I like the way this picture captures the inviting calm of sleepy boats and an open boathouse in the evening. Perhaps it reminds me of a castle with a moat, but I find an odd sense of safety in buildings built over water.
Category: New York
Life Preserver View
The “S.L.U.” on this life preserver is a good reminder that St. Lawrence University runs Camp Canaras. Still, I’m not sure it was too necessary on this chilly spring night—Lake Saranac was not overly populated.
Lodge After Dinner
The main lodge of St. Lawrence’s Camp Canaras so often seems to be abandoned after dinner for the cabins, libraries, and boat houses. In the current times, my brain reads the setting as just a bit apocalyptic.
Three Boats
The little sailboats might have been in the water of Saranac Lake in the late spring, but the Adirondack weather was not convincing anyone to head out into the evening with one.
Spring Cloud Reflections
Spring Break officially ended at St. Lawrence University today, but the students haven’t returned to campus. We’ve started remote learning. The structures of campus look the same but feel different when they’re mostly empty.
Chimney Embers
Glowing embers rising from the chimney of a cozy cabin may look charming, but I can’t recommend it. Cabins tend to be less cozy when the roof is on fire.
Views from a Mostly Empty Campus
Our campus’s oldest building (Richardson Hall, just below) and its newest building (Kirk Douglas Hall, farther down) match with a certain degree of symmetry, but while the older building’s symmetry is pretty flawless, the newer building adds wings and windows that disrupt the pattern.
They Say Herring Cole Is Haunted
Haunted buildings on St. Lawrence’s campus seem all the creepier now that most students have been sent home for remote learning.
Canaras Spring Bench
The temperature is rising and ice is melting and after the gritty, dirty snow finally vanishes, spring will come to the Adirondacks.
Two Bridges
I’m aware that this picture technically contains three bridges, but it is nonetheless an image of the Two Bridges neighborhood just after sunrise. There are so many sunset pictures of New York; I think the dearth of morning shots is correlated with the sleep schedule of the average photographer.
Fields of St. Lawrence
Battling the breezes of late summer above the fallow fields of the North Country, this image might appear to be capturing the edge of a farm. In fact, this is the southeastern reach of St. Lawrence University’s rural campus. The stables, home of our IHSA riding team, are off in the distance.
Cold Dana
Dana Dining Hall looks warm and inviting on a cold winter night; I think the car passing quickly by (rather than standing still in the cold, like me) had the right idea.
Johnson Hall Deep Freeze
Blankets of snow look good around St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall of Science.
Lasers
The hours I spend in the physics and chemistry labs of St. Lawrence University make me a bit inured to the optical shenanigans occurring when we take Raman spectra of the materials my students synthesize. Still, the effect is pretty fantastic. The grainy pattern of the laser on surfaces around lab is fantastic, but the fluorescence ink on the post-it note in the foreground fluorescing aggressively is pretty cool, too.
That violet-blue light in the background of the shot above is the 405 nm laser we use to initiate photochemical processes. The beam is poorly detected by the camera’s sensor, but the slightest hint of it is visible in the upper third of the image below.
Forest Pool
Or its alternate title, “High above shallow water.” Near an oxbow in the Grasse River, shifting land is turning the pine forest into an area of swamp.
Decaseconds 