Hundred and Eighty Degrees of Sky
Redding Connecticut
by James Nicoloro
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About the Book
My project, Hundred and Eighty Degrees of Sky, began at Lonetown Farm in Redding, Connecticut — a field that slowly became the center of my world. I started going there at twilight, not with a plan to make a book, but simply to see what would unfold as the day ended. Over seven years, I returned again and again, drawn by the changing light and the quiet space between day and night.
I photographed through the three stages of twilight — civil, nautical, and astronomical — watching how the colors deepened, spread, and finally disappeared. Beautiful cloud formations from the day often dissolved as the air cooled, yet sometimes the sky would hold together just long enough to reveal something extraordinary. I began to notice patterns: how light curved across the horizon, how temperature shaped color, how time itself seemed to slow.
The field sits between history and the present. To one side stands an old Revolutionary-era barn; in the distance are the same hills Mark Twain looked toward from his Stormfield estate. I often think of him seeing that same ridge as the light faded. My photographs are marked with date, time, and moon phase — small notes that anchor each image in both observation and memory.
I stand in the field, and the universe comes to me in darkness. Hard to imagine that we drift on this pale blue dot, circling our sun near the inner edge of the Milky Way’s Orion Arm, twenty-seven thousand light-years from the galactic center. And through it all, we have visitors — comets, fragments of the solar system’s first light — passing through like messengers from the beginning of time. They were born in the cold beyond the planets, where ice could survive, unlike the asteroids of the inner system, forged in heat and left dry by the newborn Sun.
Hundred and Eighty Degrees of Sky became a meditation on presence — on the act of waiting, returning, and seeing what changes. Some nights are vivid, others muted, but every evening carries its own quiet truth.
I photographed through the three stages of twilight — civil, nautical, and astronomical — watching how the colors deepened, spread, and finally disappeared. Beautiful cloud formations from the day often dissolved as the air cooled, yet sometimes the sky would hold together just long enough to reveal something extraordinary. I began to notice patterns: how light curved across the horizon, how temperature shaped color, how time itself seemed to slow.
The field sits between history and the present. To one side stands an old Revolutionary-era barn; in the distance are the same hills Mark Twain looked toward from his Stormfield estate. I often think of him seeing that same ridge as the light faded. My photographs are marked with date, time, and moon phase — small notes that anchor each image in both observation and memory.
I stand in the field, and the universe comes to me in darkness. Hard to imagine that we drift on this pale blue dot, circling our sun near the inner edge of the Milky Way’s Orion Arm, twenty-seven thousand light-years from the galactic center. And through it all, we have visitors — comets, fragments of the solar system’s first light — passing through like messengers from the beginning of time. They were born in the cold beyond the planets, where ice could survive, unlike the asteroids of the inner system, forged in heat and left dry by the newborn Sun.
Hundred and Eighty Degrees of Sky became a meditation on presence — on the act of waiting, returning, and seeing what changes. Some nights are vivid, others muted, but every evening carries its own quiet truth.
Features & Details
- Primary Category: Arts & Photography Books
- Additional Categories Fine Art Photography
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Project Option: 8×10 in, 20×25 cm
# of Pages: 114 -
Isbn
- Softcover: 9798295070044
- Publish Date: Oct 16, 2025
- Language English
- Keywords Environment, photography, sunset, Twilight
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About the Creator
James Nicoloro
Redding Connecticut
It seems I’ve always had a camera. Born in Arlington, Massachusetts, I earned a degree in film and television production from Montana State University. During the Vietnam War era, I served in the army; the closest I came to Hanoi was Fort Hood, Texas. From 1985 to 2009, I worked as a producer for public television at KCTS in Seattle and later at WNET in New York, where I created and directed various programs, including The Walking Tour series with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis. I am the father of five adopted children from China, and I currently reside in Redding, Connecticut.