I submitted five pictures to the Head in the Clouds Amherst 2025 wall calendar and one was selected for April! This picture was taken just across the street from where I live, at the edge of the UMass Amherst campus looking toward Orchard Hill at sunrise. The picture was actually taken on December 15. My original caption was, “This photo shows the southern-most point of the ecliptic, when the sun appears to rise behind Orchard Hill. The hill causes our winter sunrise to be an hour later than local sunrise.” Since they wanted to use the photo for April, I instead proposed using a haiku from my 2013 chapbook senokulvitre about sakura buds. You can purchase copies of the calendar for $22.
Many years ago, I got interested in photography. For a brief time, I dreamed of being a wildlife photographer. Using a 35mm single-lens reflex camera, I tried taking lots of pictures using Kodachrome and got some really nice pictures. But relatively quickly, I discovered the difference between an amateur photographer and one who can take professional, magazine-cover-quality photos. I might walk by a field, spot a deer in the field, and get a great picture. But a professional would say, “This picture is OK, but the weather is all wrong.” So they’d come back day after day until the weather was just right and then say, “The lighting is wrong at this time of year.” Then they’d come back year after year until the weather and lighting were perfect, get an even better picture, and then say, “Now the deer needs to be facing the other direction.” I had no-where near the level of patience and persistence to get cover-quality picture photos. That said, I learned a lot about photography and composition.
I still like to take pictures — especially now that, with a digital workflow, you can take as many pictures as you want. Working with Kodachrome was very limiting: you needed to use a tripod (because the films were very slow), the film was expensive, the processing was even more expensive, and then getting a photo printed was even more expensive.
I really liked the other pictures I had submitted as well, so here they are.
This was where the playground of my children’s elementary school was, before the town short-sightedly closed it down.
This is the millpond in Easthampton. I liked the reflections in the water.
This sunken road is on the way to Hawley Bog.
This abandoned trolley line is in the Arcadia Wildlife Refuge in Easthampton.
I’ll never be a professional photographer, but its still fun to take pictures.