HDR Photography
Steam pipe repairs and upgrades outside Trinity College’s Clement Chemistry Building have introduced a dramatic, Star-Wars-worthy pit outside the building that suggests a far more interesting adventure than the realities of winter heating.
On National Connecticut Day (apparently a Real Thing since 2017), I wanted to show these three views from around our state capital. They’re united by a strategy of processing the images darker in exposure than I might normally, producing deep, dark tones and highlights safe from being blown out.
A mixture of wide-angle lens distortion and “impossible” aerial drone viewpoint make for brain-twisting images of already strange and transient phenomena, like the chairs and stage of Trinity College’s Commencement Ceremony arrayed on the quad.
Trinity sings of being “‘Neath the Elms” for our alma mater, but I haven’t been able to capture that experience at Commencement quite so literally prior to now.
A springtime stroll along Trinity’s Long Walk has more leaf-generated shade every day.
Final exam week is winding down, which means we can finally emerge from our Neo-Gothic cocoons and enjoy Trinity’s perfect spring campus.
Trinity is technically an arboretum and spring brings out the photosynthesis in some of my favorite trees—with, of course, some great chairs in which to sit and enjoy them.
Flowers emerging around Trinity College’s chapel tempted me into a multi-photo study of the contrast between spring pastels and epic limestone.
Leaves are long gone, buds have yet to quite emerge, and the colorful display from my earlier picture down Summit Street exists only in that photograph.
Looking back through years of photographs, I find that my late-winter/early-spring seasonal photos are nearly empty. The bland pre-bloom colors have a lot to do with that, so I thought I would lean into it with a B&W approach that says, “You didn’t want to see the colors, anyway.”
A sudden morning snow storm followed by incongruously warm day led to an odd quick-melting layer of snow that fanned off of rooftops like the blast visible in the distance.
Cool Rayleigh-scattered blue light, warm also-Rayleigh-scattered sunset light, clean white LEDs reflecting off of snow, deep orange sodium lights—there’s every option visible from above Trinity College’s campus.
Like most infrastructure, a roof is something one generally ignores so long as it is functioning as expected. A heavy melt of snow, however, might call all of that into question. At least the view is good from up here.
Snow and scaffolding are each the kind of dramatic additions to a neo-gothic building that suggest the dramatic climax of a noir film will take place on its rooftop.
While we’re contemplating the architecture of Clement Chemistry Building, I don’t think I’ve previously considered the way in which the dark sculptural stone sections connect together the windows on the second and third floors to make these big, tall, dramatic, dark pillars up each side of the building—almost reminiscence of the tall stained-glass windows of a cathedral.
Decaseconds 