HDR Photography
It’s hard to tell from looking at the lake, even with the plaque in front of you, just how massive the Watauga Dam is… until you turn around. It’s actually pretty disorienting to look at what looks like a normal lake, then turn around and see the valley that the lake used to be. And when you look down the slope at the valley floor below you really start to understand how deep the lake really is.
Alongside landscapes and seascapes, I’m presenting a skyscape. Alternative blue skies and marine layers presented little aerial grandeur in the Bay Area, but the East Coast offers expanses of badass clouds in excess.
Semesters mostly end in a slow burn to the end of final exams. There’s a different end date for almost every student; only seniors share a collective terminus at graduation (and they’re too conflicted about the whole thing to really enjoy it, I’ve noticed.) Last year, I used Decaseconds to document the feeling of the campus contracting, like a balloon in liquid nitrogen, at the end of the semester. This year, the sky and the sun seemed ready to provide a dramatic end to this semester’s classes.
Too early in the evening and too high in the sky to be a standard sunset: this must be some serious sci-fi gridfire weaponry. The patterns in the Crepuscular rays puts me in mind of MIRV tests, and the scale of the clouds so thoroughly dwarfs the buildings beneath it on the banks of the Hudson River. Connecting spectacular aerial views with apocalyptic power is nothing new, but the twentieth century swapped the power source from divine to human.
Summer’s just around the corner.
Watauga lake is a pretty spectacular man made lake which, judging by the view down the other side of Watauga Dam (the top of which makes up part of the Appalachia Trail) used to be a pretty spectacular river valley.
Suddenly, the grass is infinitely green and thick and the trees have buds again. There’s this fundamentally Scandinavian feeling to the rolling hills and pine forests of the North Country that is best captured in spring and early summer. The world looks like a Bob Ross painting.
On the way back from the Outer Banks, a perfect storm of conditions led to this amazing mist over a Watauga Lake. As the mist lifted this small island came into view like some kind of mini magical realm (or the setting for some kind of horror film).
Keeping with the theme of great things being surprisingly small, Independence Hall.
I love the lighthouses in the outer banks but I’ll have to come back later in the season so that I can climb the towers!
Stark winter nights, the kind with a handful of clouds and a lot of bright stars, seem to be when I spend the most time shoveling my driveway. Might as well do a long exposure or two while I work, right? I particularly like the tree in the center of the image that has been completely lit by the adjacent streetlight: it seems otherworldly and special when compared to the other silhouetted trees.
Let’s usher out 2015 with this image of Buckeye Lake, may it finally be full in 2016.
The views from the Roan highlands are really something else.
Fall in the North Country makes dramatic skies and shadows. What I’ll call “drivewayhenge” aligned the sun precisely with this driveway, allowing for much of the scene to be in shadow while the garage at the end is a glowing beacon. In typical North Country fashion, that garage is a Millenium Falcon of useful modifications.
New buildings are rising constantly in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon. The reflective surfaces and exposed structure have me waiting for James Bond to send a villain tumbling over the edge of the top floor.
Decaseconds 
