1822.

Lempster Meeeting House

 
These are a few of the best meeting houses around the Monadnock region.  Others are scattered throughout New England, but many have been lost to decay or disaster.  Get out and enjoy the history where you live.

There are great resource to learn about New England's Meeting Houses.  One of the best resources is Paul Wainwright's project studying and photographing New England's Meeting House. His web site and beautifully illustrated book are great source of information about these majestic and uniquely New England structures. I thank Paul for permission to show one of his wonderful images in this article.
 Paul Wainwright Photography

My NEPG Blog : New England Meeting Houses (Published 4/4/16)

Meeting Houses and Historic Churches of the Monadnock Region

Jeffrey Newcomer
partridgebrookreflections.com

White Balance, The Basics of Digital Photography

  
Taking the Light's Temperature
 
Photography always comes back to the light and the color of the light that illuminates our subjects exerts a profound effect on the resulting image. Visible light can vary from the orange of candle flame to the deep blue of the evening sky, but he human eye has a remarkable ability to compensate for this wide spectrum. We can recognize a white card as being white through a broad color range, but our digital cameras lack our cognitive abilities to interpret visual input. Without correction, a white object captured in the yellow light of an incandescent bulb will be recorded with a yellow tint and the blue sky, illuminating someone in the shade of a building will change the face to a cold sickly blue. Digital cameras offer auto white balance settings (AWB) , using various algorithms to compensate for changes in the color of light, but, as is true of most automatic settings, the adjustments often don't produce the best results. This is one of those situations where the computer in your brain can work better that your camera's microprocessor, so its time to get to work.

Your Light Has a Temperature

Specturm of Light
http://www.exposureguide.com/white-balance.htm

Most digital cameras have white balance settings to adjust for a number of the common colors of illumination. These may work better than the Camera's auto white balance, but the balance is fixed and won't change with changing light. Fortunately a glance at the camera's LCD screen can provide quick feedback about the effect of any selection. The common presets include:

 
Sunlight:
Unfiltered sunlight contains the full spectrum of visible light and as a result tends to produce the most accurate white and color reproduction. This is a good setting when shooting outside in full sunlight, but who actually does that?

Cloudy and Shade:
In both of these situations the light tends to be cooler, as the full

Abigail in Full Shade

spectrum is filtered through blue clouds or comes into shaded areas from the even bluer sky. Cloudy and Shade settings compensate by warming the image. The Cloudy setting provides enough warming to balance the cooling effect that occurs when sunlight is scattered and filtered through the overcast. The Shade setting provides a warmer adjustment for times when the subject is illuminated by the more intense bright blue dome of the sky. It is important to be aware that, when shooting in the shade, areas outside of your main subject that are in the bright sunlight may take on an unnatural orange tint.

Tungsten:
Indoor illumination from Tungsten light bulbs has a strong yellow

Tungsten Color Balance

hue and the Tungsten setting is used to cool down the digital image by adding blue. A good way to appreciate this effect is to shoot outside in sunlight with the Tungsten WB setting. This will reinforce the importance of readjusting the white balance when you going from inside to outdoors. Last

Kissing Bridge Tungsten WB

week I used the tungsten setting while shooting inside the Vermont Country Store. When I ventured outside, I forgot to readjust the WB and the first couple images of the "Kissing Bridge" had an intensely blue tint. This blue shift is also seen when windows to the outside are included in my indoor photography. Situations like this, when there is a mosaic of different colored light, can be challenging and is where local adjustments of color balance in Photoshop can be a life-saver.

 
Fluorescent:
Fluorescent lighting has a blue/green shade which is warmed using the Fluorescent setting. The color of fluorescent can vary a good deal and it can take experimentation to find the best WB setting.

Flash WB

Flash:
The light from most flash units tends to most closely approximate sunlight, but can be a bit cool. The flash setting usually tends to slightly warm the image.

 






Custom White Balance:
The fixed white balance adjustments can provide a good approximation of the correct setting for specific lighting, but they are often imperfect. Some cameras allow fine tuning of the color compensation, but the use of Custom White Balance can be the easiest way to nail the precise adjustment. This option is available on many digital cameras.

Incandescent Light
and Tungsten White Balance

Custom White Balance starts with taking a picture of a white or neutral gray card in the same light that is falling on your subject. These cards are available on-line or at your local camera store (remember those?). A clean white piece of paper or anything else which is pure white can serve. I have a card with white on one side and gray on the other. The details vary, but on my Canon 5D II, I display the picture of my white card,

Custom White Balance

which has been exposed in the correct light and positioned in the center of the frame. Then I select "Custom White Balance" from
my camera's menu. I tell the camera to use the current image as the basis for custom white balance and then, any time I select "Custom" for the white balance option, the white balance will return to this setting. Custom white balance is helpful whenever precise control of color is necessary, such as in product photography. Your client will not appreciate getting the color wrong on the Campbell Soup can. 



 


 

Shoot RAW! 
All of this fuss about white balance is especially important if you are shooting in JPEG rather than RAW. Need I say that this is just one more reason that you should shoot in RAW? In-camera white balance settings are of little importance when shooting RAW since all of the color information is preserved in the RAW image. Regardless of the original setting, the white balance can be adjusted in post-processing without any loss of quality. Unfortunately, when shooting in JPEG, white balance is baked into the image file with the loss of a significant amount of color data.






 
 To demonstrate this, I intentionally shot Chesterfield's historic town hall with the white balance incorrectly set to tungsten. I captured the image in both RAW and in the highest quality JPEG and then tried to salvage the images to accurately reflect the overcast lighting. There was no problem readjusting the RAW color balance, but, despite doing everything I could in Lightroom and Photoshop the JPEG image's color remained disappointingly flat and dull. 




As can be seen, post-processing color balance adjustments on JPEG files are difficult and result in a poor quality image. If for some totally unfathomable reason you are still shooting in JPEG, there are two things to remember.

• First, don't.   
• Secondly, if you do, careful adjustment of white balance in the camera is essential. You really won't get a second chance.

So, when shooting RAW is there any reason to set a specific white balance? I generally keep my camera on Auto White Balance. In most situations this works well as a starting point and then I almost always tweak the color in post. In a few situations such as portraiture or product photography strict color accuracy is important, but for most of my work, precise color matching is not necessary or even desirable. When I am shooting in the golden evening light the last thing I want is for whites to appear pure white. If I used custom white balance from a white card, I would loose all the warmth of the scene. Occasionally I will use the cloudy or shade settings to more accurately reflect the warmth of the "Golden Hours", although when shooting in RAW I can make the same adjustment in post. In post processing I am looking for the colors that best reflect the appearance and feel of the moment. 

 


A Fixed White Balance
There are occasional instances when setting a specific fixed white balance can be helpful. Last week I had a great time shooting in the

Country Store Light

Vermont Country Store. The lighting came uniformly from incandescent bulbs and, by setting the camera to Tungsten White Balance, all of the images had a consistent white balance adjustment. The color wasn't precisely what I wanted, it was still a bit yellow for my taste, but, because all of the images started with the same color balance, I was able to batch all of the images together and make a single adjust which worked pretty well for all of them. Because in AWB the white balance changes from image to image, a single adjustment would not have worked as well for all of the images. Shooting in Tungsten WB ended up saving time that would have been spent performing subtle tweaks to many of the images.



Of course Photoshop and Lightroom have powerful tools to adjust

Cloudy WB

white balance in the digital darkroom, but that should be a topic for a future blog. For now it is important to understand how the camera sees color balance differently from our remarkable eyes and how color balance settings help to compensate for this difference. This is the time to settle back with your manual (if you can find it) and learn about how your camera adjusts white balance. Keep your eye on that LCD screen and experiment your brains out. Getting color balance right is especially important when shooting JPEG, but whether recording JPEG or RAW files it all comes down to Getting Color Balance Right in the Digital Camera.

Jeff Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com

Photographing a Winter Sunset

Chasing the Last Cold Light
As we in New England have been struggling through this year’s bone chilling winter, it is nice to recognize the first tentative promise of the coming spring, the days are getting longer.  In the depths of winter, I typically go to work and return home in the dark.  Even with the sparkling crisp winter days and the warm glow of our wood stove at night,  it is hard to escape at least a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder depression.  But then, usually sometime in February, it suddenly hits me.  I’m heading home and there is still light in the sky.  It may be 10 below, but that sudden revelation fills me with an invigorating sense of hope.

Spring is Coming

Steeple Light, Westmoreland, NH

It was earlier this week that the revelation struck.  I was heading
from Keene, New Hampshire to my home in Spofford and I suddenly became aware of the beautiful evening light playing against the snow.  Actual warm sunlight!  I called Susan to warn that I might be a little late for supper, and then the only question was where should I go to chase the light.  I decided to head north.

I headed north from Westmoreland to Walpole New Hampshire generally along Route 63.  The images here where all (except one) captured as

Westmoreland to Walpole

the sun dropped below the horizon, over a period of about forty minutes, covering just eight miles, last Tuesday evening. Winter sunsets have a different quality than those during the warmer months.  Perhaps it has something to do with the clearer air or ice crystals diffusing the light as then float weightless in the sky.  I suspect that the glow from the snow cover affects the drama above, but the winter white certainly helps to strengthen the appearance of the foreground as it reflects the colors from above.

On this evening my first question was whether to find a dramatic spot and sit still as the light changed or to keep moving looking for various locations that might work with the evolving glow.  I decided to hit the road.  It is amazing how quickly the mood changes as the sun dips toward and then below the horizon.  Moment to moment the light provided different opportunities and challenges.  It helped that I knew this route extremely well and could anticipate how the illumination would compliment the lovely rural countryside.

 Gizmo's World
My first stop was at a favorite farm in Westmoreland on the Old Westmoreland Road just outside of Spofford.  Of course, if you

Gizmo's World

were going from Westmoreland to Spofford, you would call it the “Old Spofford Road”.  The sun was still above the horizon casting a warm glow on the snow in the pasture.  Gizmo, the farm’s prize bull, was warming himself in the evening light.  Yes the bull’s name is Gizmo, and I’m sure he finds that name endlessly annoying.  Regardless, he is a powerfully proud animal who seemed quite content to pose for the shivering photographer.



Park Hill Light

Park Hill Meeting House, Not at Sunset

My next goal was to reach Westmoreland’s Park Hill before the warm light faded from the buildings.  Park Hill is a lovely collection of classic houses arranged around one of the most beautiful white churches in New England.  It is just west of Westmoreland’s main village, but it is really a place unto itself.  The church, which stands on a small hill above village, has been the subject of many of my photographs, but on this evening the direct sunlight was fading fast and was best seen complimenting the red bricks of a house at the edge of the green.  The glow quickly slipped away, but while it lasted it seemed warm enough to cut with a knife.  And then it was gone, but I kept moving to enjoy the afterglow of the developing “Blue Hour”.

The Blue Hour
 The Blue Hour is the 45 - 60 minutes after sunset when the sky retains a cool blue tone before all descends to black.  I found a spot on a hill that allowed me to contrast the deep blue with the sunset reds and gold reflected off the clouds on the horizon. I especially liked the detail of the farm house and the tangle of tree branches that dominated shadowy foreground.  Just a few minutes later, and from the same location, the sunset glow could only be seen in the reflections off the windows across the cow pasture.

Orchard's Last Light
In order to get one last shot at the fleeing light, I went to the hilltop

Alyson's Orchard, Walpole, NH

of Alyson's Orchard in Walpole.  From this high vantage point, there was just enough light in the sky to illuminate the ranks of apple trees.  It was interesting to see how the chaotically pruned branches contrasted with the careful linear order of the orchard rows.  The hill was lovely, clear and cold, but the light was nearly gone and I was ready for the warmth of our wood stove heated kitchen.  Of course I was also excited to see what magic I had captured on my innocent appearing CF card.

 
People often say that photography is about the light, almost as if "the light" was one thing.  Of course, we all know that light is always changing and that is what makes photography so endlessly fascinating.  The surprising variety of colors and moods in the sky over the short duration of a winter sunset is a magnificent example of this restless of quality of light and it is a privilege to be able catch even a small taste of that wonder.  And yes, I have seen the light, and can assure that spring IS coming.


Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com