HDR Photography
If only the title of this post had proven true. On a warm September day, I was ready to soar over the North Country aboard a hot air balloon! Going up a few stories and returning to earth was charming in its own way (and other people needed their turn), but I had been expecting so much more.
I’ve continued experimenting with Aurora HDR software, and I’ve confirmed my earlier opinion that it is an excellent tool for surreal, enticing night shots and cases where the noise would be too high for any other HDR technique. For realistic HDR with natural lighting, however, Photomatix remains the king.
Glaze ice entombs the branches of trees in the courtyard of St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall of Science in the aftermath of last weeks. The view out my office window is much improved.
The regular ice hockey season has ended (and the playoffs are ahead!), but it went out on a great note: St. Lawrence crushed Brown 3–0. The very similar nature of the school colors helped the aesthetics. Then there was the actual play: the three Brown players against one St. Lawrence player about measured the balance of power. It made for some odd and dynamic hockey.
Ice and snow and real winter have locked down the countryside, but I still have the photographic evidence of our ultra-mild, el-Niño-powered January.
An ice storm has transformed campus; I’ve never seen it this beautiful. For the folks in admissions (like the tour guide and family in this photograph), that must be a boon!
St. Lawrence’s campus becomes extra strange and ski-resort-esque when a fresh layer of snow is cleared by night. When morning arrives, paths are “magically” clear.
Real winter arrived with a horrible stillness. When the temperature is -25ºF, nothing moves and nothing melts and every bit of solid water stays just where you leave it. Even the tiny twigs and branches were stuck in its embrace.
I wanted to look back briefly on the structures of St. Lawrence University’s campus under lockdown from heavy snow. The oldest buildings, like Herring-Cole Hall, are naturals.
This little shed is in odd scale with the buildings around it, but its little puddle of light fits perfectly with the evening.
I’ve always grown to love the mid-twentieth-century buildings like the ODY Library. The lights, snow, and scaffolding among the trees put me in mind of Soviet science fiction.
Here is another example from around the same time period, Bewkes Science Hall. In my mind, authors of speculative fiction must be hiding behind the drawn blinds and imagining snowy, cyberpunk futures of the late 1990s.
Away from the village centers, the North Country is frozen at an odd point in development. The original farms of early settlers haven’t been completely removed, but not much development has continued past that point. Trailers were installed by the sides of hot-mix roads and everything stopped there. I’m fascinated to think what this area must have been like during the late 1940s—population returning as the nation demobilized, and those people changing things in the North Country. Things don’t seem to change as much now.
Livestock of the North Country are, well, lively, even in winter. The shaggy coat and the bright sky must help. On a night with a sunset like this one, I share the llama’s need to go out and investigate.
This cowboy of the sky is complete with mustache, wide-brimmed hat, and rugged gloves. This sunny September afternoon was the perfect time for aeronautics; today, not so much.
Snow levels and re-makes the world, if only for a short time. My sense of scale decouples slightly from reality; though I know that the chapel is far taller than any form, man-made or otherwise, on St. Lawrence’s campus, I can’t help but imagine these trees stretching to impossible heights.
At the far end of Johnson Hall, a tower of windows overlook the very pleasing shape of the circle in the setting sun. Leaning back in the chair, feet up, a glass of hot chocolate in hand: what better way to watch the day end?
Snow was falling last night. The small houses with highly peaked roofs and additions out back are a characteristic of this part of town, where the mill workers once lived. The wood sheds are another notable characteristic of an area where many people use only wood stoves to heat their homes in the winter.
When the time came to make the really big prints in Prof. Melissa Schulenberg’s Advanced Printmaking course at St. Lawrence University, only a steam roller had significant- and even-enough pressure to produce the best result. The breezy afternoon, the green foliage, and the bright yellow steam roller on a placid college campus makes for one serious juxtaposition in the middle of winter.
Decaseconds 