HDR Photography
I’ve been on a serious St. Lawrence-in-the-snow photography kick lately, but pictures like this shot of Kirk Douglas Hall (the campus’s newest dorm) really justify the trend. Framed by trees and isolated in the snow, the idyllic nature of the place is enhanced.
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.
I found myself wandering around McMenamins Edgefield (just outside Portland in Troutdale, Oregon) with some free time before a wedding ceremony, so I went exploring. I love the way the confluence of additions and annexes to buildings wind up producing these strange internal spaces; they do a lot to magnify the mystery of an already mysterious place.
The overwhelming Adirondack puissance of the St. Lawrence Outing Club has produced a sprawling compound of housing and storage and additions and canoes and bikes and skis. I imagine the building as an outdoorsy batcave: behind every door is gear for another activity.
I want to contrast the bright fall colors from my last post with the broad spectrum of colors that can originate from different types of light sources used by humans every day. Where better than the neutral-colored stone of the Cathedral of Learning? Magentas, greens, warm yellows: emission and reflection can both offer a rich array of photons.
The Ottawa Convention Centre’s fantastical facade of fenestration is a lovely example of the way a pattern of triangles can be assembled to form all sorts of other surfaces with complicated geometries. From the standpoint of symmetry and group theory, it’s quite elegant; from the standpoint of a passer-by on the street, it seems a bit sinister.
The Fairmont Château Laurier dominates downtown Ottawa; the effect is only exaggerated by the distorted effect of this multi-shot panorama. The people and buses and even the capital seem normal, but as it rises, the structure becomes increasingly Hogwartsian.
My last visit to Trinity was a great chance to see all of the Harry-Potter-esque buildings on campus. Their mass and majesty can be a bit overwhelming—so impacting the senses that I wouldn’t be surprised if I perceived a boy flying past on a broomstick.
Rivers cast a net over the northeast, one usually escaped with myriad bridges. Most are schlubby, utilitarian affairs, existing only to convey traffic (and never to inspire.) This particular through-arch bridge south of Canton, NY, however, brings a certain class to the whole “crossing a river” affair. The wood construction puts me in mind of Viking longboats and Scandinavia in general—very appropriate for the North Country. When even the patterns in the clouds align with the bridge, the drama is only heightened.
After a trip back to my alma mater, Trinity College, for reunion weekend (but not my reunion), I’ve had some time to process both my photographs and my feelings from the trip. Standard touchy/feely closure stuff—appreciating my time there, but recognizing that I’m glad I’ve moved on. (If you can call teaching at a different small liberal arts college moving on…) This image of Trinity’s awesome Neo-Gothic chapel is reflective of two things: first, of the imposing nature of the structure, and second, the way in which its white stone can take on many colors depending on the available light. Perhaps that flexibility is an overly-obvious symbol of how feelings for a place can shift with time.
On a cloudy day, the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh has a softness to its stone exterior. (Its interior, as I’ve shown in the past, is equally stunning.) The sense of scale to the image (and the distortion of the wide-angle lens) can play tricks on your mind, making the whole scene seem smaller than it really is. To get a feel for the imposing/soft contradiction, concentrate on those improbably small revolving doors. They must be human-sized, right?
Spring is late to the North Country, and though the snow is gone and the homes have (mostly) survived, plant life hasn’t yet surpassed the “first hints of green grass” level. There’s nonetheless a certain crunchy, dusty beauty to the sunset now—one that is nicely offset by the glossy reflections from window panes.
On those special nights, when ice crystals align correctly in the atmosphere, atmospheric optics get a bit crazy and a sun pillar like the one here appears.
Though, to be honest, even the Rayleigh scattering that makes the sky blue is crazy to begin with. The strange behavior of light and matter (thanks, Richard Feynman!) never ceases to amaze me.
I’ve always been fascinated by the American colloquialism of calling any feed store an elevator. (Though Canton does have a larger grain elevator of its own, as well.) When the sunset sky is at its most glorious, reality highlights the hyperutilitarian aesthetic of a working building: it has to be painted some color, so it might as well be post-war pastels.
David Lynch brings an edge of dark menace to his films; I can still remember the first time I saw Blue Velvet and felt the crisp edge of real and unreal disintegrating. In particular, the director’s visions of Small Town America and the underbelly of that beast (in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, particularly) felt notable in “downtown” Canton last week. With the sky aflame and neon lights in every window, the scene was about 15 minutes away from some Lynch-level insanity.
Decaseconds 