The huge expanses of space and the mixture of animals that might not be seen elsewhere make Kentucky Horse Park a sort of real world Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaur attacks).
Tag: field
Football in the Snow
November snow means the football fields, like everything else in the North Country, need to be plowed.
August at the Barn
Big green fields at the edge of a forest are perhaps not what I normally associate with a college campus, but St. Lawrence University’s barn (technically the Elsa Gunnison Appleton Riding Hall) is indeed on its campus. Though the main halls and dormitories are off in the distance at the right of the image, effectively this entire picture is St. Lawrence’s campus. The perks of being a rural college.
Sunset Paddocks
Lexington’s Kentucky Horse Park seems to have more than its fair share of great sunsets; I wonder whether the primary residents (the horses) appreciate them? Scientific evidence would suggest not quite to the same degree (horses see fewer colors than people.)
Little Lights in Strawberry Canyon
Beyond the bustle of the East Bay at rush hour, the preserved wooded hills of Strawberry Canyon seem so quiet.
Soy
In an Open Field
Saturday morning, on horseback, in an open field!
Nevada Valley
Contemplating a drive back across North America, I’m most looking forward to the West. The mildly populated areas (look at the tiny path in the distant center of the image) remind me of the best parts of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns.
Trucks in Their Respective Expanses
Hundreds of miles apart from each other, I happened upon these two images of vehicles, paired with their owners, otherwise alone in an expanse of western America. On a clear day, the yellow pickup in the image below is almost lost in the brush.
By comparison, this Nevadan Jeep stands out amid the dusting of snow and descending clouds. Even its driver is farther away. The setting is so perfect that it might as well be a Wrangler advertisement.
Hunter
Though English riding has much of its origin in hunts across the fields of rural estates, the sport is just as often trained indoors—particular at spacetime junctures like Salt Lake City on Christmas Eve.
Watching the Gradient
Do you see the lone person, sitting on the hillside, on the right side of this image? People provide scale, but also something more in this context. In addition to watching the literal gradient of the sky at sunset, this picture is part of a set of images of the “civilization gradient” from wilderness to dense city center. I quite like the added layer of a gradient from the individual in nature to the greater mass of humanity in cities. Traveling between rural New York and the crowded Bay Area has made me more aware than ever of the contrast.
Leafy Window to Oakland
My past couple of posts have been images of San Francisco, foregrounded by nature and suburbs—the style I like to call a “civilization gradient”. This image similarly presents downtown Oakland, California, past the hilltop homes and Cal fields of Strawberry Canyon and through the invasive alien leaves of Berkeley Lab’s eucalyptus trees. The HDR processing techniques that Brendan and I use are perfect for settings like this, with an array of light intensities across a broad landscape.
Farm in the North
Across the reaches of North America scoured by glaciers, farms roll over hills atop rocky soil. This farm is on a hill, and its fields fall away in every direction.
Riding Facility in Fall
The overnight low was –16ºF, meaning that my robotic exploration of the skies has been put on pause for the moment. Back on those crisp fall days, though, there was nothing better than putting up the quadcopter and surveying St. Lawrence’s facilities. The riding stables and fields are one of the best places to spend a Friday afternoon, whether on the ground or in the air.
Corn Hill
Even the small local farms of the North Country can seem overwhelmingly huge, and viewing them from a quadcopter’s vantage point doesn’t mitigate the effect.
Decaseconds 