Rows and rows and rows of folding chairs bookend the school year: once in the fall for matriculation, and once in the spring for commencement. Their symmetry overlaps the now-permanent paths that once began as desire paths across the quad.
Tag: aerial
The Hoot Owl and Canton
In the foreground, the Hoot Owl bar sits near Canton’s railroad tracks. Though it used to be the train station, it’s now one of the main student bars. I like to think of it as the guard house between town and the domain of the undergraduates.
Village Services
Yesterday, a Canton native unironically told me, “Winter is coming.” When it arrives, the town works team will deploy from this location to tackle snow with special forces precision. Northern New York does not mess around.
Glow on Park Street
Park Street is the residential/academic (i.e. St.-Lawrence-housing) street orthogonal to Canton, New York’s Main Street. As night falls, the cozy pinpoint lights of individual homes is contrasted by the broad glow of the streetlights on those biggest avenues.
Campus Is Ready
Though we may officially have a couple more weeks, summer has practically ended when schools resume. St. Lawrence University’s campus is buzzing with students and faculty at all hours of the day and night.
Now can we please be done with the summer weather? Bring on fall.
South to the Adirondacks
After a day of rain, the clouds peeled back around sunset to reveal the foothills of the Adirondacks to the south. This bucolic landscape (on the right side of the image) is actually the eastern reach of St. Lawrence University’s 1,000-acre campus.
Town by the Dam
In the foothills of the Adirondacks, the Raquette River was dammed for hydroelectric power. The town of Colton, New York sits on the resulting reservoir; the rapids in the foreground are the beginning of Stone Valley, an area of trails that I’ve photographed extensively in the past. The contrast between placid reflections in the reservoir and the dark currents of the river proper stand out during the blue hour.
Summer Bridge Construction
Heavy traffic isn’t restricted to city centers! This summer, Canton’s bridge over the Grasse river is being repaired, cutting it from four lanes to two. Around 8:00, 12:00, and 4:00, traffic backs up for half a mile down Main Street. (But I’d rather the traffic than skipping the bridge repairs…)
Flying on a Midsummer’s Evening
Soft evening light scattering through the trees of town brings out a dreamlike quality in Canton. Though it may be filled with humans, my imagination adds in a few nymphs, wood elves, pixies, and miscellaneous spirits.
On the Quad
This quad isn’t very much of a quardrangle, from a geometric standpoint, but that doesn’t stop students and visiting campers from having an absolutely delightful afternoon there.
Above St. Lawrence’s Campus
I’ve often commented to curious colleagues that the benefit of drone photography is the ability to get images from that “impossible” space: lower than a helicopter or other light aircraft might dare fly, but higher than a photographer could reach with a cherry picker. Those are views that can only be had from building height, and so a drone let’s one (metaphorically) put a temporary building wherever they’d like, at least for photographic purposes.
I’m evidently not obeying that rule here, nearly 400 feet above St. Lawrence University’s sylvan campus. It’s from this height where the taper of from larger halls down to smaller dorms and townhouses, and then ultimately to wooded space at the eastern edge of campus, is visible.
Snow and Clear Air
Clear, cold winter air and a road stretching north from the Connecticut-Massachusetts border makes a lovely entrance to the Berkshires. A photogenic dusting of snow doesn’t hurt, either.
This is an example of perfect timing—as much as I like to take winter pictures, quadcopter drones like neither snow nor extremely low temperatures. Early in the season, however, there are lucky days like this one where snow is immediately followed by clear skies and above-freezing temperatures that give me a tiny window in which to capture the winter.
Lush Campus
The long winter seems long behind us and campus is lush with flowering trees and grass carpets. Brush Quad, situated between St. Lawrence University’s oldest building (Richardson Hall) and its newest (Kirk Douglas Hall), looks particularly welcoming.
Lynchian Town II
David Lynch’s projects have documented the (sometimes sinister) weirdness underlying small-town life, and I think I’ve occasionally captured a hint of that in my pictures of Canton. High above the town after an August storm, the clouds impart a definitely Lynchian vibe.
Above the Quad
This weekend marked the first truly warm days (i.e. spring) after a long winter, and there’s not long now until St. Lawrence’s students graduate on that sunset-lit quad at the center of the image.
Decaseconds 