New England Climate Change
By Gregory Scheckler
26 Sep 2009
If there is a simple truth about all of the issues surrounding Climate Change, it is that the climate will change.
The concepts: Temperatures rise and fall, wind moves small and large masses of air and moisture, the earth spins. While the political and scientific debates require a firm understanding of climate science, from an artistic viewpoint I think we can find a profound beauty in the changing, constantly transforming cycles of nature.
The compositions: I've composed images in square formats for a variety of reasons. Foremost among them is that it provides a convenient way to seek out the subtleties across the entire collection. Squares also are symmetrical and fiercely balanced, which seems a good contrast to the wide range of chaotic, changing cloud and sky forms. Squares really require me to compose, because after all the camera (Nikon D300 or D50) takes pictures in rectangular formats. As for color, I've tried to stay as true as possible to the experience of the original moment that I photographed -- when gradations are subtle, this is of course a huge technical challenge. Prior to living in the Berkshires, I'd thought that the pastel and sometimes quite intense colors of landscape paintings from the Hudson River School were inventive fictions -- but now as a result of this photo project I see that those 19th Century painters were often rather accurately depicting the humidity, the air qualities, and the lighting that is so common here in New England's mountains.
The process: The images grouped together here were selected from a full series that includes about 300 images, almost all created in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts and surrounding New England sites over the last couple of years. Mainly they result from taking my camera everywhere, and looking at the sky a lot.
I hope you enjoy the series. :)
2 responses
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Tom Mertens gave props (27 Sep 2009):
Great essay and photos!
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Gregory Scheckler said (28 Sep 2009):
Thanks Tom, glad you liked it!
