HDR Photography
I was searching for a cork to fit an opening in a piece of old-school chemical glassware. In the farthest-away, most-remote corner of an old chemistry lab was simply a drawer labeled “corks”; inside, I found an expansive sea of every possible cork diameter. Nothing more, nothing less than every cork—I felt like I had cast some sort of obscure seeking spell that brought me a “be careful what you wish for” volume of results.
Continuing my recent display of discoveries from my college camera rolls, this picture of a friend reading in the open window of my dorm is fairly perfect. The motion blue of passing students outside further highlights her stillness and the open quad highlights the profile.
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.
Midwinter break left the normally bustling Long Walk of Trinity College empty for a moment but a quiet post-snowfall sunset cast shadows into the footsteps the students left behind.
The bold gothic shapes of Clement Chemistry Building are extra-sharp beneath a layer of snow and scattered with golden sunset light.
With snow removed after the storm, sports teams return to their respective fields to play beneath lights both natural and artificial.
“Trinity Days” is our college’s late-winter break, which typically leaves campus quiet, but a coating of snow just before classes ended left an array of bootprints to mark their exit.
Despite any efforts to the contrary, nostalgia sneaks into my life at moments I least expect. Trinity’s Long Walk was my undergraduate home for several years and this particular moment—a winter evening, as the sun goes down and the smell of dinner cooking in the dining hall climbs aboard the surprisingly warm breeze—was so evocative of the experiences that made me fall in love with campus 20 years ago.
Trinity College’s chapel is a beautiful piece of twentieth-century neo-Gothic architecture, but the interaction with the sunset sky brought a whole new appreciation for the structure. The gold light of the sky comes through the open belfry, but electrical lighting elements that shine up the structure from beneath the belfry happened to also match the sunset color and the position along the horizon, producing the odd trompe l’oeil of the structure appearing to allow the viewer to see through the mountains in the distance to even more sky beyond.
Trinity College’s chapter of St. Anthony Hall (a.k.a. “The Hall) may currently be closed, but a coating of snow still leaves it looking festive.
Decaseconds 