HDR Photography
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.
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.
Morning sun across the old wood of Mohonk’s porch matches perfectly with the coils of vapor from a hot cup of coffee. I think this photograph effectively captures the ladder-like pattern in the chair shadows and the possibilities of hiking in the hills beyond the lake.
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.
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.
Of all the plant phyla, I’ve always felt a particular affinity for the conifers. Those spiny softwood survivors have a diverse yet particular set of aromatic compounds that accompany them; I can chart a lot of happy memories to pine or cypress groves and their applied organic chemistry. Starting on the east coast, through the midwest, and finding myself in grad school on the west coast meant contact with a lot of different species. These ocean-wind-sculpted examples from Pacifica, California are particularly dramatic.
The shapes of the hills of California are odd and impossible by the standards of the Northeast. In spite of my time spent there, my brain has still not adjusted to the angles—either in the distance or under my own feet when I’m there. On a charming horse farm that might be at home in the early twentieth century, the sunbaked scene is too real to be real.
Piper‘s trip to Alberta, Canada led to some incredible images of Lake Louise. The scale of the setting is almost incomprehensible—except for the tiny canoes by the shoreline.
The composition and content of the photographs brought to mind the works of early/mid-twentieth century naturalists, and I tried to envision what their take on Piper’s work would have been:
Deep in winter and summer, New England becomes monochromatic (white and green, respectively). Late fall is different; “stick season” has a broad, desaturated array of hues that stretch across the landscape.
This highway in the hillside makes the mountain look rather smug, I think. This is the Han Solo of rocky formations.
This winter that won’t begin has brought strange landscapes to New England. Along Little River through Stowe, VT, the environment is in a strange flux/limbo. Add the snow with imagination?
Perhaps my last post in the cozy, wood-lined chambers of Timberline Lodge put me in mind of winter excursions. From the windy top of Lion’s Head in northwestern Connecticut, the view of three states is incredible. The snow clings to branches from a recent storm, and a few wisps of cloud mark the horizon in an otherwise azure sky. This snowsuit caught my eye, and I particularly liked the way only a single hand of human being is visible, poking out from the bundled layers.
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.
Here is your intrepid photographer (a.k.a. me), standing at the foot of a lovely waterfall on Mt. Riga. Near the summer solstice, on the perfect warm and breezy day, we paused here just long enough to take a few shots before we dove into the natural pool beneath the falls.
This weekend, I finally conquered a serious challenge: organizing my ancient photo collection. As I went through it, I found some photographs from almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, they weren’t taken with a DSLR, but I’m presenting them here as a taste of compositions, colors, and places that aren’t otherwise found on Decaseconds that frequently. With no further ado:
This is the creek, behind my childhood home, where I spent countless hours building castles, bridges, and walls from sticks and stones. The water comes from the top of nearby Mt. Riga, and is icy cold through most of the year. Somehow, we still managed to handle swimming in it during the summer.
This picture shows the Long Walk of Trinity College in Hartford, CT. This is the oldest part of the school, built when the campus moved to its current location in 1863. This particular day at the end of November was the first snow of the year. Everyone is just a bit surprised, the leaves are still on the trees, and the snow seems wetter than at any other time.
This photograph was taken at the top of Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Though the top of the mountain is barren but for a few shrubs, it turns out that this isn’t because of being above the tree line. Over the course of centuries, the mountain was repeatedly burned, both to make room for livestock and because wolves were living in its caves. Now, just a handful of berry bushes and grasses crust the smooth, ancient stone of the mountain. Some have called it, “the Most Hiked Mountain in America.”
Finally, I have a picture from Key West, Florida. The sunsets and the enormous thunderheads there make for some lovely pictures, but my favorite detail is at the horizon: the poles supporting power lines, alone in the water, bringing electricity from key to key.
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