Today has been swamped under constant, freezing barrage of rain that carries dreariness in every drop. I prefer to remember the campus as it was in the last moments of aumtun, when one last sunset blazed through the crisp air.
Tag: photography
Quiet Kill
The “real-world Zen garden” effect of northwestern Connecticut at the end of November was just the calming experience I needed: after a busy semester, stopping for a moment by the edge of slow stream, standing among the red, crinkly fallen leaves and short grasses, and feeling the wind lift puffs of snow from the rocks to my face.
Snow in the Zen Garden
A “casual blizzard” hit the North Country this weekend, and after I excavated around the house, I went exploring. St. Lawrence’s Zen garden was looking particularly peaceful under its (pardon the cliché) blanket of snow. The tiny structures seem to amplify the effect.
Ghostavator
Sometimes, ghosting is a gross byproduct of taking HDR brackets in an imperfect world. Other times, it can be used to create a ghostly Schrödinger’s Cat elevator door, neither closed nor open, forever in flux. Different moments in time and space, overlapped, with brain-twisting results.
By the Banks
Winter crisps and desaturates the landscape, and draws the eye from the Northeast to places more southern, where I wonder if, “the grass is greener on the other side.” That might sometimes be an illusion, but then there are cases like this one: the grass is literally greener on the other side.
Foggy Ascent
Early morning fog clings to the rocky-yet-verdant hills and cliffs of Muir Overlook, just north of San Francisco. Lichen-encrusted rocks and eerie, hanging trees capture moisture from the air. It’s not raining, but everything is “drippy.”
Silo and Tree
The rolling, bucolic hills of the Connecticut-New York border are one of my favorite places. The foothills of the Berkshires roll along under the late-autumn reds and browns, the clouds pucker towards rain overhead, and the decrepit skeletons of agriculture linger among the charming homes that now dominate the landscape.
Vintage BMW
That perfect New England Saturday morning: crisp fall air, vintage European bikes, bright red barns, out to get waffles.
Vacuum Parts
When you’re working with an ultra-high vacuum chamber, there’s no “popping down to the hardware store for a spare part.” Over the years, spares and replacements and antiquated equivalents and almost-still-good parts tend to accumulate in the cabinets of a physics lab. Cabinets start to look like set dressing in a sci-fi movie.
Under the Milky Way
After an enormous Thanksgiving dinner, we stood out in the cold, under the stars, and gazed into infinity at the disk of the Milky Way. The world feels small and calm on a noiseless fall night. I don’t know that I’d ever recognized the galaxy before.
Snow on Salmon Kill
Thanksgiving is around the corner, and New England has equilibrated to early-winter leafless distributions. On a morning coffee-and-breakfast-sandwich run, snow encrusted rocks form the boundaries of a real-world Zen garden.
Linden Fairy
A friend in northwestern Connecticut had me out to his property to photograph this amazing, craggy, ancient Linden tree. Vines cling to the heavy, sprawling shell of the tree, and it’s not a stretch to imagine fairies flitting between the leaves. Nothing captures fantastical rays of light like f/22 aperture. Every ray and every bent photon is transmogrified into beams and rainbows from the dimension of quantum uncertainty.
Shattuck Rooftops
Looking south, over the rooftops and streetlights of downtown Berkeley, the high-rise buildings of Oakland and Emeryville are luminescent ghosts in the bay fog. I’ve come back to this photograph again and again—the composition isn’t quite right, the quality is just average, but for some reason I find it inescapable. I can forgive all of its sins (and mine in taking it) for the trajectory of those sodium lamps, arcing gently to the south like some fairy worm.
Cold Containment
Hyperbright hallways in the Energy Biosciences Building come straight from the set of a sci-fi movie. Between labs and storage space are cold room facilities like the one in the foreground of this photo, with its bank of controls on the wall outside. The research accomplished here lives up to the imposing appearance: the future of using biology to harness the Sun’s energy will be born here.
Last Light: Port of Oakland
Across the San Francisco Bay, under the shadow of the East Bay hills, the Port of Oakland hums busily along. From far away and in the golden light of sunset, it’s easy to forget the sophisticated dance of distribution that keeps the urban tangle of the Bay Area alive.
Decaseconds 