Rows and rows and rows of folding chairs bookend the school year: once in the fall for matriculation, and once in the spring for commencement. Their symmetry overlaps the now-permanent paths that once began as desire paths across the quad.
Tag: College
Things to Come
I’ve taken many pictures of St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall, particularly at night—its sheer glass face looks particularly stunning when fully illuminated. After years at the school, I’ve realized the degree to which those pictures have aged; the trees outside no longer take the same form and the whole setting of the structure is now. After more than five years at St. Lawrence, perhaps I need to begin revisiting other structures, too.
Campus Is Ready
Though we may officially have a couple more weeks, summer has practically ended when schools resume. St. Lawrence University’s campus is buzzing with students and faculty at all hours of the day and night.
Now can we please be done with the summer weather? Bring on fall.
South to the Adirondacks
After a day of rain, the clouds peeled back around sunset to reveal the foothills of the Adirondacks to the south. This bucolic landscape (on the right side of the image) is actually the eastern reach of St. Lawrence University’s 1,000-acre campus.
Northam II
Years have passed since I last stood before the central edifice of Trinity College’s Long Walk, Northam Hall (and even longer since I lived there.) Twelve years later, many things have changed about me but this building has remained remarkably static.
Flying on a Midsummer’s Evening
Soft evening light scattering through the trees of town brings out a dreamlike quality in Canton. Though it may be filled with humans, my imagination adds in a few nymphs, wood elves, pixies, and miscellaneous spirits.
Above St. Lawrence’s Campus
I’ve often commented to curious colleagues that the benefit of drone photography is the ability to get images from that “impossible” space: lower than a helicopter or other light aircraft might dare fly, but higher than a photographer could reach with a cherry picker. Those are views that can only be had from building height, and so a drone let’s one (metaphorically) put a temporary building wherever they’d like, at least for photographic purposes.
I’m evidently not obeying that rule here, nearly 400 feet above St. Lawrence University’s sylvan campus. It’s from this height where the taper of from larger halls down to smaller dorms and townhouses, and then ultimately to wooded space at the eastern edge of campus, is visible.
Halloween Rainbow
Summer research students at St. Lawrence have reached the halfway point (chronologically) of their projects, and the wildest (read: hottest) weather of the summer is coming along with it. At times like that, looking back on (and forward to) the cooler fall weather is a respite.
Spectroscopy Lab
Approaching the summer solstice, the start of fall-semester classes and their attendant labs seems far away, but a new class of St. Lawrence first-year students will be here before I know it.
This was one of the light sources students were interrogating: a sodium lamp, like the ones used in street lights (at least in the twentieth century—LED street lamps are becoming increasingly dominant now.)
Lush Campus
The long winter seems long behind us and campus is lush with flowering trees and grass carpets. Brush Quad, situated between St. Lawrence University’s oldest building (Richardson Hall) and its newest (Kirk Douglas Hall), looks particularly welcoming.
Above the Quad
This weekend marked the first truly warm days (i.e. spring) after a long winter, and there’s not long now until St. Lawrence’s students graduate on that sunset-lit quad at the center of the image.
Fall Visit
Good landscape photography advice: take your pictures from the top of the second tallest structure (or drone) around and let the tallest structure (like St. Lawrence’s Gunnison Chapel) cross the horizon.
Trinity Window
Thirteen years ago, I took this picture out the window of my dorm room in Trinity College’s Jarvis Hall. Over the years of renovations and upgrades between then and now, I don’t believe the room or the tree are still there. The iconic Neo-Gothic windows, however, are still there.
St. Lawrence Winter Flight
I’ve previously compared the feel of St. Lawrence University’s campus in the winter to a ski resort missing its ski slopes; even from the air, the miniature snow city effect holds. Though I’m not sure I can explain the particular magic of this image, it currently holds the record has the most-liked picture on St. Lawrence’s Instagram. Perhaps it’s the glow of the setting sun on the buildings?
Campus on the Eve of Finals Week
Finals week is upon St. Lawrence University. The campus is in full “winter mode”, blanketed with snow. The oddest thing about this time is its effect on the student population: a sharp partitioning between those who are finished, relaxed, preparing to leave and those who are tense, stressed, and trying to make it through. Like the dynamics of molecules in excited states, that latter group slowly relaxes to join the former.
Decaseconds 