HDR Photography
The shapes of the hills of California are odd and impossible by the standards of the Northeast. In spite of my time spent there, my brain has still not adjusted to the angles—either in the distance or under my own feet when I’m there. On a charming horse farm that might be at home in the early twentieth century, the sunbaked scene is too real to be real.
I didn’t think the day would ever come but I’ve become nostalgic for my time in Berkeley. The coming of fall has got me thinking about walking to campus at the advent of a new school year. Walking up Channing, past this Buddhist temple every day. The temple never meant anything to me personally while I was in Berkeley but now I find myself missing walking past it in the mornings. Memories are weird.
The lights mark the border between forest and manicured athletic fields. In real life, crossing the border means risking ticks and perhaps a run-in with a deer; in the realm of science fiction, I can imagine much more terrifying consequences from crossing the border from light into darkness as the sun sets.
Shipping containers are ubiquitous yet mysterious. Because they’re used to transport almost everything, they could contain almost anything—and that has been used to great effect by a variety of my favorite authors. There’s little doubt over what these particular containers are holding—mostly supplies left in dorm rooms by St. Lawrence students at the end of the year—but there’s still a healthy dose of mystery in their juxtaposition with the regular structures of a college campus.
St. Lawrence’s campus includes far more natural settings (and transitions far more quickly to them) than any place I’ve previously experienced. The Wachtmeister Field Station is a field laboratory that feels like a “candle in the wilderness,” despite being within (drone) sight of campus.
Moving your belongings in and out of a house is hard enough on a normal street, I can hardly imagine what it’s like to navigate the narrow Elfreth’s alley, America’s oldest residential street.
On a clear summer night, with the campus quiet and mostly studentless, St. Lawrence’s Japanese zen garden reaches its most silent and, well, zen.
Coming to St. Lawrence, I was not prepared for the amount of forest space on the school’s 1000-acre campus. Flying above the Grasse River, campus looks wild and vaguely Nordic. I’ve never run into a frost giant on the way to work, but now I’m sort of wondering whether I need to prepare for that, too.
North Carolina has beaches for miles.
Looking back on some of my earliest shots of the California coastline this evening: Light-leaked soft blues and golds are the colors. Is the soundtrack the jangle of surf music guitars or just the crashing of waves?
Coming down here always reminds of my parents taking me and my brother down here every weekend to get vegetables and hopefully a piroshky or a gyro or some sushi!
The roars and gasps of the crowd could be heard all over town: Friday night football in the North Country of New York. St. Lawrence’s Saints dominated Morrisville to the tune of 28–0. From quadcopter, the action on the field is just a bit out of range. One of the recurring themes of my work is the civilization gradient between densely human areas and wilderness; I view this picture as another interpretation of that theme. There’s perhaps no urban center in Canton, but there are quaint homes and university buildings giving way to farmland and, eventually, the foothills of the Adirondacks in the distance where the Earth begins to curve.
Structures along the Hudson River mark eras of American practicality and industrial life. There’s a great combination of aesthetics and practicality.
The mid-century (1955) Tappan Zee Bridge is from a different era from the lighthouse above, but it also represents this aesthetic/industrial impact on the Hudson River.
Night-flying for long-exposure photography seems to rely a lot on luck: How’s the wind? How’s the weather? That’s a lot to consider, but the superhuman perspective (even if it is occasionally a bit blurry) is worth it. I love the times of day when the brightness of building lights and the brightness of the setting sun match each other in intensity.
Decaseconds 