Though the winter oak savanna of Fullersburg Woods is a busy mess of trees, grass, and snow, the horizontal Rayleigh-scattering-blue shadows of the riverbanks add large-scale structure to the landscape.
Canada Geese from Above
Canada geese clustered around the newly restructured Salt Creek through Fullersburg Woods form an array of little dots and dot-pairs: sitting geese form single blobs, while standing geese make for a dot-pair from a goose and their shadow. It occurs to me that I might analyze the distribution between the two to understand flock dynamics if I weren’t the particular kind of scientist I am.
Hot Jumping
Way back when the Sun was inescapable, a pack crowd baked in UV radiation while watching CSI Greenwich.
Snow Off of Cook
A sudden morning snow storm followed by incongruously warm day led to an odd quick-melting layer of snow that fanned off of rooftops like the blast visible in the distance.
Night Snow Plow
During the Northeast’s last great storm, I ventured out with my camera to document Hartford’s response and the stillness of the city beneath a layer of sound-absorbing snow.
All the Kinds of Evening Light in Hartford
Cool Rayleigh-scattered blue light, warm also-Rayleigh-scattered sunset light, clean white LEDs reflecting off of snow, deep orange sodium lights—there’s every option visible from above Trinity College’s campus.
Date Palms in the Rain
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.
Roof of Clement
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.
Under Arches, ‘Neath Snow
Big winter storms make for salty, chaotic snow piles alongside the symmetrical Neo-Gothic architecture of Hartford’s Trinity College.
Mohonk Boats, Day and Night
From “open for business” to “sleeping on the dock,” Mohonk Mountain House’s boats present lovely repeating patterns.
Summer Job
As summer jobs go, lifeguarding on Lake Mohonk seems like a pretty good one.
Super Cold Morning
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.
Oak Savanna in the Shadow of Towers
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?
Dead Tree in New Prairie in Winter
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.
Rebuilding the Palm Plantation
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.
Decaseconds 