Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Urban

At Digital Photo School, this week's assignment is "in the city".

Luckily, I was in Concord, NH today for the New Hampshire Weavers Guild meeting. Afterward I ran errands in town, and snapped a few pictures for the assignment.

Concord is the state capital of New Hampshire, so I'm counting it as a city - even though that might be a stretch. The population is something like 43,000 people. It's not much bigger than Portsmouth, which is much closer to my house.

The NH State House was constructed from 1816-1818. Being frugal Yankees, the NH legislature still meets in the original chambers - the oldest original chambers still used for legislative meetings in the US.

The NH House of Representatives has 400 members, making it the third largest English-speaking legislative body in the world. (We are a small state - each representative represents about 3200 people.) The state reps get a small stipend (about $200), but are basically volunteers.


The granite used to construct the statehouse is from the Swenson Granite quarries north of Concord. The side steps and mailbox post at our house are also from Swenson Granite.

The dome is made of steel and covered with 16.5 pounds of gold leaf.


Driving down Main Street



Underpass


Beautiful Lamp Posts

Patterns


I can tell that these photo school assignments are affecting my photography in a good way. Driving around town today, I was surprised to find things that seemed beautiful or interesting to my eye. The pictures that I thought would be good, as I drove toward Concord this morning, were really boring and didn't make the cut. (Such high standards I have for this blog, eh?)

I secretly hope the assignments turn back toward something textile related....although I guess I could have walked around and taken pictures of any interesting textiles I found in Concord. Maybe next time!

4 comments:

charlotte said...

Reading your blog let's me travel while sitting still in front of the PC! Concord looks like a city with an amiable atmosphere. You do your photo assignments really well!

Theresa said...

Thank you for the pics! Great job. I have only scooted through Concord NH once and looking at those photos, I wish I had stopped and spent some time.

bspinner said...

Great job on the pictures. My favorite is the 58 Chevy yellow pick up. We had a 57 Chevy pick up on our farm when I was growing up. Thanks for sharing your pictures of Concord. Nice city.

Life Looms Large said...

Thanks for commenting on my photography assignment!!

I'm impressed that you can tell the year of the truck!!! That photo was definitely one of the pleasant surprises when I checked out what was on the camera!! I was just trying to get a good picture of the main street - while I was driving (gulp). I was lucky to have such a photogenic vehicle right near me....it definitely made the picture better!

Sue