"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Gothic Revival Architecture: Church and Two Steeples

St. John’s Catholic Church, in Keeseville, New York, was erected in 1903 on the site of a relocated 1850s Baptist church. The Catholic church is an example of early twentieth century gothic revival architecture, emulating in its steeple design in particular “reach to the sky” elements that are typical of gothic churches, but also incorporating arches, stained glass, and stonework found in gothic and gothic revival styles.

The two steeples are 125 feet high, making the church an impressive building for such a small town and reflecting the growing wealth of French-Canadian residents who settled in the area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Situated as it is on a large, open plot of land, the variable colors in the churches stonework, stained glass, and copper roof look especially rich and inviting on a bright sunny day. You may notice in the photos that louvers are missing from the left steeple, but those are planned for reconstruction as the church undergoes restoration.

The last image in the gallery was previously feature here: Wordless Wednesday: Line, Circle, Arch.

Select the first photo below to view larger images in a slideshow; thanks for looking!

Summer, Fall, Winter: Three Galleries

Since rebooting Flickr last year with a couple thousand reprocessed and new photos, I keep a small portion of one eyeball cued into what gets viewed, liked, and commented on. It’s always fun to see what people are interested in, partly because I like to puzzle about different preferences, how people see the photos, what they like, and how that varies from my own perspective. There’s a certain randomness to it of course — as there is with just about everything we do on social sites, including blogs — yet in that randomness there can certainly be some found-surprises.

The three galleries below show the twenty most liked photos, which — as I assembled them for this post — realized could be organized into three seasons: summer, fall, and winter, a little sample of my photography covering three quarters of a yearly progression. New photos of spring buds are just a few weeks away, at which time this top twenty will likely drop off the Flickr stats page, so I thought I would capture the current crop and share them here.

Many of the photos in these galleries have appeared on this site before, but some have not. If you would like to see the full Flickr albums the photos came from, here are the links.

Georgia: Grant Park Atlanta Fall Color
New York: Ausable Chasm
New York: Northern Landscapes
New York: Whiteface Mountain Region
New York: Winter Scenes

Thanks for reading and taking a look!





Winter Scenes: After the Storm (Set 3 of 3)

From the essay “House-Warming” in Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau:

“The snow had already covered the ground … and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me….”

“At length the winter set in in good earnest … and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then.”

The gallery below contains the last of three sets of photos I took in the days following a snowstorm in northern New York.

The previous sets in this series are here:

Winter Scenes: After the Storm (Set 2 of 3)

Winter Scenes: After the Storm (Set 1 of 3)

Enjoy the photos!

Bye for now……………….. ๐Ÿ™‚

Winter Scenes: After the Storm (Set 2 of 3)

From The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones by Alfred Watkins:

“The winter, with its light of low elevation, and with an absence of leaves, is by far the best season, and the lovely December day โ€ฆ gave an opportunity long hoped for.”

“[The] absence of leaves on trees, winter is by far the best time of year for a certain type of explorationโ€ฆ.  Sun shining on one side and very low down is an ideal condition.”

The gallery below contains the second of three sets of photos I took in the days following a snowstorm in northern New York.

The first set in this series is here: Winter Scenes: After the Storm (Set 1 of 3).

The irresistible Ford truck partly buried in the snow made an earlier appearance on this site, in a different season, here: Before and After: Swamp Things.

Thanks for taking a look!