Adding to my collections of homesteads in places like Vermont and Wyoming is today’s shot from outside Park City, Utah. Looking closely, you can see the array of vehicles in the landscape, looking extra-miniature against the mountains beyond.
Tag: photography
Lynchian Town II
David Lynch’s projects have documented the (sometimes sinister) weirdness underlying small-town life, and I think I’ve occasionally captured a hint of that in my pictures of Canton. High above the town after an August storm, the clouds impart a definitely Lynchian vibe.
Above the Quad
This weekend marked the first truly warm days (i.e. spring) after a long winter, and there’s not long now until St. Lawrence’s students graduate on that sunset-lit quad at the center of the image.
Earth Day 2018
A special weekend post: Happy Earth Day from Decaseconds!
End of the Blue Hour: San Francisco
A history of design and engineering is visible from the Marin Headlands in the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco beyond it. That’s visible at every hour of the day, so I must conclude that the people jamming the roads earlier on the evening of this image were mostly there for the combination effect with the sunset. As the crowds decamped for dinner elsewhere, the blue hour brought my favorite views of the city.
Awaiting a Summer Storm in the Pearl
Most of my photographs are either calming or energizing, but it’s a rare image that makes me anxious. Storm clouds rolling over Portland, Oregon, however, have me running for cover.
Mohonk and Its Setting
The Mountain House seems to float above its eponymous lake—I’ve lately been imagining it as an overgrown version of Howl’s Moving Castle.
Fall Visit
Good landscape photography advice: take your pictures from the top of the second tallest structure (or drone) around and let the tallest structure (like St. Lawrence’s Gunnison Chapel) cross the horizon.
Old Hotel
From modern lasers to something a bit older: the lakeside view of Mohonk Mountain House, looking much as it has for more than 100 years. The sheer face of the cliff contines into the structure and reflects in the water.
532 nm
In St. Lawrence’s Raman spectroscopy and microscopy lab, the most potent laser illumination source comes from a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet. This is a pretty ubiquitous laser source, but I happen to like it because it also demonstrates the value of nonlinear optics: though this laser is emitting light at 1064 nanometers (in the infrared), a suitable doubling crystal can combine two of those 1064 photons together to make a shiny new 532 nm photon.
No More Canoes
There are many ways to define the seasons, with varying degrees of usefulness. (Solstices and equinoxes seem to have only the thinnest connection with the weather.) Perhaps the most valuable differentiation between times of the year is when one can reasonably be out on the water: “Spring” is that first moment when an afternoon in a canoe doesn’t sound miserable.
Hotel Services
Even the grandest of hotels have infrastructure that supports the guest experience. For a grand old hotel like Mohonk Mountain House, that infrastructure is charming enough to be interesting in its own right.
Those early-twentieth-century structures—boilers and exhaust stacks and hand-painted signs noting the protocols for refilling the massive fuel oil tanks.
Last Nights in the Normandy Village
The end of sabbatical meant saying “goodbye” to the Normandy Village and its quaint weirdness. I’ll always remember them as my collaborator described them: “The little Hansel and Gretel houses.”
Mohonk Gold and Blue
Deep night colors on the snow cliffs contrast with the warm glow of the hotel; this could be an infrared image, mapping the local temperatures.
Mohonk Reflections (I, II, and III)
Mid-March shift from my most photographically productive time on the West Coast (amazing sunsets, end of the rainy season, etc.) to my least in the East (dirty snow, still-bare trees, sandy roads). I’ve been trying to find more beauty in the pre- and post-winter “stick seasons,” examining the shapes revealed when leaves and snow can’t hide branches. Though I’m not yet convinced to do anything more than grudgingly accept its necessity, but it led to some pretty dramatic reflections at Mohonk Mountain House.
Decaseconds 