Time Series: Travelers Tower

The move to Hartford has offered me the opportunity to capture this time sequence (like the ones I took in Kentucky and the North Country) with a dramatic view of Travelers Tower over the course of a day. If the image appeals, it’s also available as a dynamic wallpaper for macOS that will change your desktop with the time of day.

04:30

Travelers Tower 04:30

04:52

Travelers Tower 04:52

05:10

Travelers Tower 05:10

11:32

Travelers Tower 11:32

14:11

Travelers Tower 14:11

16:33

Travelers Tower 16:33

17:31

Travelers Tower 17:31

18:51

Travelers Tower 18:51

19:25

Travelers Tower 19:25

19:40

Travelers Tower 19:40

20:00

Travelers Tower 20:00

20:36

Travelers Tower 20:36

23:46

Travelers Tower 23:46

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Equus Run, a Concert, and Margaux

Last Wednesday, I showed you the light trails of concertgoers leaving Equus Run Vineyards. Today, I bring you a bird’s eye view of the same moments. In the distance, Margaux is quiet for the evening; in the midground, car headlights bounce off the grapes; in the foreground, light trails highlight the bridge and the road through the trees.

Equus Run, a Concert, and Margaux

Dry Paths and Trails

Rain brings spontaneous desert symmetry breaking: some areas become rivers and streams, while others stay high and dry. La Quinta Cove brings hiking trails into this equation. Looking high over the landscape, those trails and dry streambeds may be hard to distinguish—until the rain comes. In the distance, just above the tan tanks on the left of the image, the Salton Sea serves as a reminder of how water and the desert interact.

Dry Paths and Trails

Unexpected Finds Around the Kentucky Paddock

A lot happens around the Kentucky cottage when we’re home from a show, but I have to admit that a pair of vultures drying out after a sudden thunderstorm in the top of a tree with a rainbow behind them isn’t what I was expecting…

Vultures and Rainbows

This look from Papaya through the trees was pretty profound but still not really what I was expecting…

A Look from Papaya

Quiet grazing in a sunset-lit paddock is perhaps closer to expectations, but this idyllic, Miyazaki-esque view still surprised me with the sense of warm summer calm.

Snacking at Sunset

Where the Houses Stop/Palm Trees and Sprawl

Like a child’s legos, spilled out onto the floor until they reach the wall of the room, the sprawl of Coachella Valley reaches from one mountain range to the other.

Palm Trees and Sprawl

Of course, when that sprawl does reach the edge, modern California’s land conservation kicks in and a hard barrier appears between homes and desert.

Where the Houses Stop

Night Arrives Above Empire Polo Club

I guess I’m still discovering new tricks up the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s sleeve. I’ve never managed to create a panorama (much less one looking up) from drone images before, but this massive shot of the sunset over the San Jacinto Mountains has changed all of that. The pink clouds arc above and the Empire Polo Club (home of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival) spreads across the foreground.

Night Arrives Above Empire Polo Club

(You’ll definitely want to click through for full resolution on this one.)

Three Views of Canton, New York

I upload pictures to be future Decaseconds posts as I find images I think are worthy. (Only the best for my readers.) During most of the year, a three-photographs-per-week pace keeps up with my new acquisitions. This fall, however, was a time of plenty, powered by my DJI Mini 3 Pro’s incredible range and low-light image quality. To keep up with demand necessitates a triple-play today.

Three views of Canton, New York begin with this image over the Grasse River, with islands in the foreground and SUNY Canton in the distance.

Reflections from the Grasse River at Sunset

Farther south, St. Lawrence University’s campus is lit up for the evening.

The Walk Home

And the quad by Kirk Douglas Hall looks warm and inviting. (It’s currently beneath a layer snow.)

The Quad by Kirk Douglas Hall

Water Escape: Coachella Valley

Coachella Valley is a desert that was once home to a lake, so careful management of water—both where it should go, and where it shouldn’t—leads to some fascinating human-engineered structures. I like this image for the sense of depth, but also for the way that the unmodified hills rise above the human-produced forms in the fore- and mid-ground.

Water Escape: Coachella Valley

Miyazaki’s Kentucky

Hayao Miyazaki’s films are notable for these beautiful landscape/establishing shots of windswept grassy hillsides beneath huge cumulus clouds. The gentle, rolling limestone hills of northern Kentucky, with some cows grazing quietly in the distance, made me feel like I was in a Miyazakiesque setting.

Miyazaki's Kentucky

Lights of the Ready Campus

I’ll be teaching my first class of the Fall 2022 semester tomorrow morning, so today seemed like the perfect day to reflect on the campus to which I’m returning. The structures amidst the trees sure look good from 100 meters up.

Lights of the Ready Campus

This image also brings up an interesting note on aspect ratios: Since the start of Decaseconds, I’ve largely been formatting my very favorite images in a 1.6:1 (i.e., 16:10) aspect ratio, such that they’d function well as desktops for my various MacBook Pro laptops. The advent of the “notch” and associated added screen real estate means that new MBPs have a 1.547:1 ratio—and thus my favorite images (like this one) are arriving with a new aspect ratio.