Night – Page 13 – Decaseconds

Hunter’s Supermoon on Main Street

2016-Oct-19 adohertyhLeave a comment

The weekend marked a Hunter’s supermoon—one that also coincided with the moon rising along the axis of Main Street in Canton, New York, as well as coinciding with the local period of peak foliage. Can one small town handle all of those events? My quadcopter and I were on hand to investigate. From 100 meters up, Main Street looked just about perfect. You can spot the awning of the Chinese restaurant and the movie theater that I’ve photographed previously, but the same structures take new meanings.

Previously Everyday

2016-Oct-12 adohertyhLeave a comment

The intersection of Hearst and Euclid was an everyday sight (and site for lunch) during graduate school. Just as daytime settings become otherworldly by night, chronological distance from those days have made the setting alien and exciting. How could this place ever have seemed normal?

Club Sports

2016-Oct-052016-Oct-06 adohertyhLeave a comment

After classes end for the day, there’s still an astonishing amount of activity on St. Lawrence’s campus. My favorite detail about this picture (other than its, “Hey, I can see my house from here!” vibe) is the chapel tower sneaking over the horizon. It’s mirrored on either side by a water tower and a cell tower that are, uh, a bit less dramatic.

Light Pollution Sucks

2016-Oct-042016-Oct-04 emceehammr3 Comments

I’m amazed at what I can capture with my camera, especially given that I can’t see this with my naked eyes. Still, I wish that I didn’t have to contend with the bright lights of even a small town.

Forest Border

2016-Sep-19 adohertyh3 Comments

The lights mark the border between forest and manicured athletic fields. In real life, crossing the border means risking ticks and perhaps a run-in with a deer; in the realm of science fiction, I can imagine much more terrifying consequences from crossing the border from light into darkness as the sun sets.

Mysterious Containers

2016-Sep-16 adohertyhLeave a comment

Shipping containers are ubiquitous yet mysterious. Because they’re used to transport almost everything, they could contain almost anything—and that has been used to great effect by a variety of my favorite authors. There’s little doubt over what these particular containers are holding—mostly supplies left in dorm rooms by St. Lawrence students at the end of the year—but there’s still a healthy dose of mystery in their juxtaposition with the regular structures of a college campus.

North to College

2016-Sep-09 adohertyh1 Comment

Coming to St. Lawrence, I was not prepared for the amount of forest space on the school’s 1000-acre campus. Flying above the Grasse River, campus looks wild and vaguely Nordic. I’ve never run into a frost giant on the way to work, but now I’m sort of wondering whether I need to prepare for that, too.

Friday Night Lights in the North Country

2016-Sep-05 adohertyh1 Comment

The roars and gasps of the crowd could be heard all over town: Friday night football in the North Country of New York. St. Lawrence’s Saints dominated Morrisville to the tune of 28–0. From quadcopter, the action on the field is just a bit out of range. One of the recurring themes of my work is the civilization gradient between densely human areas and wilderness; I view this picture as another interpretation of that theme. There’s perhaps no urban center in Canton, but there are quaint homes and university buildings giving way to farmland and, eventually, the foothills of the Adirondacks in the distance where the Earth begins to curve.

Last Light and First

2016-Aug-31 adohertyhLeave a comment

Night-flying for long-exposure photography seems to rely a lot on luck: How’s the wind? How’s the weather? That’s a lot to consider, but the superhuman perspective (even if it is occasionally a bit blurry) is worth it. I love the times of day when the brightness of building lights and the brightness of the setting sun match each other in intensity.

Night Above

2016-Aug-22 adohertyhLeave a comment

After playing at low altitudes, I upgraded to a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced last week. This quadcopter can stay stationary in the night sky—like, “long exposures look good” stationary. I’m looking forward to exploring what the little flying robot can do.

Home Arch

2016-Jul-29 adohertyhLeave a comment

Having lived in dorms with entrances under archways myself, I’ve always found them friendly and inviting places. Perhaps that effect stems from the Batcave effect of having a “secret” entrance in a cave-like stone structure. Good place to store the batmobile.

Complicated Cabins

2016-Jul-20 adohertyh1 Comment

“Cabin” is more an aesthetic style than a humble building in the North Country. At St. Lawrence’s Camp Canaras, the cabins are large structures with complicated architectural flourishes; at midnight, they take on a Tolkeinesque vibe.

Small College Town

2016-May-13 adohertyhLeave a comment

There are a lot of small, rural towns with the odd culture bloom of colleges planted in their cores. I think it’s the ancillary buildings, the old fraternities and club houses with their mix of higher grandeur and shabbier paint, that most signal one of these villages

That extra school year energy of students wandering the campus at all hours provides an extra energy to a sleepy place. I miss it in the summer.

OMNI, Again

2016-Mar-18 adohertyhLeave a comment

Traveling back to California for the first time since I left in 2013, I realized I had forgotten the little but important differences: the streets are crowded with cars instead of trucks and the air is saturated with a different set of volatile organic compounds.

From another perspective and at another time, this photograph captures the same Omni hotel and Petco Park from one of my earliest Decaseconds posts, almost four years ago. How odd to be back again.

Snow on Geology

2016-Mar-14 adohertyhLeave a comment

St. Lawrence’s Geology Department faculty take students out of their everyday dorm-gym-class world and bring them to the nature surrounding our campus. When winter locks down the Adirondacks, those adventures can’t happen as frequently. I imagine they must be looking forward to the end of winter more than most.