HDR Photography
I sometimes reprocess older pictures when I find some new approach or something special in an image that wasn’t there before. This picture is a bit different—though I captured it at this time seven years ago, I found that I felt no urge to reprocess any part of it. I was happy with it then—though apparently not enough to post it until now—and I’m impressed with it today.
This nineteenth-century water tower in the North Country hamlet of Heuvelton, New York is scheduled for demolition (or disassembly, really) to make way for its modern replacement. In the process of preparing the site, however, it was discovered that the original graveyard that was moved to make room for the tower was, uh, not so thoroughly moved as originally assumed. Now, biological anthropologist Prof. Mindy Pitre and her team are on site (beneath the oak tree) to properly finish the job. I joined her for an afternoon to photodocument the site and its tower before ongoing construction forever alters it.
I’ve been capturing images of Johnson Hall of six years, and though the building itself stays the same, the trees outside have shifted and grown (and some died) over time. Time marches on.
When every other inch of Paris seems bathed in light, the rails exiting Gare Montparnasse make for an odd dark vein through the cityscape.
We may be deep within the glowing core of autumn in the Northeast at this moment, but I can’t escape the feeling that spring and its attendant graduation drama is fast approaching. If winter proves deep and dark, that may prove itself to be an illusion.
Days are shortening and skies are hardening and winter is coming.
Though the difference in color temperature between sunlight and indoor lighting may be intuitively understood common knowledge, I’ve rarely seen a picture that so dramatically illustrates the color contrast.
Each tree in the canopy is roughly rotationally symmetrical, resulting in an anisotropic pattern. The sunlight breaks the symmetry and produces this beautiful streak of bright, cadmic yellow.
Though the central glass pyramid of the Louvre gets all the attention, the other pyramids of the Louvre can be just as dramatic (if the perspective is set correctly.)
Though the Musée d’Orsay seems from outside like a fine, upstanding member of Paris’s “traditional architecture” club, its interior reveals some more unconventional aesthetic choices.
Sacré-Cœur sits high on a hill above Paris, and from the top of Tour Montparnasse (Sacré-Cœur architectural polar opposite), the view shows off so many of the city’s famous structures simultaneously: the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, the Palais Garnier.
Liberty Island played such a huge role in the media I consumed as a child—the most iconic symbol of New York (far more recognizable to a child than e.g. the Empire State Building)—that seeing it from One World Observatory was surreal.
Decaseconds 