adohertyh

Three Scenes from the Dairy Princess Festival

2014-Jun-092014-Jun-09 adohertyh1 Comment

This weekend marked the crowning of a new Dairy Princess in Canton, New York, and with that crowning came a variety of festivities. A location scout for a charming movie about a small-town baseball team with moxie would have been hard-pressed to find a better vision of classic America. While eating an ice cream cone taller than my head and avoiding children running at full tilt, I had a chance to put my 35 mm prime lens to good use. I present three of my shots from the evening.

Ubiquitous food stands offer what you’re craving—as long as that includes sugar, salt, grease, potatoes, and caffeine.

There were also, of course, the quiet asides between family members in quasi-privacy. I really liked the way that this side-conversation was also physically away from the lights (and crowds), even if it did push my poor APS-C sensor to its limits.

And what kind of American festivities would be complete without some live music?

Old Barn, New Summer

2014-Jun-06 adohertyhLeave a comment

When barns are no longer needed, they so rarely seem to be torn down. Rather, they sink slowly back into the earth, like tree stumps. New life is bursting forth around an old barn, and it does start to seem like just another feature of the natural landscape.

It’s been strange to see the degree to which the seasons and cycles of the Northeast have started to influence my photography. I don’t know that I thought as much about the passage of time and the seasons when I was in California with its nearly-unchanging conditions (pick between rainy or dry, but that’s about it.) Doing landscape photography in a place with drastic seasonal swings makes me more aware of them than ever before.

Berkeley Still Life

2014-Jun-04 adohertyh2 Comments

Berkeley is a pretty surreal place; as I process that, I thought my 400th post on Decaseconds might be a great time to really show it. The yellows of the birch tree are so sharp on a foggy fall morning, amid the hard, stained concrete of the past and the high-tech Li Ka Shing Building (one of my first-ever posts) materials. Visual contrast, both literal and metaphorical, align with the conceptual contrast of a place that prides itself on being countercultural while also being the birthplace of many of the technologies and ideas that make our modern culture possible.

Deer Play

2014-Jun-02 adohertyhLeave a comment

That perfect, after-dinner dusk moment: the deer (and the bugs) are out to play, and everything is quiet in the last un-Rayleigh-scattered rays of sunlight. Among the weathered fenceposts and glacier-carved rocks, deer are out to play. I’m interested by the idea that children play, and animals play, but the idea of “play” as something that adult humans do takes on a different meaning in the context of adult human culture. The concept of responsibility brings with it a parallel idea that to play is to behave irresponsibly, doesn’t it?

But don’t dwell on that. The sunset is enchanting and the deer are having fun. I will, too.

Take a Break (Abandoned)

2014-May-30 adohertyhLeave a comment

During our time in Zulu Nyala (in eastern South Africa), we visited the set where the film “I Dreamed of Africa” was shot. Since the movie was finished, the area has been used for some other purposes, but it’s largely intact (if abandoned) in the state it was when it was last used. The benches and chairs are welcoming, even amid the overgrown grass, but in places you find the strange artifacts of the set’s true purpose. One-way mirrors and weird hiding-places for cameras are all over the place.

Sunset and Lazy River

2014-May-28 adohertyh2 Comments

When I discuss HDR photography, I usually borrow the words of Trey Ratcliff and the idea of better capturing a scene as the human mind perceives it. In the case of this particular sunset over the Grasse River (the North Country at its prettiest), however, I feel like HDR has captured even more than my eye could perceive at the moment I took the picture. This is not only because of the increased dynamic range, but also the resulting detail in the trees by the bank and in the wee islands and rocks. I was too distracted by the intensity of the sun when I took the original image to spend time on the details of the scene, but now I’m glad to be able to look back to those details to really place myself in that moment.

A Break for Infrastructure

2014-May-26 adohertyh2 Comments

Forests and farms and “small”/”close” settings seem so common in the North Country; when the landscape opens to reveal wide bands of high-voltage lines amid the trees and streams, I’m always a bit surprised.

Summer Sunset Farm

2014-May-23 adohertyh5 Comments

On the quiet and winter-crushed roads outside of town, the density of nuclear mosquitoes skyrockets when summer finally arrives. Standing on the edge of a glacier-scared field, under the dome of clouds, and watching the thermonuclear fireball of our star vanish over the horizon, it’s easy to feel small. But if science allows me to understand these phenomena and my place in the world, the nature of what an image of that world means changes.

Parker And I Have An Understanding

2014-May-21 adohertyh4 Comments

This charming warmblood, Winter Park (“Parker,” to his friends) was at St. Lawrence’s stables for a show this weekend. Seeing a gray bathed in light, with the gentle, weathered woods of the stall surrounding him, was quite (pardon the cliché) an experience.

Halloween in April

2014-May-19 adohertyhLeave a comment

There’s something about a red sky and an abandoned house that seems creepy and Halloween-esque, even when it’s April. Maybe it’s another case of Canton’s Lynchian vibes.

Tiny Doors to Knowledge

2014-May-16 adohertyhLeave a comment

On a cloudy day, the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh has a softness to its stone exterior. (Its interior, as I’ve shown in the past, is equally stunning.) The sense of scale to the image (and the distortion of the wide-angle lens) can play tricks on your mind, making the whole scene seem smaller than it really is. To get a feel for the imposing/soft contradiction, concentrate on those improbably small revolving doors. They must be human-sized, right?

Self Portrait 2014

2014-May-14 adohertyh2 Comments

I often find myself using a timer in place of a cable release to remove camera shake on long-exposure shots—why not use that time for a bit of a “landscape self-portrait,” too? At the end of a long winter, in the dark of night, when it seemed that cold and precipitation dominate forever, my own presence in the environment and in reality is ghostly and insubstantial.

Four Images of Fermilab Prairie

2014-May-12 adohertyhLeave a comment

For 28 years, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois was the site of the now-dormant Tevatron particle accelerator. For three summers during high school and college, I worked in the archives there, helping to catalogue, maintain, and restore the physical history of the place. (Given the time frame of today’s pictures—the early 2000’s—you’ll forgive the poor image quality.) I wanted to share a few images of the place (in particular, its enormous swaths of restored prairie) and try to convey to you the everyday feel of the place.

Perhaps the most salient feature of the lab is the prairie itself. Other than a berm over the accelerator, a few tangential buildings, and the main complex, the vast majority of the 6,800-acre site is natural midwestern landscape, dotted with disused farms and watched over by birds of prey.

The reason for the old farms and strange buildings is linked to the provenance of Fermilab: in the early 1960s, towns competed to be the site of the latest and greatest national lab. The town of Weston, Illinois won the honor, and in doing so, ceased to exist. The residents were bought out (by the choice of their village board) and the remnants of the village still exist on site as ancillary buildings (including the archives, where I worked.)

The farmland was largely restored to prairie, and the unique buildings of the lab were assembled. Among the fascinating sights at the lab are these Shinto-influenced power lines, designed by the lab’s first director, R.R. Wilson. (He was also responsible for the lab being finished on-time and under-budget.)

Wilson Hall, seen in the distance of this landscape, was named in his honor. Here you can see some of the lab facilities proper, including a beamline on the left of the image.

A Spring Campus Panorama

2014-May-11 adohertyhLeave a comment

On Mother’s Day, the North Country feels alive and warm and breezy. Smells of vegetation and fresh earth and coniferous trees flood the air. A panorama of life restored to campus (even as it quiets down for the end of the school year) seemed highly appropriate.

Snow Is Gone

2014-May-09 adohertyh4 Comments

Spring is late to the North Country, and though the snow is gone and the homes have (mostly) survived, plant life hasn’t yet surpassed the “first hints of green grass” level. There’s nonetheless a certain crunchy, dusty beauty to the sunset now—one that is nicely offset by the glossy reflections from window panes.