Last Thursday morning I pointed the truck north and headed to New Hampton, NH. My immediate goal was to view an exhibit of alternative process prints at the gallery on the campus of the New Hampton School.
The exhibit was nice, but this is the second, recent alt process exhibit I have seen recently that included traditional silver gelatin prints, which to my mind are not an alternative process*. I fall further out of step each year that passes.
As I walked back to my truck after taking in the exhibit, I noted that the skies were partly cloudy with nice puffy, photogenic clouds. Thus, after a quick lunch, I decided to drive further north and photograph. My first stop was the village of Hebron on the northeast corner of Newfound Lake. There is a nice town commons and some classic white clapboard buildings there. I have passed through Hebron a number of times but the conditions for photography were never just right. However, this was the day!
I started out photographing with my ‘normal’ camera but fairly quickly broke out the camera obscura. I continued to make photographs with both cameras throughout the day.
After Hebron, I set my sights on Stinson Lake in Rumney. I wanted to photograph the skies with a pristine mountain lake in the foreground. Stinson Lake may be a nice lake (I don’t really know.) but it is ringed in with houses/cabins. I did not make any photos there.
A bit disappointed, I continued north on Stinson Lake Road and am glad that I did. There is a really nice waterfall right along the road. Upon returning home, I read a bit about this waterfall which is also called “Stepped Falls” and discovered that there is another set of falls a short walk up stream. I guess that I’ll have to make a another visit before the snow falls as a section of Stinson Lake Road is not maintained in the winter.
Still thinking about pristine mountain lakes, I next pointed the truck in the direction of Kinsman Notch. I have photographed there many times and the Beaver Pond there is certainly a pristine mountain lake. I arrived just in time to catch the last light on the water before the sun sank below the ridge line.
Taking that as a hint, I pointed the truck towards home and pulled into the driveway just about 7:30.
* To my mind and alternative photographic process requires that the photographer coat the paper with light sensitive material themselves. Then again, I’m a geezer who remembers when gelatin silver printing was in the mainstream. Oh well!
I couldn’t agree with you more about silver gelatin prints … definitely NOT alt-process. I think your definition is spot-on, as it were.