HDR Photography
For the past decade (nearly, anyway), I’ve been bringing you pictures from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. With my move to Trinity, I’m running through my final stock of my favorite images. I suspect these will be the last images of St. Lawrence I post (no promises), so it seems fitting that they capture the campus at its most St.-Lawrence-y: crisp autumn evening, foliage lit up by campus fixtures, with a big North Country sunset on the horizon.
After a teaser from the climb up on Friday, here is the full view from the top of Mohonk’s Skytop. This high-resolution panorama is definitely worth clicking through to Flickr for the full-sized version. There’s a lot here: the hotel and its namesake lake, but also the trails and conserved forest space around it. The water retention pond in the foreground is the semi-secret reason for Mohonk’s continued existence: though there were a variety of all-wood structures like Mohonk in the past, most have burned down over the years. This is the water source for the Mountain House’s fire suppression system, which was installed early and has preserved the structure through tribulations.
If that picture of Skytop from last week sparked the question, “What does the view look like from the top?” I’ll meet you halfway; this is the view from the climb up. (The rest of the view will come Monday.)
That cliff face exploding from the trees is part of the Shawangunk Range of mountains, home of Mohonk Mountain House.
Skytop overlooks Mohonk Mountain House. Though built as a stone replacement for a wooden forest fire watch tower that (ironically) burned down, today it mostly serves as an end-point for a relaxing afternoon hike. As any good landscape photographer will tell you, human figures it your shot helps to provide a sense of scale. Do those figures look tiny enough?
These bright oranges around the quad last fall marked the formal inauguration of St. Lawrence’s latest president, Kathryn A. Morris.
The line where the crown of trees around Lake Mohonk gives way to the much-farther-away trees of the valley beyond looks like the sort of trompe-l’œil that might, these days, be generated by a glitchy machine learning algorithm. In this case, however, it’s just down to the unique mountaintop-lake location of Mohonk Mountain House
Colton, New York’s hydroelectric dam brings together dark, deep, deceptively passive water on one side and a raging torrent on the other. It’s perhaps a useful metaphor for the experience of preparing to leave a place one has lived for a decade. Visiting sites like this is also a reminder that sometimes I avoid exploring the interesting places near me until I’m preparing to leave the area; something analogous happened near the end of my sabbatical.
On the path to Mohonk’s Skytop, this gazebo hangs into empty space. The Bob-Rossian layers to this image make the uncanny perch even more dramatic.
Far in the distance of last Friday’s post was Mohonk Mountain House’s swimming area; I thought it deserved a closer look. The glacier-formed cliffs, tall trees, and array of wooden structures reminds me (oddly enough) of a Shinto shrine—though obviously without the spiritual aspect.
In my last post from Mohonk Mountain House, I talked about the importance of seating to develop a sense of welcoming and place. The same technique is employed outside, as well as in. This rustic love seat overlooks the lake and its swimming area on the far side.
Design matters, and thus details matter, in making a place feel warm and inviting. Comfy chairs arrayed facing this curved bank of windows offer more than a place to sit while waiting for dinner at Mohonk Mountain House—they produce a sense of place and belonging.
When breakfast is done, a panoply of watercraft are ready to carry me onto the reflective surface of Lake Mohonk. I have to admit, I’ve always preferred the canoes.
A perfect late-summer morning at Mohonk Mountain House holds the promise of a day spent outside. While this image may be a sequel to last week’s post, I think this other angle reveals a far different view of the possibilities a day can hold when experiencing vacation.
Mohonk Mountain House remains a place nestled into both the rocks of the Shawangunk Mountains and a pre-digital era. Nonetheless, delightful new traditions manage to merge into the setting. Breakfast in the open air of the expansive front porch came about during the Covid era but has remained—a just delightful way to start the day.
This image also further exhibits the trend I explored in another recent image, showing both a view and a space for the viewer.
This photograph places into contrast the way humans made linear forms and nature exists beyond those patterned limits. Not only do the sloping hillsides contrast with the columns, but even the shadows cast by the Sun take orthogonal shapes and skew them to other angles.
