HDR Photography
Visiting Governors Island (lacking that apostrophe since 1784) for the first time this weekend, I was astonished to see its historic buildings standing in such contrast to the sleekly modern shape of One World Trade Center in the distance. The island is only 800 yards off the coast of Manhattan, but seems a generation away.
There’s a warm comfort to a camp office, center of order and structure, on a cold early summer evening.
Nights may have turned cold and the first leaves have lost chlorophyll to turn gold, but fields are still filled with crops today—the Autumnal Equinox.
As busy as the cities of the Bay Area become, there are the spaces in the fire trails (like the one in the foreground) to get some quiet and distance. There’s an odd orthogonality of the senses in being able to see all of the commotion below with none of the accompanying sound.
Returning to Trinity College’s campus for reunion this summer, I felt a little like I was sneaking around in a place I didn’t quite belong. The moon, hiding just behind the chapel’s steeple, seemed to share my bashfulness.
St. Lawrence University’s campus has an “everything the sun touches is your kingdom” vibe—the school extends over almost an entire quadrant of town. Just under the setting sun is the most-frequented version of campus, but it continues to extend over the woods to this oxbow.
Two of my past St. Lawrence University students are working on their Ph.D.s at Berkeley and I discovered yesterday that one was giving her Graduate Research Conference (Berkeley’s version of a thesis defense, but earlier) while the other was in the audience. I’m very proud of both of them.
Understandably, this had me thinking about my experiences at Berkeley. In this picture from Grizzly Peak, the perspective folds together Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley. In the foreground, look at those gnarled trees—they’re weird but they’ve grown tall. I’ll take that visual metaphor for the grad school experience. I took this picture on Christmas Day in 2016, so I guess that makes these Christmas trees, too.
I cheekily posted this picture to Instagram with the caption, “Get ready for fall(s),” last weekend, but I have to admit I really am. Photographically, autumn means peak creativity for me in the North Country, including visits to places like this: Lampson Falls.
My favorite part of a huge cityscape view is the way the tiny details of buildings (windows, lights, roofs) slowly become less and less distinct as you look farther away. I was inspired to get a “real” camera all those years ago in part from a desire to takes pictures that gave the viewer a feeling of being able to “zoom forever” and always see more detail.
Libraries already have a capacity for bending time a bit (“I’ve been studying for how long?”), so it’s only appropriate for St. Lawrence’s most haunted building to have its space bent a bit as well (by, say, a fisheye lens).
One of Trinity College’s oldest buildings (Clement Hall, home to the Chemistry Department where I got my bachelor’s) is across from one of its newest (Raether Library and IT Center). From inside the modern surfaces and behind the modern windows, Clement looks even more Hogwartsian than it does typically.
The incredible architecture of Berkeley Lab, like the Molecular Foundry hanging out into the space of Strawberry Canyon, is implanted into an otherwise natural setting. In that sense, being there reminded me of a sort of real-world Jurassic Park. (The flocks of turkeys and herds of goats on the grounds were a bit less threatening than dinosaurs, thankfully. The mountain lions were a different story…)
Even with more than six million remains in the Catacombs of Paris there are apparently still absences in the patterns created by those filling the space.
Marine layer water clusters suspended in the air can always turn San Francisco pale, but the fuzziness of memory also layers over the time when Transbay Tower was under construction.
I’ve shown many parts of Berkeley’s Normandy Village, but perhaps not these square homes (that look like cubes with roofs jauntily capping them).
Decaseconds 