HDR Photography
The North Country is an unforgiving place during most of the year, but never more than during the depths of winter. Our first snow arrived last week, and I looked back through my photographs from last winter. The transition from summer is renders the landscape nearly unrecognizable.
A central theme to my photography is visualizing the progressive gradient from dense urban areas to natural settings. Some of my favorite images are cases where that gradient is particularly abrupt or unexpected. Until I began flying quadcopters, I didn’t expect that I’d be able to find the same transitions in the North Country, with its much more homogeneous rural structure. Here in Canton, however, the juxtaposition of apartment towers, shops, and bridges with forests, islands, and farmland creates a similar effect. The North Country supports this cultural difference between folks who live “in the village” and those who live “out of the village”.
Not quite as dramatic as the upper falls. It’s hard to call them “falls” at all. There is a certain tranquility to them.
A whole new point of view on the shadows of Gunnison Chapel across the quad. Much like my last post, I love the intentional alignments of the designs.
When St. Lawrence’s newest dorm, Kirk Douglas Hall, was designed, its dramatic glass bridge was brought into alignment with the Avenue of the Elms and gap between Richardson Hall and Gunnison Chapel. When the sun rises over the North Country landscape, I am drawn to the focused geometry of the landscape. (And glad I awoke to fly my quadcopter.)
The rise of an almost-full moon, framed between branches. Autumn arrives early in the North Country.
The falls themselves aren’t the most impressive in the area but the cliffs surrounding them were really something.
The weekend marked a Hunter’s supermoon—one that also coincided with the moon rising along the axis of Main Street in Canton, New York, as well as coinciding with the local period of peak foliage. Can one small town handle all of those events? My quadcopter and I were on hand to investigate. From 100 meters up, Main Street looked just about perfect. You can spot the awning of the Chinese restaurant and the movie theater that I’ve photographed previously, but the same structures take new meanings.
It may be the fall everywhere else, but here in the South it still feels like summer.
Rural college campuses have components I’d never considered: rivers and boathouses and forests. The arrival of (slightly) colder weather means the canoes and kayaks will be closed away for the winter. Autumn, here we go!
Autumn in the Northeast has its particular look and feel, but it comes quite a bit earlier to the North Country than to elsewhere. Canton, New York is looking its most charming and just over the horizon, Ontario, CA is doing the same.
As much as I liked to joke that the Bay Area only had a single season, I have to admit that if you looked for it you could find fall.
The intersection of Hearst and Euclid was an everyday sight (and site for lunch) during graduate school. Just as daytime settings become otherworldly by night, chronological distance from those days have made the setting alien and exciting. How could this place ever have seemed normal?
My background as a chemist, rather than a biologist, is most apparent when words to describe my environment fail me. I can discuss fall colors and grassy areas near streams, and I understand the molecules involved in producing both structures at the microscopic level, but I’m bereft of the ability to precisely identify the transition occurring here.
Decaseconds 