When the perfect blanket of snow is gone and mid-spring is grimy and gritty, I kind of miss the winter.
Author: adohertyh
Melting Landscape
When the crust of winter slides off the landscape, the points and lines of the resting geometry beneath are exposed on foggy days like these. In Duchess County, where Connecticut meets New York, the density of the post-winter effect is damp. It has its own beauty, apart from snow-blasted winters or verdant summers. (And by contrast, this “melt season” represents a major chunk of the North Country’s spring attitude.)
Visit the Sheep
A bucolic vision of the North country: a field of munching sheep, a barn and silo in the distance, a stand of trees, a simple fence, and a gentle brook. Spring is charming when it finally arrives.
Knight
This frozen moment of energy and will and concentration captures Lillie Keenan in the Grand Prix at the 2013 Fairfield County Hunt Club June Benefit Horse Show. Though it’s the incredible 2-meter jumps that really capture the attention in these events, for my moment, it’s the rocket acceleration leading up to a jump that makes for far more drama.
Come On, Street!
Having been outside the crazy-sphere of city life for a year now, I like looking back on the outrageous geometries that San Francisco calls reasonable. (I’m guessing the number of patches are repairs to that very steep street is a testament that road crews are just as uninterested in climbing it as the average pedestrian.) It’s really not surprising that so many classic movies take place in San Francisco: drama and strangeness is built right into its structure.
New England Summer
The passage of time and the seasons is a common theme on Decaseconds. As the Northeast struggles out of winter and into spring, I wanted to spotlight some fundamentally “summer in New England”-ish images.
Boston in early summer hasn’t yet become miserable and sweaty yet, and is instead a sea of crisp flags and bright flowers and blue skies. At Longwood Cricket Club, the New England of the twentieth century is preserved.
Inside that club, on the porch above the immaculate grass tennis courts, is the perfect place for a frosty chocolate milkshake and a buttery roll filled with lobster meat. New England prep at its finest.
And just outside Boston is Humarock, this charming seaside community of even more flags and sea grasses and ocean-smoothed rocks. The American flag has never looked so good.
Sharing
Waking up early on a cold morning can be tough, but riders never seem to have trouble getting up for a show. (Caffeine seems to help!) I loved the moment of calm and intimacy between horse and rider in this particular image, and the comfort it conveys.
The combination of chestnut horse and bright red Coke can also goes a long way to making the scarlet and brown St. Lawrence color scheme appealing.
Winter Ninjas
Spring may be here, but it was still 7ºF when I awoke this morning. Thinking back to the coldest I’ve ever been (and the appropriately Canadian/ninja response), this image seemed appropriate to convey the feeling of “spring” in the north.
Helping Out on the Farm
The narrow depth of field exaggerates an image that flashed past me in an instant while we traveled: a few children, playing in the crunchy remains of winter outside a barn. Ignoring the safety orange hat and the electrical conduit traveling up the side of the barn, and this seems like an image that could have come from any point in the past 150 years.
Highway: Time-Resolved
After dark on an empty stretch of highway, the reflective signs become hypnotic.
Abandoned or Snowed In?
Traveling through the Adirondacks means passing the semi-abandoned cabins that dot the roads. I particularly liked the image of a basketball hoop hanging above a driveway entombed in three feet of snow.
Eden Rain
Safari is South Africa is already a lovely experience, but the sense of interacting with Nature one feels on an afternoon, just after a rainstorm with the air filled with petrichor, is superlative.
I felt like a single image couldn’t capture the feeling; the damp darkness of a rainy day is better conveyed in this acacia.
Capital and Canal
The Canadian Capital has this charming, European flair to it in the winter. Between the stone walls, steep hills, and canal locks (not to mention the bridge), I’m left waiting for a sophisticated spy thriller to begin.
Span Aside
This photograph is a double-case of finding interesting details by looking away from the obvious. On one hand, this subtler image was captured opposite an intense sunset over San Francisco. The color palette is heavy with pastels, but accented with a few harsh reds from Oakland in the distance. In the image itself, there’s a tiny building under the right-hand span of the bridge. Seeing something so (let’s say) adorably sized next to something so dominant and enormous makes for a charming contrast.
Ottawa Dredd
Continuing on the Ottawa theme, today’s image is much farther to the other end of the “clean——dirt” spectrum than my last. There’s something about the grimy copper colors of the bridge, the salty road, and the slushy sidewalk that speak to an alternate-reality, Judge-Dredd-esque, cyberpunky Canada.
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