HDR Photography
Heavy traffic isn’t restricted to city centers! This summer, Canton’s bridge over the Grasse river is being repaired, cutting it from four lanes to two. Around 8:00, 12:00, and 4:00, traffic backs up for half a mile down Main Street. (But I’d rather the traffic than skipping the bridge repairs…)
North Country temperatures abruptly rose from 20ºF to nearly 60ºF before suddenly dropping to -20ºF—all in under 36 hours. The result was rain that completely melted almost all snow, followed by freezing rain that deposited a layer of ice, followed by a new 12″ of snow to replace what came before.
In the midst of that chaos, I visited the Grasse River through the center of Canton to see it rising above its banks and jamming the shores with ice.
Autumn is my favorite season for flying above the North Country. Heading back toward New York, there’s a lot to look forward to with the shift in the seasons.
Canton’s bars are pretty specific in their target markets: bars for students, or for locals, or for the staff of the local schools. There’s not a lot of overlap. The Buccaneer Lounge, housed in the blue and white building at the lower right of today’s quadcopter photo, was the favorite hangout of faculty. The bar closed this winter, and (as with many third spaces) it will be missed.
Flying a quadcopter feels a heck of a lot like flying did in my childhood dreams. Nap-of-the-earth flying reveals new textures and geometries that were invisible from the group. I was perhaps most surprised to realize how bright a road can be, relative to dense summer foliage.
Autumn in the Northeast has its particular look and feel, but it comes quite a bit earlier to the North Country than to elsewhere. Canton, New York is looking its most charming and just over the horizon, Ontario, CA is doing the same.
Cabins and homesteads have accompanied the Grasse River through the North Country for hundreds of years. Photographing those structures from a GPS-stabilized quadcopter hovering a meter off the water’s surface? That’s kind of new.
