HDR Photography
See that little camper, beneath the streetlight, near the center of the image? Though I know it’s most likely the headquarters for a construction project, I like to imagine it’s the kind of “humble abode with dramatic view” that serves as the home of some loner protagonist (see TRON: Legacy and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.)
After a teaser from the climb up on Friday, here is the full view from the top of Mohonk’s Skytop. This high-resolution panorama is definitely worth clicking through to Flickr for the full-sized version. There’s a lot here: the hotel and its namesake lake, but also the trails and conserved forest space around it. The water retention pond in the foreground is the semi-secret reason for Mohonk’s continued existence: though there were a variety of all-wood structures like Mohonk in the past, most have burned down over the years. This is the water source for the Mountain House’s fire suppression system, which was installed early and has preserved the structure through tribulations.
If that picture of Skytop from last week sparked the question, “What does the view look like from the top?” I’ll meet you halfway; this is the view from the climb up. (The rest of the view will come Monday.)
That cliff face exploding from the trees is part of the Shawangunk Range of mountains, home of Mohonk Mountain House.
Light trails from (a) vehicles leaving a concert at Equus Run Vineyards and (b) cruising along the nearby highway might imply some connection between the two, but years of renting the summer cottage at the left side of this picture has taught us the truth: it’s a surprisingly long drive down back-country roads to reach that interstate.
Why save RAW camera outputs from (in this case) six years ago? Digital photography is a rapidly advancing field, and the advent of machine-learning-based noise reduction techniques has completely changed what sorts of images are salvageable. This lovely shot of Berkeley’s fire trails and tall (but invasive) eucalyptus trees stayed in the “unusable” pile for half a decade because I took it freehand, just after sunset, before I deployed my tripod—resulting in an ISO 4500 image from my old D7000 that was just too noisy. Topaz’s latest filters solved that and now this photo can take me back to my California sabbatical.
Moving to downtown Hartford, Connecticut placed this view just outside my window. I used to look across the city to Travelers Tower (the illuminated building at right) from my dorm room at Trinity College; 15 years later, I realize it shone like a beacon because it was being actively lit from nearby rooftops. Perhaps that’s a good lesson for life: the achievements that stand out don’t do so by accident, but because of conscious effort.
Reviewing my street photography from last November’s trip to Dublin, I was interested to find this set of three otherwise-unrelated images in which the sense of perspective above a busy crowd induced an element of symmetry and order.
Interstates may seem a natural part of the American landscape, but the drone’s-eye view reveals the truth of how highways were laid atop the earlier landscape. I like the convergence of the headlights along both the country road and I-64, like two different eras running to a shared future.
Skytop overlooks Mohonk Mountain House. Though built as a stone replacement for a wooden forest fire watch tower that (ironically) burned down, today it mostly serves as an end-point for a relaxing afternoon hike. As any good landscape photographer will tell you, human figures it your shot helps to provide a sense of scale. Do those figures look tiny enough?
Last Wednesday, I showed you the light trails of concertgoers leaving Equus Run Vineyards. Today, I bring you a bird’s eye view of the same moments. In the distance, Margaux is quiet for the evening; in the midground, car headlights bounce off the grapes; in the foreground, light trails highlight the bridge and the road through the trees.
These bright oranges around the quad last fall marked the formal inauguration of St. Lawrence’s latest president, Kathryn A. Morris.
The line where the crown of trees around Lake Mohonk gives way to the much-farther-away trees of the valley beyond looks like the sort of trompe-l’œil that might, these days, be generated by a glitchy machine learning algorithm. In this case, however, it’s just down to the unique mountaintop-lake location of Mohonk Mountain House
Equus Run Vineyard holds summer concerts, using the ample space available among the vines.
Our little cottage is across the street; after listening to the concert, we got a secondary show watching concertgoers depart.
Legend Mary Chapin Carpenter was playing, so the line continued for quite a while.
Colton, New York’s hydroelectric dam brings together dark, deep, deceptively passive water on one side and a raging torrent on the other. It’s perhaps a useful metaphor for the experience of preparing to leave a place one has lived for a decade. Visiting sites like this is also a reminder that sometimes I avoid exploring the interesting places near me until I’m preparing to leave the area; something analogous happened near the end of my sabbatical.
Tranquil summer fields beneath a vividly hued sky make for a perfect Kentucky landscape.
Decaseconds 