HDR Photography
Flying a drone makes me think a lot about my xyz position in space. Dark stone and glossy water and fuzzy trees seem to occupy orthogonal dimensions: the trees point along the z-axis, the striations in the stone along the y-axis, and the ripples and rapids in the water along the x-axis.
Manhattan has been the site of an unsurprisingly large number of climactic cinematic showdowns. In the dramatic golden light of an autumn sunset, this particular image contrasts two tall towers on the horizon: in the east, the Empire State Building, site of King Kong’s climb, and in the west, the new Hudson Yard buildings that bear a marked resemblance to Stark Tower from the Avengers.
Stone Valley is a hyperreal place at sunset; the effect is a bit different from above but no less magical. The rapids do, I’ll grant, look a bit less steep from up here.
Last summer, Herring-Cole Hall in the foreground received a new roof. They say the building is haunted; I wonder if the ghost appreciated the upgrade?
The red-roofed Outing Club building has all kinds of odd decorations that have made it a frequent subject for me in the past; this sunset view puts my previous work in a rather different context. St. Lawrence University’s campus is just across the street, and the town of Canton is down the road in the distance.
Though Decaseconds isn’t about to become an auto blog, there’s something about a car in the environment for which it was practically designed (like a tiny Peugot in Paris, a Miata on a racetrack, or a manual transmission, turbocharged, German wagon in the Adirondacks) that looks just right.
Universities think on long timescales (decades and centuries) and as a result, the oldest building on St. Lawrence’s campus (Richardson, on the right) overlooks the newest addition (the quad in front of Kirk Douglas Hall).
Though school may be out “forever” when summer arrives, there’s a stillness that overtakes the campus of which I am not particularly fond. At the start of this spring semester, campus is bustling. Is it ironic that campus is “alive” when frozen solid, but “dead” when it looks like this.
Sunsets might be a cliché subject for a landscape photograph, but the North Country’s specimens offer such glowing, striated features with such regularity that the truly exceptional examples can strain my belief in atmospheric models of cloud formation and light scattering.
Winter’s lockdown continues (it might warm up above -10ºF today!), but spring will eventually return. The footbridge to SUNY Canton will eventually be free of ice and the smallest hints of leaves will peak out from the tree branches.
Next week marks the beginning of the Spring 2019 semester. I’m shocked that it has arrived so quickly, and sure that I’ll be equally shocked when the end arrives in May; that was definitely the case last year.
On a chunky rock in the middle of the Grasse River through Canton, New York, the lack of good soil has kept the trees small and bonsai-esque.
St. Lawrence University’s campus is quiet for the moment; athletes have returned early from break but pretty much everyone else is still on winter vacation. The snow adds an extra layer of dampening.
When they return, the school will once again take on its weird ski lodge vibe.
When winter is temporarily interrupted (as it is today in Northern New York) by a sudden thaw and double aliquot of rain, the ice on the Grasse River breaks up and clusters around the rocks and islands. This path in Canton, New York has been rendered impassable by a pack of rogue ice forced between the two sets of stairs by the high water.
Decaseconds 