The rocky beaches around San Francisco look so dramatic in B+W.
Ski Lawrence University
In case you were wondering where I get the expression that St. Lawrence University looks like “a ski resort without the ski slopes,” last weekend provided some pretty good evidence. The modern-but-slightly-Nordic buildtings, the oft-cleared pathways, and the gates with reflective tape on them all remind me of ski lodges. Perhaps the best way to describe the school during winter break is a ski lodge for cross-country skiers?
North Carolina Highway
Now that I’ve got a little more free time I finally got an opportunity to get out and snap a few shots. Here I’ve got a shot toward North Carolina from a scenic overlook on the way from Asheville, NC to Johnson City, TN. I was stunned by the vastness of it all.
St. Lawrence Winter Otherworld
No cropping, no HDR, and only minimal post-processing were applied to this image. Wandering in a snowstorm with a prime lens felt, well, primal, and I wanted an image that captured that. I know that there’s no such thing as the “true” photograph of a place or a moment, but at the edge of St. Lawrence’s campus, at this particular blue hour, the magic needed no adulteration.
This is the kind of image that I look back on the most: the ones with the strongest sense of place, the most obvious path to escape into the image. As we start a new year, I’d like to think that it’s a mark of my increased confidence as a photographer that I can make more with less. (Though don’t get me wrong—there are times when I’m glad to be able to make something out of nothing.)
Perfect Field
Pardon my sappy cliché for the moment: a brand new year and a perfect, untouched field with interesting features in the distance. Here we go!
Florida Dawns Forever
Today is New Year’s Eve: out with the old, in with the new, etc. Time doesn’t seem to pass in Florida, however—it’s a place that’s always at the dawn of history, the muggy primordial swamp, with the monolith and the howling primates just outside the frame.
Sugarbrook Trinity
When I travel from the wintery expanse of the North Country to Florida, nothing feels real. Am I in some humid almost-heaven of trees and life and ponies? The massive sun halo doesn’t hurt the effect—that’s for sure.
Saturnalia Sunset
One of my favorite times (of the entire year) for photography is after Christmas dinner. Life is slow and sedate, and it matched the placid(ish) rolls of the Gulf of Mexico perfectly. Even the shapes of people are soft and indistinct—an impressionist’s idea of a family playing in the waves. Spending the holidays in Florida has a certain appeal.
Meeting Eagle
This eight-month-old colt is named Eagle, and he’s a bundle of friendliness and worry, now that he’s been weaned. For Piper, meeting him was perhaps the most exciting moment of the year. Pony eye contact tells the whole story.
December in Florida
When the weather outside is frightful, go to Florida! With sunrises like this to greet me, I might never leave.
There is something enormously satisfying about the moments when a great shot comes directly to me—no setup, no searching, no prep. I looked outside, the scene was beautiful, and all I had to do was compose and shoot. The “easy” feelings keep coming in Florida: I don’t have to shovel any snow, either.
Death’s Door
Pressing yourself to try something different is important: different setting (no crazy vista here), different lens (70-200 mm f/2.8 in place of my frequent wide-angle lens), and a different mood. There’s a stillness to a mausoleum door that never gets opened—something odd and unsettling and heavy that I think this image conveys.
Summer at Trinity
From the crust of winter, looking back to summer and reunions and picnics on the quad brings that inner warmth.
Ice Pony
Feeling a bit of the black-and-white mood at the moment, I wanted to bring in this shot of a pony at Stonewall Farm in Ixonia, Wisconsin, that focuses on the textures of ice-encrusted hair and big, friendly eyes.
Indiana Isolate
Driving across Indiana at dusk is a bit isolating—but here’s a strangely isolated church in the middle of a field to mirror the feeling.
Passing By
The North Country is carpeted in snow (not shown). I like to think back to the lazy, shoveling-free fall days when homes were just beginning to mystically gird themselves for the oncoming blizzard. Life merrily passes by these old, modest homes.
