HDR Photography
Downtown Hartford jumps into view like a cliff of buildings, connected to the riverside interstate (at least for now) by a tunnel beneath Hartford Public Library (still lit with orange sodium vapor lamps, see right.) Traveling through that tunnel and out into the city proper always feels a little like Batman emerging from the Batcave, if I’m honest.
From a circa-2008 view to the present day—just before the construction fences came down—we see the progression of LSC through time.
Far away over Frog Hollow, the towers of Trinity College jut out from the autumn foliage.
Looking back for images of Trinity’s Life Science Center (LSC) prior to some recent renovations in the area, I found a set of early digital camera pictures I’d taken that happened to form the components for a panorama. The idea of compositing images to a panorama wasn’t one that entered my brain back in 2008, and yet I had chanced into capturing just the right combination to do so 16 years later.
A bird’s eye view can shrink the impact of many human-made objects, but Calder’s “Stegosaurus” (1973) jumps from the foreground not only not only for its color, but also for the way in which it breaks the symmetry of the square in front of Hartford’s City Hall.
Halloween season brings the most New-England-y aesthetics to New England, and nowhere more than in a city park. The foliage adds a perfect contrast to blue-hour colors, and the park lights (as in the foreground) highlight the evening walkers.
Summer efforts brought a beautifully pristine soccer field to life at Trinity. From above, I appreciate even more the gentle slope of the hills that arranges the rest of campus in the background. The little chimneys of Northam peak up on the left side of the image in a way I find particularly appealing.
This dense assemblage of dormitories at Trinity College was long referred to as the “concrete jungle”, but it’s now getting a major upgrade and the majority of the concrete for which it was named is missing. Will it return? I’ll be curious to find out!
Summer construction is bringing new buildings to Trinity—in this case, a much-needed update to the fitness center. These are the kinds of drone shots that are moderately interesting in the moment and downright fascinating in futures years, once the campus stands permanently changed.
New drone-facilitated angles and new views combine sights, like Northam Hall and Hartford beyond it, that I never thought I’d be able to combine in a single image.
A great delight of moving to Hartford was finding myself with morning views that excite and motivate me. Even when the sky itself is flat, the fog in the valley provides a smoothly varying topography to contrast the angular structure of the skyline.
This block of neo-gothic dormitories at Trinity College was, I discovered last week, not just the place where I spent several of my own years; it was also home to my father-in-law 40 years earlier.
This is a sight I haven’t seen since I lived in the Bay Area: a layer of low-lying clouds caused by a temperature inversion that look remarkably like the marine layer. Though I know the origins aren’t the same in the Central Valley of Connecticut, that mix of perfectly clear sky and rolling clouds brought me back in time and made rising at dawn worth it.
Students have returned to campus and summer winds to a close; our campus is so green and full of life!
The deep artificial canyon between the two buildings of 55 Elm is deeply shadowed as late afternoon shades into evening.
Decaseconds 