Studium

…finds an acorn once and a while.

A winning image in PDN’s Top Knots wedding photography contest…

I have always wanted to climb up to Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington, and managed to accomplish this feat a few weeks ago. I am not much of a hiker – it always feels to be a bit of a chore – but the lore and history of Tuckerman’s was enough to motivate me this one time.

Tuckerman’s Ravine has been the site of an annual spring skiing ritual for a very long time. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people make the hike after the worst of the winter is over, and because of its bowl shape and vast amounts of snow, it is a fairly unique experience for those who ski mostly in the East.

The day began with a fairly vigorous two hour hike – it almost did me in – but as I mentioned above, I’m not a big fan of climbing things. If you want to ski, you have to carry all of your stuff on your back. Once in the ravine itself, the experience is pretty great. The floor of the ravine provides a stunning view of the entire bowl, and you can comfortably watch the poor rugged souls who have decided to climb up the face of the bowl itself in order to ski back down it. Because of the warm winter we had, the conditions this spring have not been particularly good in Tuckerman’s, so the skiing was fairly poor. This not deter the many who ventured forth and faced either a hair-raising ski on a hard, crusty surface if they were lucky, or a head-over-heels tumble the length of the headwall if they were not.

As I chose to photograph the festivities rather than ski in them, I spent the day clinging to the hard-packed surface hoping not to tumble myself. Thank goodness for the fancy pair of Microspikes I purchased the night before – my one capitulation to rigors of outdoor adventuring. Even in good weather, Mount Washington is cold and windy,* so my camera batteries would conk out regularly. I had to swap the dead batteries with extras I kept warm in my armpits. Invariable, I would forget that the batteries were there as I scampered about, and they would either fall down into the sleeves of my long-underwear, or go the other route and wind up somewhere in the depths of my well-layered middle regions. Either way, I practically had to disrobe to get them out.

The trip back down was when I learned why people recommend sturdy, lace-up boots for hiking. The slip-on “casual” boots I wore did not do the trick, and resulted in some blistering. Not to worry, I can walk now.

* From Wikipedia: “Fastest recorded with an anemometer outside of a tropical cyclone: 372 km/h (231 mph) sustained 1-minute average; Mount Washington, New Hampshire, April 12, 1934.”

I climbed up to Tuckerman’s Ravine last weekend, and am putting together an edit.

I can’t decide which of theses I like better, leaning towards the second…

This portrait of biologist David Sabatini of the Whitehead Institute was shot with the layout in mind – the designer wanted plenty of space to run text over the image.

Sometimes working within someone else’s vision can be difficult, but sometimes it can be liberating, as it was in this case. Knowing that the layout was fixed meant that I didn’t have to spend a whole lot of time trying to find the perfect location – just had to find a location that fit. This gave more time to get to know David a little bit, and get some of the other details worked out at relatively leisurely pace. I think the shot reflects a little of the relaxed atmosphere.

This shot is an oldie but goodie, shot at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC during an exhibit of antique frames. Unfortunately, something terrible happend to the negative in the processing, which resulted in a horrendous grain structure. It’s straight from the Elliot Erwitt School of the Happy-Go-Lucky, with an emphasis, in my case, on the “lucky”.

Here’s another from the same school…

My daughter was in a school musical about Dust Bowl immigration to California, and I took some shots of the actors prior to their final performance.

Here are a few of them where the kids weren’t goofing around and mugging for the camera, as kids are want to do.

So I went to New Hampshire the other day to photograph a pond hockey tournament. The tournament had been postponed from several weeks earlier on account of the warm weather. It was a fun weekend, marked, ironically, by the freezing temperatures and heavy winds.

For the uninitiated, pond hockey involves a 4-on-4 game in a small rink with modified goals that are very low to the ice. It is fast and rough, in a friendly sort of way.

I went to Fairhaven, MA, last month for Hillary Raskin at Newsday to photograph a fisherman named Mark Phillips.

Mark lives in Long Island, but has to run his boat out of Massachusetts because of strict New York State fishing quotas.

It was a frigidly cold day, and when I mentioned that to Mark that my hands were numb from having to work my camera bare-handed, he asked what I thought it might be like to have to repair netting out on Georges Bank in a storm in February. I quit complaining.