I’d never dare to suggest that an enormous stone staircase in a tourist-focused area of Paris would be a “secret”, but that glowing doorway below street level looks like some secretive club or spy rendez-vous.
Tag: photography
Empty Dorms in Spring
When spring shades into summer and the students go home for break, the campus is oddly empty for the best weather it ever sees. The empty dorms feel a bit like the result of a very tidy zombie apocalypse.
Every Detail of the Bay
My favorite view of the Bay Area (and the view that first let me define the idea of the civilization gradient as an element of my photography) is layered up with loads of detail. Down in Berkeley Lab is the building where I worked on sabbatical, and across the Bay Bridge is the completed Salesforce Tower hiding in the marine layer. The differences, particularly from the last time I showed a very similar shot from the spring, are in nature: the high-altitude clouds have been replaced with empty skies and that rolling marine layer, while the green hills have shifted to a dry, highly flammable tan.
Water Tower Excavation in Heuvelton
This nineteenth-century water tower in the North Country hamlet of Heuvelton, New York is scheduled for demolition (or disassembly, really) to make way for its modern replacement. In the process of preparing the site, however, it was discovered that the original graveyard that was moved to make room for the tower was, uh, not so thoroughly moved as originally assumed. Now, biological anthropologist Prof. Mindy Pitre and her team are on site (beneath the oak tree) to properly finish the job. I joined her for an afternoon to photodocument the site and its tower before ongoing construction forever alters it.
Johnson Hall in the Fall 2019
I’ve been capturing images of Johnson Hall of six years, and though the building itself stays the same, the trees outside have shifted and grown (and some died) over time. Time marches on.
Spring Arrangements
We may be deep within the glowing core of autumn in the Northeast at this moment, but I can’t escape the feeling that spring and its attendant graduation drama is fast approaching. If winter proves deep and dark, that may prove itself to be an illusion.
Winter Arrives in Manhattan
Days are shortening and skies are hardening and winter is coming.
Hallway with Two Colors
Though the difference in color temperature between sunlight and indoor lighting may be intuitively understood common knowledge, I’ve rarely seen a picture that so dramatically illustrates the color contrast.
Foliage Streak
Each tree in the canopy is roughly rotationally symmetrical, resulting in an anisotropic pattern. The sunlight breaks the symmetry and produces this beautiful streak of bright, cadmic yellow.
Pyramid Size Inversion
Though the central glass pyramid of the Louvre gets all the attention, the other pyramids of the Louvre can be just as dramatic (if the perspective is set correctly.)
Within the Red Stairs
Though the Musée d’Orsay seems from outside like a fine, upstanding member of Paris’s “traditional architecture” club, its interior reveals some more unconventional aesthetic choices.
To Sacré-Cœur
Sacré-Cœur sits high on a hill above Paris, and from the top of Tour Montparnasse (Sacré-Cœur architectural polar opposite), the view shows off so many of the city’s famous structures simultaneously: the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, the Palais Garnier.
The Statue of Liberty and New Jersey
Liberty Island played such a huge role in the media I consumed as a child—the most iconic symbol of New York (far more recognizable to a child than e.g. the Empire State Building)—that seeing it from One World Observatory was surreal.
Uptown
On this bright Sunday morning, I finally photographed the mighty Manhattan skyline from high above its (mostly) rectilinear grid. This is my favorite kind of photograph: The expanse of cloud-dappled space stretches all the way to tree-covered hills at the horizon and the cityscape seems to offer infinite detail down at the level of individual windows.
Governors Island Off Manhattan
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.
Decaseconds 