Hotchkiss Brothers Factory Complex

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Photo courtesy of Loop.net The One That Got Away: A Lumber Mill, Some Idiots, and a Call I Don't Regret Some stories don't have a satisfying ending. This is one of them. And I've been carrying it around long enough that I just need to put it down somewhere. J and I drove out to Torrington on what should have been a straightforward documentation run in 2023. The target was the former Hotchkiss Brothers Lumber Mill on Water Street, sitting on the east bank of the Naugatuck River. We scoped it on the way in, circled the block, found our parking spot, and liked what we saw. Entry looked manageable. The building looked intact enough to be worth the effort. We were ready. We crossed through the Stop & Shop parking lot in the full summer heat, shoppers drifting past us with their carts, completely indifferent. We clambered over a wall, pushed through branches that swatted us in the face, and followed the sound of the Naugatuck moving over rocks somewhere below. The grass...
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Musa Acuminata (Banana Leaf)





Added a new lens to the camera bag recently and so far it's been a learning curve in how best to capture unique perspectives in a world of billions of images. It's been a trying experience so far in the field wielding the Canon 100mm macro lens. It definitely takes a different approach than my Sigma wide-angle lens. The results haven't been extraordinary but I wanted to try something new from another perspective. I have been shooting the same subject matter for quite some time and wanted to try something new and different. I've always been curious and quite envious of the work of various macro photographers in some of the photography blogs I read. Although some of those macro photos take quite an elaborate setup to achieve stunning results.

So far I have a lot to learn and small subjects to "model".


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