Quintessential Vermont View

There is a story behind this shot. Here’s the short version…

About thirty years ago, as a designer, I had to create a series of travel brochures for a tour company. And I was provided with the images to use by the client. Mostly they were pretty mediocre. But… didn’t have much of a choice, so made do. – I did go out and reshoot as many as possible myself, but geography and timing (and budget) limited what I could do.

The cover of the New England brochure had a shot of these particular church steeples in the fall, but… Had an ugly dead tree branch right in the middle of the shot. And this was all way before Photoshop and even PCs. So I was forced to go ahead and use the poor shot. All I knew was that the shot came from the Vermont Department of Tourism & Marketing.

Flash forward to early the following fall and a family camping trip up to Vermont. We made it a game to find the exact location where the shot was taken (so I could recreate – it without the branch). Remember, this was way before Google and GPS… After surveying several small towns in eastern Vermont, we found It was in the village of Bradford (about two-thirds of the way up the state along the Connecticut River). Next step was to find exactly the angle that the original shot was taken.

After driving around the churches (both on Main St - rt 5), And looking for the high vantage point, we found that it was taken from up the hill a bit on street parallel to Main. But there was one problem: It was over twenty years since the original picture was taken… and trees had grown up blocking where the shot was taken from… Plus it was a grey rainy day, but at least the rain had stopped…

So, of course, I did the next best thing – I climbed up a tree (to see if I could find an opening to get a view). At twenty-some feet up I shot a couple rolls, but not very exciting - too grey. Was on my way back down, when the sun suddenly broke through!

Fantastic light on the steeples, with the dark receding storm behind… but out of film… So I yelled down to one of my daughters, who threw me up a couple more rolls! This is one of the images from that very memorable day. I didn’t get to exactly replicate the original shot, but did get a few really cool shots!…

PS: I must acknowledge my longsuffering wife and three daughters who patiently (okay maybe somewhat IMpatiently) went along for the ride…

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