HDR Photography
Cool Rayleigh-scattered blue light, warm also-Rayleigh-scattered sunset light, clean white LEDs reflecting off of snow, deep orange sodium lights—there’s every option visible from above Trinity College’s campus.
Winter rain in Coachella Valley brings deep, somber hues to the monoculture arrays of date palms. I usually aim for depth and variety in my images, with a sense of definite space, so it’s an engaging game to depart from that and focus on a single plane and hypnotic pattern.
Like most infrastructure, a roof is something one generally ignores so long as it is functioning as expected. A heavy melt of snow, however, might call all of that into question. At least the view is good from up here.
I’ve long been drawn to images where I could capture nature and dense urban settings in close proximity. Perhaps it’s the utopian feel of those images—if a lot of people want to live in harmony with nature, we need to pack ourselves into dense structures to do so. Does that make this just a little solarpunk?
Early morning sees quiet at the old construction site, where this home at the site of an old palm plantation (which had fallen into disrepair) is being renovated. I love the chaos amid the grid of palms.
A terrifying cloud (I swear, it makes sense) is the antagonist of “Nope,” and I saw echoes of that shape in this cloud above the San Jacinto Mountains and the Empire Polo Club.
Snow and scaffolding are each the kind of dramatic additions to a neo-gothic building that suggest the dramatic climax of a noir film will take place on its rooftop.
While we’re contemplating the architecture of Clement Chemistry Building, I don’t think I’ve previously considered the way in which the dark sculptural stone sections connect together the windows on the second and third floors to make these big, tall, dramatic, dark pillars up each side of the building—almost reminiscence of the tall stained-glass windows of a cathedral.
White covers Trinity’s campus and accents the Neo-Gothic architecture, but the modernist skyline of Hartford in the distance perpetually suggests what else might architecturally be. Though I love twentieth century architecture, there’s little argument that it would have been the wrong choice for a small liberal arts college. It wasn’t until recently that I came to realize that many of these old-looking buildings are less than 100 years old; in essence, they were built to be old-fashioned from the start. Most east-coast schools are a sort of academic Disneyland—one constructed long enough ago that we forgot about the artifice and now see only authenticity.
The secretive and elite (and currently-on-probation) St. Anthony’s Hall looks dignified and quiet beneath a layer of snow.
Though the tiny lights of the Coachella Valley set the scale for the mighty size of the San Jacinto Mountains, even that range is dwarfed by the mighty scope and expanse of the sunset.
The newly renovated pond in Bushnell Park had crisp, clear water this fall and I assumed that I’d lose sight of the rocks at the bottom from the build-up of fallen leaves. Instead, it turns out that a frozen surface was the bottom-obscuring victor.
Despite years of living across the street from this charming skating rink in Bushnell Park, I’ve somehow never managed to capture good images of the action before this year. With the light of the full moon in the background, Hartford residents queued up for a chance on the ice.
When showing this picture of Trinity College’s chapel and Long Walk to a fellow alum, his first question was, “Where did you go to take this?” A near-lifetime of seeing the same perspectives from the same high points on campus made a shot like this one a complete surprise—a reaction that I’m always happy to provide.
The impossibility of this particular view of Trinity’s Long Walk keeps my eye returning to the perspective line as the building stretches away in the distance but doesn’t leave the frame.
Decaseconds 