Median Building Distribution

Arriving at St. Lawrence’s campus, I was amazed at all of the space between the buildings: tree-lined paths, broad quads, and extra fields. Having spent my education on urban campuses with buildings packed in tightly together, I was used to a height and compact structure.

Median Building Distribution

Standard Berkeley Street Scenes

The title of today’s post is somewhat sarcastic: there is such an incredible variety of vehicles and homes visible on any Berkeley street that a “standard” is impossible. This Volvo wagon and turreted home both seemed like prime examples of classic Berkeley engineering.

Standard Berkeley Chariot

Standard Berkeley Home

San Francisco: Texture and Geometry

Beautiful San Francisco and its changing, growing skyline are the site of some incredible sunsets. This image from earlier in the spring features a sunset of mostly naturally induced colors, but the fires threatening the Bay Area at the moment are producing a much more intense set of hues.

San Francisco: Texture and Geometry

Views from Derby Day

St. Lawrence University’s Derby Day finished out the summer horse show season, and I was on hand to get some shots. The day started dry with a dramatic sky, but quickly turned to rain.

X Horse

Did you know that a group of vultures (of the turkey variety, in this case) in a tree are called a “committee”? I’ll not over-interpret that.

Vulture Committee

High-collared jackets are the perfect (badass) gear for when the weather turns stormy but you still need to warm up outside before heading into the ring.

Rain Rider

North Country Japanese Garden

In the past, I’ve photographed several Japanese gardens, and even St. Lawrence University’s own North Country Japanese Garden, but I’ve never been able to capture it like this before. From my quadcopter’s vantage point, I captured the geometry of Sykes Hall and the North Country Japanese Garden in the grids of streets and campus paths.

North Country Japanese Garden: Above

Self-Portraits of a Sabbaticaler

I’m interested in how scientists are depicted in media. They seem to always be in one of two modes. Either smiling at the desk with a screen and board filled with data/equations:

Self-Portrait at Berkeley Lab

Or in the lab, with fancy apparatus and appropriate PPE. This may be real evidence of a sort of dichotomy in the lives of many working scientific professionals: some of the time is spent at a desk, doing the sort of email-answering/paperwork-submitting tasks that are common to many fields, but the rest of the time is spent in a more technical setting. I’d really like to see a broader view of how scientists spend their time. Could the whole breadth of the approach be captured in a single image, like some elaborate Baroque painting?

Sabbaticaler

The Old Part of Campus

Though St. Lawrence has its share of modern buildings (including my own), it’s the old part of campus (buildings like Piskor and Sykes Halls) that best captures the Harry Potter vibe of small liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.

The Old Part of Campus