HDR Photography
Summer on a college campus (with all of the energy of a reunion weekend) buzzes and burbles with the remembered excitement of perfect afternoons. On the quad of Trinity College, in the shadow of elm trees and the enormous Neo-Gothic chapel, this reaches its apex. I particularly enjoy the father and son talking on the bench in the foreground, adding a touch of the intimate to an otherwise crowded scene.
A pony farm nestled in the hills of northern Vermont: with a ring and a pond by the house, what more can a young American dream of?
(At the moment I took this picture, the answer was, “snow.”)
Ice and snow and real winter have locked down the countryside, but I still have the photographic evidence of our ultra-mild, el-Niño-powered January.
Real winter arrived with a horrible stillness. When the temperature is -25ºF, nothing moves and nothing melts and every bit of solid water stays just where you leave it. Even the tiny twigs and branches were stuck in its embrace.
I wanted to look back briefly on the structures of St. Lawrence University’s campus under lockdown from heavy snow. The oldest buildings, like Herring-Cole Hall, are naturals.
This little shed is in odd scale with the buildings around it, but its little puddle of light fits perfectly with the evening.
I’ve always grown to love the mid-twentieth-century buildings like the ODY Library. The lights, snow, and scaffolding among the trees put me in mind of Soviet science fiction.
Here is another example from around the same time period, Bewkes Science Hall. In my mind, authors of speculative fiction must be hiding behind the drawn blinds and imagining snowy, cyberpunk futures of the late 1990s.
Away from the village centers, the North Country is frozen at an odd point in development. The original farms of early settlers haven’t been completely removed, but not much development has continued past that point. Trailers were installed by the sides of hot-mix roads and everything stopped there. I’m fascinated to think what this area must have been like during the late 1940s—population returning as the nation demobilized, and those people changing things in the North Country. Things don’t seem to change as much now.
Beyond Sather Tower’s bars and columns is Telegraph Ave. and the city of Oakland. I never forget that view, but I do somehow always forget the red tiles at the top of the campanile. I guess my brain abstracts away the details, even when they’re a major part of the scene.
Livestock of the North Country are, well, lively, even in winter. The shaggy coat and the bright sky must help. On a night with a sunset like this one, I share the llama’s need to go out and investigate.
In this image, my entire walk to work during graduate school is captured and arrayed. The go-to-work route of my co-editor is also hidden in the farther reaches of this picture (with the far-off Albany Hill marking its start). That hill is interesting in part because it used to have several similar siblings in the area that ere dynamited down to make room for more housing. Being a primarily landscape photographer, I’ve always liked the relationship between physical spaces and memories—and the ways the two can shift together over time. The connection of photography and memory, and the effect of going back to old photos, has been a growing interest of mine. (I articulated my general feelings in this post from 2014.)
Snow levels and re-makes the world, if only for a short time. My sense of scale decouples slightly from reality; though I know that the chapel is far taller than any form, man-made or otherwise, on St. Lawrence’s campus, I can’t help but imagine these trees stretching to impossible heights.
Stark winter nights, the kind with a handful of clouds and a lot of bright stars, seem to be when I spend the most time shoveling my driveway. Might as well do a long exposure or two while I work, right? I particularly like the tree in the center of the image that has been completely lit by the adjacent streetlight: it seems otherworldly and special when compared to the other silhouetted trees.
Snow was falling last night. The small houses with highly peaked roofs and additions out back are a characteristic of this part of town, where the mill workers once lived. The wood sheds are another notable characteristic of an area where many people use only wood stoves to heat their homes in the winter.
St. Lawrence University’s Herring-Cole Grove (a.k.a. the “Enchanted Forest”) in autumn is flush with golden leaves that carpet the ground and frame the sky; this makes the perfect compliment to the Gunnison Memorial Chapel from which these two just exited. I can’t help but be grandiose when remembering a day like this one.
Homes designed to weather the fierce winters of northern New England and the North Country have a particular structure: Something vaguely Scandinavian and reminiscent of a Viking longhouse. When the sun sets and the clouds gather for our (current) proper winter, I’m glad for the equivalence.
The New Year is here, and real winter has arrived along with it! Snow flies through the air and ice clings to the branches and sticks of the North Country.
Let’s usher out 2015 with this image of Buckeye Lake, may it finally be full in 2016.
Decaseconds 