Tag: photography

Chapel by Night

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After a trip back to my alma mater, Trinity College, for reunion weekend (but not my reunion), I’ve had some time to process both my photographs and my feelings from the trip. Standard touchy/feely closure stuff—appreciating my time there, but recognizing that I’m glad I’ve moved on. (If you can call teaching at a different small liberal arts college moving on…) This image of Trinity’s awesome Neo-Gothic chapel is reflective of two things: first, of the imposing nature of the structure, and second, the way in which its white stone can take on many colors depending on the available light. Perhaps that flexibility is an overly-obvious symbol of how feelings for a place can shift with time.

Chapel by Night

Two Rides from the Dairy Princess Festival

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Today, I’ll follow up Monday’s “Three Scenes” with two of the cool cars/trucks/auto-vehicles from the Dairy Princess Festival last weekend. Seeing strange and special cars in a land of brütal road salt is a testament to their owners care and attention.

Beach Machine

I shot these images free-hand, outside, after 9:00 PM. That’s a testament of its own—either to the power of a fast prime lens and good noise reduction software, or to how late it stays light in the summer when you live this far north.

Big Kid Toy

Three Scenes from the Dairy Princess Festival

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This weekend marked the crowning of a new Dairy Princess in Canton, New York, and with that crowning came a variety of festivities. A location scout for a charming movie about a small-town baseball team with moxie would have been hard-pressed to find a better vision of classic America. While eating an ice cream cone taller than my head and avoiding children running at full tilt, I had a chance to put my 35 mm prime lens to good use. I present three of my shots from the evening.

Ubiquitous food stands offer what you’re craving—as long as that includes sugar, salt, grease, potatoes, and caffeine.

Snack America

There were also, of course, the quiet asides between family members in quasi-privacy. I really liked the way that this side-conversation was also physically away from the lights (and crowds), even if it did push my poor APS-C sensor to its limits.

But Dad!

And what kind of American festivities would be complete without some live music?

Elders with Music

Old Barn, New Summer

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When barns are no longer needed, they so rarely seem to be torn down. Rather, they sink slowly back into the earth, like tree stumps. New life is bursting forth around an old barn, and it does start to seem like just another feature of the natural landscape.

It’s been strange to see the degree to which the seasons and cycles of the Northeast have started to influence my photography. I don’t know that I thought as much about the passage of time and the seasons when I was in California with its nearly-unchanging conditions (pick between rainy or dry, but that’s about it.) Doing landscape photography in a place with drastic seasonal swings makes me more aware of them than ever before.

Old Barn, New Summer

Berkeley Still Life

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Berkeley is a pretty surreal place; as I process that, I thought my 400th post on Decaseconds might be a great time to really show it. The yellows of the birch tree are so sharp on a foggy fall morning, amid the hard, stained concrete of the past and the high-tech Li Ka Shing Building (one of my first-ever posts) materials. Visual contrast, both literal and metaphorical, align with the conceptual contrast of a place that prides itself on being countercultural while also being the birthplace of many of the technologies and ideas that make our modern culture possible.

Berkeley Still Life

Deer Play

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That perfect, after-dinner dusk moment: the deer (and the bugs) are out to play, and everything is quiet in the last un-Rayleigh-scattered rays of sunlight. Among the weathered fenceposts and glacier-carved rocks, deer are out to play. I’m interested by the idea that children play, and animals play, but the idea of “play” as something that adult humans do takes on a different meaning in the context of adult human culture. The concept of responsibility brings with it a parallel idea that to play is to behave irresponsibly, doesn’t it?

But don’t dwell on that. The sunset is enchanting and the deer are having fun. I will, too.

Deer Play

Take a Break (Abandoned)

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During our time in Zulu Nyala (in eastern South Africa), we visited the set where the film “I Dreamed of Africa” was shot. Since the movie was finished, the area has been used for some other purposes, but it’s largely intact (if abandoned) in the state it was when it was last used. The benches and chairs are welcoming, even amid the overgrown grass, but in places you find the strange artifacts of the set’s true purpose. One-way mirrors and weird hiding-places for cameras are all over the place.

Take a Break (Abandoned)

Sunset and Lazy River

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When I discuss HDR photography, I usually borrow the words of Trey Ratcliff and the idea of better capturing a scene as the human mind perceives it. In the case of this particular sunset over the Grasse River (the North Country at its prettiest), however, I feel like HDR has captured even more than my eye could perceive at the moment I took the picture. This is not only because of the increased dynamic range, but also the resulting detail in the trees by the bank and in the wee islands and rocks. I was too distracted by the intensity of the sun when I took the original image to spend time on the details of the scene, but now I’m glad to be able to look back to those details to really place myself in that moment.

Sunset and Lazy River

Summer Sunset Farm

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On the quiet and winter-crushed roads outside of town, the density of nuclear mosquitoes skyrockets when summer finally arrives. Standing on the edge of a glacier-scared field, under the dome of clouds, and watching the thermonuclear fireball of our star vanish over the horizon, it’s easy to feel small. But if science allows me to understand these phenomena and my place in the world, the nature of what an image of that world means changes.

Summer Sunset Farm

Tiny Doors to Knowledge

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On a cloudy day, the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh has a softness to its stone exterior. (Its interior, as I’ve shown in the past, is equally stunning.) The sense of scale to the image (and the distortion of the wide-angle lens) can play tricks on your mind, making the whole scene seem smaller than it really is. To get a feel for the imposing/soft contradiction, concentrate on those improbably small revolving doors. They must be human-sized, right?

Tiny Doors to Knowledge

Self Portrait 2014

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I often find myself using a timer in place of a cable release to remove camera shake on long-exposure shots—why not use that time for a bit of a “landscape self-portrait,” too? At the end of a long winter, in the dark of night, when it seemed that cold and precipitation dominate forever, my own presence in the environment and in reality is ghostly and insubstantial.

Self Portrait 2014