HDR Photography
A perfect late-summer morning at Mohonk Mountain House holds the promise of a day spent outside. While this image may be a sequel to last week’s post, I think this other angle reveals a far different view of the possibilities a day can hold when experiencing vacation.
Mohonk Mountain House remains a place nestled into both the rocks of the Shawangunk Mountains and a pre-digital era. Nonetheless, delightful new traditions manage to merge into the setting. Breakfast in the open air of the expansive front porch came about during the Covid era but has remained—a just delightful way to start the day.
This image also further exhibits the trend I explored in another recent image, showing both a view and a space for the viewer.
A quiet early morning at Mohonk Mountain House’s dock has a place for every boat and every boat in its place. I like the way the path of the dock mirrors the path of the mountaintop in the distance. This calm-before-a-busy-day setting is also a metaphor for Decaseconds: I finished processing all of my pictures from a trip to Mohonk at the end of last summer. Like the boats, my work is organized and ready to be shared.
Atop forested cliffs, the view to the porch and dock of Mohonk Mountain House has a “child’s treehouse” quality that matches well with the magical feeling of the place.
Strange sunlight geometries at dawn make for rare reflections on the hull of this ship.
I know they both have their shape due to the same causes (i.e., physics, gravity, etc.), but it sure is convenient that the wings of this seaplane and the shore behind it so tidily align.
To borrow an Internet cliché, “Name a more iconic summer combination.”
Mohonk Mountain House’s dock is normally busy with canoes and paddle-boats during the warmer months, but that’s… uh… not the case when ice and snow encrust the wood.
I mentioned in Monday’s post that I find structures built over water to be oddly cozy, and this dock and boathouse on a rainy late spring evening conveys the same kind of feeling.
There are many ways to define the seasons, with varying degrees of usefulness. (Solstices and equinoxes seem to have only the thinnest connection with the weather.) Perhaps the most valuable differentiation between times of the year is when one can reasonably be out on the water: “Spring” is that first moment when an afternoon in a canoe doesn’t sound miserable.
Deep night colors on the snow cliffs contrast with the warm glow of the hotel; this could be an infrared image, mapping the local temperatures.
Though I’m sure both the homes and the boats of Tiburon cost dearly for their charming setting, it’s easy to forget all of that when the sun is going down and a cool breeze is blowing in the from the San Francisco Bay. That little gray house in the middle with all of the little extra architectural details is my favorite.
Two structures (ship and bridge) designed to cross water, though over very different length scales. The two-centuries-old advances in metallurgy that allow for steel production at this huge scale still amazes me.
For the stealthy, angular trimaran exterior of the littoral combat ship USS Jackson, peaking inside the ship reveals a more mundane interior (look, a forklift!) that seems oddly pedestrian.
This week, Portland was visited by the US Navy ships USS Bunker Hill (the missile cruiser in the background) and USS Jackson (the stealthy littoral combat ship in the foreground). The futuristic structure and military aesthetic makes for odd juxtaposition with Portland’s Old Town/Voodoo Donuts reality.
Decaseconds 