HDR Photography
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Heating up and then slowly cooling a material anneals it, softening the material by allowing the crystal structure to reform to an optimal geometry. Annealing at the correct temperature for a metal produces a characteristic color—often a dull, cherry red like the edges of this sunset. After baking in the hot sun all day, the St. Lawrence University and the North Country are probably feeling lower in energy and ready to relax their geometries, too.
I’ve shown you St. Lawrence University’s zen garden in the past, but never from above. Down in the middle of Sykes Hall, in front of the clock tower, you can see a hint of raked gravel and carefully cut grass. I’m not sure I ever appreciated how many trees we have until I started flying.
After playing at low altitudes, I upgraded to a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced last week. This quadcopter can stay stationary in the night sky—like, “long exposures look good” stationary. I’m looking forward to exploring what the little flying robot can do.
After all of these summer images, it’s time for something completely different from the Berkshires.
Continuing my exploration of the capabilities of Aurora HDR from Wednesday, I processed this image from high above central Pennsylvania after sunset using that software and the Noiseless CK package to unbelievable results—that is, I literally could not have achieved this image with an acceptable level of noise using my earlier workflow. Though it’s still not perfect, I can’t stop examining the path of that river, lit by the last few photons of the day.
The gradient from dense, urban (and suburban) areas to rural and natural settings is one of my favorite photographic subjects—and the subject of most of my favorite photographs. In this particular aerial shot from the in-between area over Pennsylvania, the sun has mostly set, leaving shadows and a few orange reflections in the overly ordered geometry of subdivisions. Down the winding highway, beyond the hills, in the less-dense and more agrarian land, the sun still casts a warm glow.
Procrastinating a proposal is a great time for a quick drone flight. Though the camera quality is still around “potato,” the sight of St. Lawrence’s campus as autumn colors seep in, with foothills in the background, was too good to pass up.
If you’d like to watch the full flight (complete with overly trippy guitar music in place of screaming drone prop noise), I uploaded it to YouTube. The need for a gimbal on the camera is evident.
This image, taken from the air over Campus Security and with the restored steeple of St. Lawrence University in the background, might not be quite up to my normal quality standards. I find it more interesting for another reason: it’s the first (good) picture I’ve captured with a quadcopter drone. I have to admit, the potential of the technology for landscape photographers is pretty exciting. Now if I can just get a drone to carry something as heavy as my DSLR…
From the human-scale intimacy of family life yesterday, I wanted to contrast at the other extreme: the irrigation-induced circles of the central United States in an otherwise barren landscape. Particularly as spring (and photosynthetic life) begin to dominate the countryside, I wanted to reflect on the role of humans in that transformation.
A rural childhood lends itself to stretches with zero requirements: impossibly muggy summer afternoons or frigid winter nights trapped inside. I spent many of those stretches drawing maps of fantastical places, and I can’t help but wonder if my current interest in aerial photography stems from the process of projecting real scenery onto my imagined childhood maps. This meandering oxbow near the Columbia River Gorge has that feel of a place perfect for a fort, doesn’t it?
Decaseconds 