HDR Photography
Students hike the cliffside where geological formations collide. On July 4th, let me compose an overly-ornate sentence about the season and the nation.
“Summer hiking in the North Country of America, at the edge of the Adirondacks: stripes of chlorophyll and aluminosilicate and tanninful water.”
If this week on Decaseconds has had a theme, it has been structures suspended over water at sunset. It has also been a week of long-exposure shots that live up to the site’s title. Hoards of gulls riding on the waves are reduced to weird ghost-blurs in the foreground of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Yerba Buena, and the Port of Oakland.
Adirondack-meets-elven style in this bridge over the Grasse River. The lights seem inviting; that’s probably appropriate, given that this is the bridge connecting SUNY Canton’s campus with the town proper. (I’ve explored the connection from another angle in the past.)
Though the architectural style isn’t as apparent from this shot, I love the sense of multiple pathways vanishing to infinity: down the river or across the bridge. So many places to go and things to explore. (And some proper long exposure to merit this website’s name.)
Walking by Grasse River under a tree-shaded path sounds romantic. As overtly charming as the sunset hour can be, I find that I prefer the photographic version; there are a lot fewer mosquitoes.
Campus is (mostly) empty. The longboards and snowboards and ancient bikes are packed away. Any motion grabs attention—even shadows and lens flare.
Heritage Park (on the left of this image) on the Grasse River in Canton came into existence through the efforts of many people in the community. Yesterday evening, a fundraising event was held to support those efforts. Nature turned up in full display to support the festival.
Summer is here! Chlorophyll-generation reactions abound in leaf and stem; the summer solstice is grand. In a countryside that seems forbidding during the winter months, warm weather changes the attitude of the land. Get out and explore!
After all of these summer images, it’s time for something completely different from the Berkshires.
The perfect frame appears: trees on either side, gentle river in the distance, and a path to the intersection between them. Canton homes are just around the corner. Civilization can wait. Skinny Bob Ross trees are welcoming the path and the river together. Happy little ferns!
Deep in winter and summer, New England becomes monochromatic (white and green, respectively). Late fall is different; “stick season” has a broad, desaturated array of hues that stretch across the landscape.
The North Country has rough, glacier-hewn landscapes and a culture of independence. How this area is understood and depicted is often a matter of choice on the part of the photographer. Case in point: the path of the Grasse River, on its way to the the St. Lawrence Seaway. Look at all that beautiful early-spring nature!
But cropping can deceive: if I pan the camera to the right, you see a much different image. The Grasse River travels through downtown Canton, past parking lots and apartment complexes. I think I might prefer the more honest juxtaposition.
La Jolla Shores is a righteous beach: good swimming, okay surfing (I’m told), and excellent Southern California sights. As mid-twentieth-century architecture has grown on me, I’ve even come to appreciate the homes and UC buildings overlooking the beach—but what must it have been like to visit here 100 years ago?
This Adirondack-y bridge connects SUNY Canton’s campus to town across a branch of the Grasse River. The photograph is a metaphor for the college experience: being a little apart from the regular world, in a place that’s just a bit magical. On one side of the bridge are normal houses, normal roads, normal life; across the bridge is a gently lit path through the woods. Very Rivendell-esque?
The North Country, like many rural places in America, has rugged expanses of nature abutting everyday locations. Example: the Buccaneer Lounge has this marvelous array of rapids just past its charming array of picnic tables.
Visiting nearby Canada means looking at a mirror-version of the United States, reflected across the border. Like looking in a mirror, everything is still recognizable. Up is still up. Down is still down. But the brands and the metric units and the nationalism is different. Does looking in the reflection of Ottawa in the Shaw Centre reverse the transformation?
An added bonus: this is technically a self-portrait, with my tiny self down in the foreground.
Decaseconds 