HDR Photography
If “Dark Academia” has become a fairly well-worn genre with familiar tropes, I can’t say I’d mind finding a more optimistic and friendly version—less secret knowledge driving cults towards madness, more dragging indoor furniture into the sunshine to produce a comfy afternoon study spot.
Flying a drone is often a strangely lonely affair—high above the world, separate from it—but on this occasion, my Mini 3 Pro had a companion in this red-tailed hawk, perched on Trinity College’s chapel.
Quiet summer evenings along Trinity College’s Long Walk, so calm and dignified and neogothic, are best complemented by the shiny silver paint of a vintage Porsche 911.
Renovations in the early 2000s greatly enlarged (and renamed) Trinity College’s library; this monolithic-yet-warm form feels welcoming amidst the Hartford landscape.
The warm sodium glow of Trinity College’s campus by night—Clement Chemistry Building and Raether Library in the foreground, the chapel and the Hartford skyline in the background—highlights (in a literal, X-marks-the-spot manner) the contrast between being a student and a faculty member here. Though the same institution, the same general campus, I spend my time now in completely different places than I once did. A prime example is the X-marked courtyard between the two buildings—a place I walked through perhaps 10 times total as a student, but where I now pause for coffee with my colleagues nearly every morning.
Summer nights on Trinity College’s campus are quiet but the paths and buildings remain as effulgent as ever. There’s a luminous quality to this aerial view that really captures the sensory experience of exploring the quads by night.
The monolithic shadowed face of Trinity College’s Long Walk is particularly dramatic as morning sunshine bounces from the leaves of the surrounding trees.
(And yes, I’m still six months behind processing pictures. And autumn in New England looks great.)
Looking over the campus rooftops (and their cozy position in the hills around them), the difference between old and recently renovated is readily apparent in a transformation from black to white-with-solar-panels.
After the stress of final exams tapers away, seniors have a week to kill time before graduating—and where better to spend it than catching rays on the quad?
Red bricks match red leaves on every tree—except for those elms that stubbornly refuse to turn until months later.
With Hartford’s skyline looking on in the background, the brutalist facade of Trinity College’s LSC matches the carefully graded dirt of its adjacent quad before a thick layer of new sod was applied.
I decided to make my collection of photographs from my time as a student available to Trinity’s social media team, which required sorting and uploading them. Among the random motion-blurred messes of my past, I encountered the occasional serendipitous moments of actually striking photography.
The end of the semester (and some final-exam stress) nears but for now, relaxing on the quad on a warm and sunny spring day could be the move.
Though I have my fair share of images that were only possible with the full capabilities of my best camera (just wait for Monday’s post), I’ve been experiencing the impact of Chase Jarvis’s famous quotation lately: “The best camera is the one you have with you.” This perfect warm spring afternoon moment on Trinity College’s main quad was one I serendipitously passed and the image that resulted wasn’t one I would have missed for not having the “perfect” camera.
Clement Chemistry Building is surrounded by flowering plants that complement its red stone structure on perfect spring morning.
Decaseconds 