HDR Photography
Sunsets might be a cliché subject for a landscape photograph, but the North Country’s specimens offer such glowing, striated features with such regularity that the truly exceptional examples can strain my belief in atmospheric models of cloud formation and light scattering.
Winter’s lockdown continues (it might warm up above -10ºF today!), but spring will eventually return. The footbridge to SUNY Canton will eventually be free of ice and the smallest hints of leaves will peak out from the tree branches.
Next week marks the beginning of the Spring 2019 semester. I’m shocked that it has arrived so quickly, and sure that I’ll be equally shocked when the end arrives in May; that was definitely the case last year.
On a chunky rock in the middle of the Grasse River through Canton, New York, the lack of good soil has kept the trees small and bonsai-esque.
This quiet winter evening (Christmas day, as it turns out) presented a delicate mirroring between sky and earth, broken by the presence of a single buoy.
St. Lawrence University’s campus is quiet for the moment; athletes have returned early from break but pretty much everyone else is still on winter vacation. The snow adds an extra layer of dampening.
When they return, the school will once again take on its weird ski lodge vibe.
I’ve looked across the Twin Lakes to this odd little stone tower for at least two decades, but have still never traveled over there to figure out what it is. Maybe it will stay mysterious forever.
Professionally, 2018 was a good year: my sabbatical work was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C. That came from a long time writing and a long time in this lab.
Berkeley Lab’s Frei Group was kind enough to share their space with me, and I could not have done that work without this high vacuum line. I’ve always loved the way understanding the components of a system can take a complicated image like this one and break it into understandable parts. This image, in particular, gets less odd after the realization that this is two lines, mounted back-to-back, in the same Unistrut frame.
When winter is temporarily interrupted (as it is today in Northern New York) by a sudden thaw and double aliquot of rain, the ice on the Grasse River breaks up and clusters around the rocks and islands. This path in Canton, New York has been rendered impassable by a pack of rogue ice forced between the two sets of stairs by the high water.
Spokes of major boulevard traffic stretch out from the Tour Montparnasse, golden streaks across the city. The Eiffel Tower makes a perfect vertical accompaniment to the earthbound light channels.
Christmas in the Berkshires brings a whole lot of classic, rustic sights.
The Christmas tree is glowing inside, where it’s warm.
Outside, wind tosses snow from the branches.
Though the symmetry of Notre Dame de Paris stands out from the mere mortal constructs around it, I enjoy playing the game of identifying the breaks in its symmetry. Some of those are small, like the different statues around the building. Others are more significant, like the triangle in place or an arch above the left-most set of doors.
An early winter afternoon on a Parisian street means the minimal aliquot of sunlight peaking between buildings and turning the pedestrians to silhouettes. School just let out in the 15th arrondissement and parents walk their squads of enfants home.
The tiny people at the left side of the image provide a sense of the scale for the wide face of Clare, New York’s Lampson Falls. In spite of the frothy surface, the river is placid and friendly before and after the discontinuity.
Even as deciduous trees enter their period of dormancy, a bright blue river winding its way through a wetland area can’t help but look rich and fertile. Just down stream, Lampson Falls change things up a bit.
