HDR Photography
Winter rain in Coachella Valley brings deep, somber hues to the monoculture arrays of date palms. I usually aim for depth and variety in my images, with a sense of definite space, so it’s an engaging game to depart from that and focus on a single plane and hypnotic pattern.
Like most infrastructure, a roof is something one generally ignores so long as it is functioning as expected. A heavy melt of snow, however, might call all of that into question. At least the view is good from up here.
Big winter storms make for salty, chaotic snow piles alongside the symmetrical Neo-Gothic architecture of Hartford’s Trinity College.
From “open for business” to “sleeping on the dock,” Mohonk Mountain House’s boats present lovely repeating patterns.
As summer jobs go, lifeguarding on Lake Mohonk seems like a pretty good one.
Some subzero mornings make rising from the bed nonetheless worthwhile. Billowing clouds of water vapor converting quickly to ice crystals produced this entrancing pattern, in which the plumes shifted from being lighter than the sky to darker, depending on position and density.
I’ve long been drawn to images where I could capture nature and dense urban settings in close proximity. Perhaps it’s the utopian feel of those images—if a lot of people want to live in harmony with nature, we need to pack ourselves into dense structures to do so. Does that make this just a little solarpunk?
Fullersburg Woods was the location where I captured some of my earliest Decaseconds posts (all the way back to December 27, 2011!); it was a delight to revisit the location after the nature preserve has been completely restored to the oak savanna ecosystem it originally exhibited.
Early morning sees quiet at the old construction site, where this home at the site of an old palm plantation (which had fallen into disrepair) is being renovated. I love the chaos amid the grid of palms.
A terrifying cloud (I swear, it makes sense) is the antagonist of “Nope,” and I saw echoes of that shape in this cloud above the San Jacinto Mountains and the Empire Polo Club.
This connecting courtyard between two Travelers buildings in Hartford has been blocked from foot traffic (I was shooting through a high fence), making it a strange forbidden liminal space. That the two buildings facing each other aren’t actually symmetrical—despite echoing one another—makes it feel like a sort of forbidden zone where reality has faulted somehow.
Photographing progress in the research lab can be so useful for answering that future question: “Did it really look like this last time we ran this experiment?” Our memories are imperfect, but so too is an image of a sample if one adjusts the processing settings to amplify saturation or contrast beyond reality. Sometimes, the goal of capturing something true to life overlaps with capturing something aesthetically pleasing, and then I have to share this image of freshly synthesized nanopowder clinging via static electricity to the end of a glass stirring rod.
Snow and scaffolding are each the kind of dramatic additions to a neo-gothic building that suggest the dramatic climax of a noir film will take place on its rooftop.
Passing Trinity College’s chapel on a crisp winter afternoon, I saw the nearby flag casting a dramatic shadow onto the stark white surface of the building and it was too perfect a shot to ignore.
While we’re contemplating the architecture of Clement Chemistry Building, I don’t think I’ve previously considered the way in which the dark sculptural stone sections connect together the windows on the second and third floors to make these big, tall, dramatic, dark pillars up each side of the building—almost reminiscence of the tall stained-glass windows of a cathedral.
Decaseconds 