Tag: New York

St. Lawrence Winter Otherworld

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No cropping, no HDR, and only minimal post-processing were applied to this image. Wandering in a snowstorm with a prime lens felt, well, primal, and I wanted an image that captured that. I know that there’s no such thing as the “true” photograph of a place or a moment, but at the edge of St. Lawrence’s campus, at this particular blue hour, the magic needed no adulteration.

This is the kind of image that I look back on the most: the ones with the strongest sense of place, the most obvious path to escape into the image. As we start a new year, I’d like to think that it’s a mark of my increased confidence as a photographer that I can make more with less. (Though don’t get me wrong—there are times when I’m glad to be able to make something out of nothing.)

St. Lawrence Winter Otherworld

Autumn Is Winter

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Late fall doesn’t mean rich, verdant scenes or flame-colored leaves. In the North Country, late fall really means early winter. The fields are brown, the trees are bare, and the scene is dusted with snow. Other than the greens of the pines, the world hibernates. The birds scattering to the air are the only signs of life, but the scene has a sort of cliché, stark beauty.

Autumn Is Winter

Study Area

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When photographed with a wide-open aperture and that “bokehlicious” depth of field, amplified by the Brenzier method, a quiet corner in St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall of Science can be magically welcoming. That particular chair in the corner, lit from above, looks like just the place to kick back and learn some science.

Study Area

Late Night Chinese Food

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Spending the past decade in urban environs, easy access to cuisine from outside the European canon was always a given. When I arrived in the North Country, I was ready for the snow—but perhaps not for the near-total absence of food from Asian cuisines. Just up the road from Dave’s II (which I’ve photographed previously) is No. A-1 Oriental Kitchen, which seems to satisfy every preconception of what a Chinese food restaurant in New York might be (according to twentieth-century American cinema.)

Late Night Chinese Food

Buffalo Aftermath

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Driving through Buffalo in the snow-entombed aftermath of the recent blizzard meant sliding our car between snow drifts and abandoned vehicles, all brutally carved out of the way by earthmoving equipment. Though I’m used to seeing a cut in an earthen hillside, it’s quite different to see cuts as necessary to open a snowy highway. Given the way this storm will stick in folks’ minds, I like the idea of a fuzed, muted scene that already seems placed in memory.

Buffalo Aftermath

Puck Control

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Watching the Women’s Ice Hockey team cruise to victory over Dartmouth was satisfying from both the standpoint of a fan (Here we go, Saints!) and from the standpoint of a photographer. Though I know that my 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens will forever be the patron saint of action photography, I really enjoy the challenge of shooting with a 35 mm prime lens. Appleton Arena is a gorgeous old rink with acres of wood, and the less extreme lens gives me the chance to capture the action and the ambiance from the standpoint of a fan in the front row.

Puck Control

American Cinema

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The American Theatre in Canton, New York has survived many a winter (and an unfortunately interior remodeling) with much of its twentieth-century charm intact. Continuing my investigation of the “slightly sinister” in small-town America (from yesterday and last spring), this is yet another charming vision of Americana. The echo of a passing car’s headlights in the street below only adds to the mystery.

American Cinema

Brenzier Grass

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Having read about the Brenzier Method of producing wide-angle photos with intense bokeh, I thought I’d give it a try. I’m not totally happy with this image of the grass shifting in the rain outside my building, but it’s exciting to try new things and aim towards new possibilities. In the mean time, I think this image nicely captures the strange, silhouetted glow of being outside a busy building at night.

Brenzier Grass

Jamaica Bay to Manhattan

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Departing JFK International Airport over Jamaica Bay, with the Manhattan skyline glittering in the sunrise, brings to mind my favorite topic: the gradient between dense urbanization and “wilderness.” If there’s a consistent theme to my photography, it’s the desire to capture this gradient in a single image (as I sometimes have in other settings.) Even my wide angle lens couldn’t capture the whole scene, but here’s One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building alongside the wetlands of Jamaica Bay, with New Jersey and Brooklyn buffering and smoothing the divide to a gradient.

Jamaica Bay to Manhattan