hotel – Decaseconds

Charles Bridge

2020-Oct-23 adohertyhLeave a comment

Prague’s Charles Bridge is centuries-old, covered in statues, and seemly perpetually mobbed. We visited during the off-season (November) and never saw the bridge without plenty of company. Perhaps the best part of the visit, though, was staying adjacent to the bridge in the Smetana Hotel, looking out over the Vltava (and crossing the bridge on many of our adventures around the city.)

From up close, the hotel is easier to find, but small triangle park across the street from the hotel is still not visible from this angle, making the the geometry of the ground floor and the street outside escheresque.

Smetana Hotel

2020-Sep-212020-Sep-20 adohertyhLeave a comment

We were visiting Prague in the off-season—that’s what we heard from every cab driver and waiter. Though gentle spring breezes had been replaced with nascent winter gusts, there were numerous benefits; the relative sparsity of fellow tourists in Old Town made for easy access to the city’s sights. Two of the subtler benefits are captured in this image: (1) the bare branches opened new views of the skyline, and (2) the Smetana hotel (just across the river) where we stayed had a spectacular room overlooking the Vltava open for us.

Mohonk and Its Setting

2018-Apr-162018-Apr-15 adohertyh3 Comments

The Mountain House seems to float above its eponymous lake—I’ve lately been imagining it as an overgrown version of Howl’s Moving Castle.

Old Hotel

2018-Apr-11 adohertyhLeave a comment

From modern lasers to something a bit older: the lakeside view of Mohonk Mountain House, looking much as it has for more than 100 years. The sheer face of the cliff contines into the structure and reflects in the water.

Hotel Services

2018-Apr-022018-Apr-01 adohertyhLeave a comment

Even the grandest of hotels have infrastructure that supports the guest experience. For a grand old hotel like Mohonk Mountain House, that infrastructure is charming enough to be interesting in its own right.

Those early-twentieth-century structures—boilers and exhaust stacks and hand-painted signs noting the protocols for refilling the massive fuel oil tanks.

Mohonk Gold and Blue

2018-Mar-28 adohertyhLeave a comment

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.

Mohonk Reflections (I, II, and III)

2018-Mar-26 adohertyh1 Comment

Mid-March shift from my most photographically productive time on the West Coast (amazing sunsets, end of the rainy season, etc.) to my least in the East (dirty snow, still-bare trees, sandy roads). I’ve been trying to find more beauty in the pre- and post-winter “stick seasons,” examining the shapes revealed when leaves and snow can’t hide branches. Though I’m not yet convinced to do anything more than grudgingly accept its necessity, but it led to some pretty dramatic reflections at Mohonk Mountain House.

Blue Hour Gazebo

2017-Jan-27 adohertyhLeave a comment

Mohonk’s gazebos are a signature of the hotel, and this particular structure is my favorite of them all. It’s not the biggest, or the most elaborate, but it benefits from being built on a concrete island projecting into the lake. At least to my eight-year-old self, that made it by far the coolest.

Two Views of Mohonk

2016-Dec-30 adohertyhLeave a comment

Mohonk Mountain House has grown like lichen across its mountaintop, but its oldest core shapes much of the structure’s identity. Tea time happens at 4:00 PM each day, and guests sit in the array of front porch rocking chairs with their tea during the warmer months.

Just around the corner, gazebos crusted with snow dot the cliffs.

Port in a (Snow) Storm II

2016-Dec-142016-Dec-14 adohertyhLeave a comment

I’ve taken a few pictures around Salisbury, CT in a snow storm in previous years. When the snow is drifting down and the charming New England buildings look inviting, the setting is perfect for feelings of home.

Mohonk Flying Castle

2016-Dec-09 adohertyhLeave a comment

Literally on a lake near the top of a mountain, Mohonk Mountain House gave my childhood self the illusion of a flying castle. This particular image is an iconic one for me, but it’s also part of a family of “ubiquitous images” that come from photographing a landmark from one of the only available views: shots like the Yosemite tunnel view, or the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, or the view of Manhattan over the Brooklyn Heights pilings. Any new image is just adding to the canon.

Mohonk Dock Snow

2016-Dec-07 adohertyhLeave a comment

Summer canoeing is months in the past at Mohonk Mountain House; snow and rime crust the boat dock. On the cliffs in the distance, the hotel’s signature gazebos are (mostly) unoccupied and winter is settling in.

American Hogwarts

2016-Nov-25 adohertyhLeave a comment

Mohonk Mountain House is a unique hotel in the hills above New Paltz, New York. Though I visited there during the summer as a youth (while reading Harry Potter, naturally), this was my first visit as an adult and during the winter. None of the magic has been lost during the seasons in between.

Salisbury After the Storm

2016-Nov-212016-Nov-21 adohertyhLeave a comment

Winter arrived in the Northeast with maximum attitude: from 66ºF on Saturday morning to a full-on blizzard by Sunday. In Salisbury, CT, home of ski jumps and wood-lined hotel bars, we got to experience the odd dynamic of watching Porsche and Mercedes SUVs claw through the snow. The classic White Hart hotel was looking its best.

I tested my DJI Phantom 3 Advanced in the post-storm conditions. Almost-freezing, windy conditions didn’t have an impact on its flight performance, but the gimbal didn’t seem too thrilled. Some of its smooth elegance was lost… Or maybe it was just the wind.

OMNI, Again

2016-Mar-18 adohertyhLeave a comment

Traveling back to California for the first time since I left in 2013, I realized I had forgotten the little but important differences: the streets are crowded with cars instead of trucks and the air is saturated with a different set of volatile organic compounds.

From another perspective and at another time, this photograph captures the same Omni hotel and Petco Park from one of my earliest Decaseconds posts, almost four years ago. How odd to be back again.