HDR Photography
Across the San Francisco Bay, under the shadow of the East Bay hills, the Port of Oakland hums busily along. From far away and in the golden light of sunset, it’s easy to forget the sophisticated dance of distribution that keeps the urban tangle of the Bay Area alive.
November snow can’t hold the title “unseasonable” in Canton, New York, but it adds a gentle blanket to the campus, just the same. The soft dusk ceiling of pastel clouds and the quiet campus converge at the end of the day.
Where earth meets sky at the edge of the horizon, the foothills of the Adirondacks oscillate under the autumn colors and I use increasingly baroque adjectives to describe the North Country.
On my way back from my conference in Connecticut, I drove through the Adirondacks, where winter is arriving fast. The hills were dusted with snow and all but the most tenacious leaves were carpeting the forest floor. I pulled off the road for this shot in Tupper Lake, where the grasses, placid waters, and stubbly hills matched perfectly with the dense clouds and the random distribution of sunlight. The moment felt chaotic, strange—just a bit primeval. I had a chance to do landscape photography that truly excluded any human intrusion (save the eye of the photographer himself.)
When I have to be up early to shoot a horse show, I make certain to take advantage of the occasion. In looking across the autumn North Country fields, I was amused by the “chronological asymmetry” between the looming living tree and the stump of “tree-past.”
On the dawn of SLU’s homecoming weekend, the sky was filled with appropriately dramatic clouds and the campus was dotted with all sorts of exotic temporary structures. (Or really only one sort: tents.) The attraction of a liberal arts campus on a crisp autumn weekend jumps from the screen.
Outside Vancouver (the city) are the hillsides, dotted with homes and apartment buildings and, farther north, massive rocks. (That’s a pretty rare combination.) The difference between the soft, welcoming pink hues of the sunset and those massive hillsides (with some lovely evergreens in the foreground) is stranger, the more I think about it.
This picture also illustrates the biggest difference I’ve encountered since moving from the west coast to the east: the environments are less staggering and overwhelming, but the skies (and the buildings) are much more so. I’ve had to reorient the way I shoot to account for it.
This hill in northwestern Connecticut is, tragically, not really named “Dragon Mountain.” That never kept my elementary-school-aged self from calling it that. The way it rises, green and different, from the surrounding winter landscape brought to mind Smaug, sleeping under the mountain. At age seven, I half-wished that it would awaken and soar above the miniature houses below.
I dream of the perfect vacation house, nestled on the shores of some lonely Adirondack lake and stocked with just the right combination of boats and brews and firewood. I project this dream onto this unassuming cabin and its charming beach, nestled on the shore of Mirror Lake.
Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Colin Hill.
Here is the boat lauch ramp on the shores of Lake Pontoosuc, just north of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Although spring has arrived and the sun takes longer to disappear behind the mountains in the distance, the water is still icy cold to the touch.
Having recently spent a great deal of time hiking the forests of New England, the broad, grassy, and only sparsely forested hills of California are seeming more and more alien in my memory. With the fluffy intrusion of some low-lying clouds, the whole experience is rendered otherworldly.
On the rocks of Grizzly Peak, nothing resets your soul like seeing the hills and trees towering above the hazy sprawl of Oakland.
Bright and fresh and “Easter-colored,” a horse show in the summer reminds me of a Seurat painting: tall trees, broad trellises, vibrant flowers, and spectators in pastels.
At Gracelynd Hill, outside Santa Barbara, the late afternoon sun tickles the long grass in horse paddocks. If I were a horse, I suspect that an afternoon in the warm sun with an hillside’s worth of food would be a pretty paradisiacal place.
Not far from Muir Woods, the Pacific coast cliffs of California are a starker, steeper, and foggier place than I expected. The nearly sheer cliff face, the scraggly trees hanging on for dear life, and the weather- (and person-) beaten railings make the whole place feel mythical. The fog density hit just the right soupiness on this particular day; we could just barely see and hear the waves crashing on the rocks below.
