Nicole Elkins: The Window Series

“The Window Series” is a continuation in my exploration of suburbia. I find the marriage of natural and artificial light to be spellbinding as they mix in an overlap of the inside and outside view. Windows create a perfect frame for the scene that lies beyond. Changes in the seasons, development of landscape, and the passing of time are all elements of the environment morphing and evolving yet the frame remains the same.

Untitled © 2012 Nicole Elkins

Untitled © 2012 Nicole Elkins

Untitled © 2012 Nicole Elkins

Untitled © 2012 Nicole Elkins

Traverse Day Robinette: Somewhere Between Here and There

I use to find the best way for me to connect with nature was to hike as fast as I could. I had this idea if I travel a great distance I would experience nature better by seeing more. All this rushing proved to be, I was missing out on all the woods had to offer. I now take hours to travel the distance of a mile. I spend more time looking at and appreciating my surrounds. Being still is becoming part of the environment. Slowing myself down even more I journal about each image made. Thinking more about what I’m looking at and what the scene looks like before and after exposure, instead of capturing and moving on. Not only do I record the light and my settings, but also how I feel at that moment with all that is happening around me. It is a time for me to connect with nature and a time to disconnect from everyday life.

Noon Hill Reservation2011 © Traverse Day Robinette

I search for places close to Boston that make you feel miles away. Most of the reservations are quite small.  All of the woods I visited are second generation growth. These places were cleared for farming and now new growth has taken over. I think these small parcels of land are just as important as the grandeur of any mountain or ocean. The beauty in this ordinary landscape is overwhelmingly powerful. Every tree, rock, twig, puddle is special and important. A puddle deserves the same attention as an ocean. 

Rock Woods Reservation 2011 © Traverse Day Robinette

Cooks Canyon 2011 © Traverse Day Robinette

Underneath the canopy a complexity of layers unfolds and envelops me. I find my way through these layers by working out the patterns of the trees and undergrowth. Letting my gaze drift through this maze of layers I try to find spaces where there is an opening, looking for a way out at the same time finding enjoyment in being lost.

Cooks Canyon 2011 © Traverse Day Robinette

Middlesex Fells 2011 © Traverse Day Robinette

Hannah Bemelmans: Scotland

These pictures are from Calanais, Isle of Lewis part of the Scottish Hebrides.  Calanais has 12 sites of Standing Stones and Ruins.  The main site is known as Calanais and it is a stone circle which contains a small chambered tomb and has five rows of massive stones emanating out from it--one for East, South, and West, but two for North, which form an avenue.  It is about 5000 years old and, like the rest of the standing stones, people can only speculate as to it’s purpose for being built.  As a New Englander, the Land is both familiar for it’s pastoral nature but also starkly foreign and melancholic as it is treeless, rocky, and surrounded by tidal lochs.  Together the Land and the Stones elicited in me a profound emotional response, the feeling of connection to those ancient people and, understanding that although they are a mystery, the feeling that the Stones make sense.

Calanais Stones (Site 1), Calanais, Scotland 2011 © Hannah Bemelmans

Cnoc Ceann a' Gharraidh (Site 2), Calanais Scotland 2011 © Hannah Bemelmans

Loch, Calanais, Scotland 2011 © Hannah Bemelmans

Loch Water, Calanais, Scotland 2011 © Hannah Bemelmans