HDR Photography
When the crust of winter slides off the landscape, the points and lines of the resting geometry beneath are exposed on foggy days like these. In Duchess County, where Connecticut meets New York, the density of the post-winter effect is damp. It has its own beauty, apart from snow-blasted winters or verdant summers. (And by contrast, this “melt season” represents a major chunk of the North Country’s spring attitude.)
A bucolic vision of the North country: a field of munching sheep, a barn and silo in the distance, a stand of trees, a simple fence, and a gentle brook. Spring is charming when it finally arrives.
Waking up early on a cold morning can be tough, but riders never seem to have trouble getting up for a show. (Caffeine seems to help!) I loved the moment of calm and intimacy between horse and rider in this particular image, and the comfort it conveys.
The combination of chestnut horse and bright red Coke can also goes a long way to making the scarlet and brown St. Lawrence color scheme appealing.
The narrow depth of field exaggerates an image that flashed past me in an instant while we traveled: a few children, playing in the crunchy remains of winter outside a barn. Ignoring the safety orange hat and the electrical conduit traveling up the side of the barn, and this seems like an image that could have come from any point in the past 150 years.
After dark on an empty stretch of highway, the reflective signs become hypnotic.
Traveling through the Adirondacks means passing the semi-abandoned cabins that dot the roads. I particularly liked the image of a basketball hoop hanging above a driveway entombed in three feet of snow.
When it’s a snowy Friday morning and the ski slopes are calling, who can resist the urge to cut class and get to skiing?
Dotting the road to Ogdensburg’s bridge to Canada are tiny, abandoned houses like this one. It’s rather charming, and just a bit sad, but mostly it reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, and the obversations that a society can retreat from the frontiers and back into the cities over time. Sprawl and civilization are not inevitable.
There are few natural features that look colder than a rushing blackwater river when the air temperature is below 0ºF. The convergence of this little reservoir to the far-off (and equally miniature) hydroelectric station neatly contrasts the frigid setting with the optimism of twentieth-century technocrats. (The Adirondacks are dotted with an improbable number of tiny hydroelectric stations.)
The ice hockey season is winding down in the North Country (always much earlier in the winter than I expect), but I captured the last of the women’s games at St. Lawrence’s Appleton Arena. The school is on mid-winter break, so the crowd in the wonderful, old, wooden bleachers are a bit thin. We cheered all the harder when the Saints crushed higher-rated Quinnipiac 3-0.
This is Kodi. He is part American Eskimo dog and part miniature poodle. He is completely adorable.
I present to you a pair of photographs:
The first is from Muir Woods on the Marin Peninsula of California. That morning was rainy and the colors are rich and dark and the setting is some natural/romantic variety of Baroque. Practically overwhelming.
The second is from Stone Valley this weekend, dry and crunchy with snow, the river mostly frozen at the surface, with currents of dark water beneath. More minimal, more quiet, more subdued. But is this trail any less beautiful than the first?
A quaint home, encrusted in snow and accompanied by a Subaru and a stand of pines, makes for a perfect slice of North Country life. Today’s winter storm brought this image back to my mind.
My favorite feature to incorporate in my occasional sports photography is the “spectator sport” nature of an event. Seeing not just the players in action, but also the responses (or lack thereof?) from the fans does the best job of bringing me back to a moment.
The St. Lawrence University Outing Club always has something interesting set up outside their house, no matter the season. Even when they’re away on break, the frames and supports and ground-work for some crazy stunt of the future are ready. This peaceful moment seemed uncharacteristically placid and I just had to capture it.
