HDR Photography
I’ve always been fascinated by the American colloquialism of calling any feed store an elevator. (Though Canton does have a larger grain elevator of its own, as well.) When the sunset sky is at its most glorious, reality highlights the hyperutilitarian aesthetic of a working building: it has to be painted some color, so it might as well be post-war pastels.
David Lynch brings an edge of dark menace to his films; I can still remember the first time I saw Blue Velvet and felt the crisp edge of real and unreal disintegrating. In particular, the director’s visions of Small Town America and the underbelly of that beast (in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, particularly) felt notable in “downtown” Canton last week. With the sky aflame and neon lights in every window, the scene was about 15 minutes away from some Lynch-level insanity.
When a warm breeze blows across a college campus at twilight, the already gorgeous buildings only become more (pardon the extensive use of cliché) romantic and magical. They tell me that this particular building contains a ghost, but it seems too warm and welcoming (a sort of half-scale college building) to be threatening. Perhaps it contains a friendly ghost?
In the rest of the world, it’s almost April, but in the North Country it still looks (and feels) like winter. The land and the people and the houses and the barns are battered by the weather, and when spring arrives we’ll repair and recover and regenerate.
Another Saturday special: I took this image of a quiet bridge over the Grasser River (on the over-named Miner Street Road) tonight. This is far too much beautiful winter scenery for mid-March.
Taking a temporary aside from Africa (and the warm/rainy weather of weird northern New York), here’s an image from the Zen garden just after the most recent blizzard. I haven’t done much work in black and white photography since high school, but this was a case of contrasting textures and tones that just demanded it. The rough, dark brick and stone dressed by puffy snow seemed poetic almost to the point of (again) cliché—so I went with it.
Today has been swamped under constant, freezing barrage of rain that carries dreariness in every drop. I prefer to remember the campus as it was in the last moments of aumtun, when one last sunset blazed through the crisp air.
A “casual blizzard” hit the North Country this weekend, and after I excavated around the house, I went exploring. St. Lawrence’s Zen garden was looking particularly peaceful under its (pardon the cliché) blanket of snow. The tiny structures seem to amplify the effect.
When I have to be up early to shoot a horse show, I make certain to take advantage of the occasion. In looking across the autumn North Country fields, I was amused by the “chronological asymmetry” between the looming living tree and the stump of “tree-past.”
On the dawn of SLU’s homecoming weekend, the sky was filled with appropriately dramatic clouds and the campus was dotted with all sorts of exotic temporary structures. (Or really only one sort: tents.) The attraction of a liberal arts campus on a crisp autumn weekend jumps from the screen.
Rising before dawn (and posting shots of buildings taken from slightly below and to the right) seems to be a recent trend for me. When I struggled out of bed to shoot a Saturday morning horse show on St. Lawrence University’s campus, I had the opportunity to capture the predawn North Country roads. No HDR, no fancy post-processing here (beyond some simple noise reduction). I present a quiet Saturday morning moment that captures the whole “stuck in time” 1980’s vibe of northern New York. You can almost hear Bruce Springsteen tracks playing in the background.
Decaseconds 