Rippling pool water, comfy lounge chairs, palm trees, and a beautiful blue sky all project a “vaporwave come to life” image.
Tag: pool
View from the Relaxation Spot
Even without a full array of ancillary pillows, a spot to lounge by the pool on a cool desert evening seems like an enormous upgrade over the second half of winter in Northern New York.
A E S T H E T I C Hot Tub
Magenta-and-cyan “vaporwave” aesthetics go well with an Indio hot tub.
Seats By/In the Pool
Whether it’s a hot desert afternoon or a cool desert night, the best seat by the pool appears to be the seat in the pool.
Forest Pool
Or its alternate title, “High above shallow water.” Near an oxbow in the Grasse River, shifting land is turning the pine forest into an area of swamp.
Waterfall Around the Corner
Winding against the river current (or the prevailing wind, in my drone’s case), one rounds a bend to find a pool and Lampson Falls in their ring of sunbaked rock and aromatic pine needles.
The Weekend of July 4th in California
There’s something quintessentially “summer” about a pool party at a weird California hillside home built in the mid-twentieth century. There are little details and vignettes among the clusters of people—stories packed into the space. This party took place almost nine years ago; I can’t remember what a single group was discussing.
High Country Dunking
I wouldn’t say the water was all that inviting (could have been the day) but I thought it was hilarious that the hiking guide I learned about this trek through suggested that if you were in the mood you could go for a “highland dunking.”
Portland Corgi Walk
Portland, Oregon has its own thing going. The yearly corgi walk has hundreds (literally) of corgis traveling a corgi’s worth of distance (with water breaks in between) to the cool flooding fountain of Jamison Square. The water level in the lower part of the pool slowly raised and lowers, leaving some surprised corgis swimming.
Multnomah Bridge
Traveling across America, I can’t help but be astonished by the difference in scale between the East and West Coasts. The Northeast has waterfalls, sure—but nothing like Multnomah falls. (Well, not many.) The majesty must become almost pedestrian after a while when living adjacent to such a place. I particularly like this image two two reasons: the tiny hikers clustered on the bridge add a sense of impossible scale, and cropping out the top of the falls lends the setting a feeling that the falls must continue on forever. In my own tiny way, as well, I really love the tiny insertion of man-made concrete into the otherwise natural scene.
The Fall and the Pool
A year ago, I stood atop this waterfall in the corner of Connecticut, relaxing and hiking in the last few days before I traveled north to Canton to begin the faculty life. There are three things that this image captures:
- So many waterfall pictures use a long exposure to smooth the water into some blurry, surreal, Platonic ideal of flow. The effect might be pretty, but that effect is also a lie about the true experience of the crashing and splashing. Let’s get some spray in here!
- Poetically standing atop a waterfall in a wood, with a calming pool nearby, seems to me less a cliché than something that is consistently authentic across the American experience.
- Nostalgia may power a lot of my images, but it’s a force that only works retroactively. I would feel very different about the image if I’d promptly slipped and trashed my camera. Can that “dodged danger” exist within the image itself?
Reflected Rings
Sculpture installation in the reflecting pool on the Hearst mining circle on UC Berkeley’s campus.
Reflecting Annulus
The quiet corners of Berkeley’s campus are united by the coniferous smell that takes me back to summers in New England. Even when science won’t cooperate, no walk home disappoints me if I travel through this strange, surreal little place.
(And as a note to the geometry buffs out there–yes, I realize that the annular part of the picture is not reflective. The name was too good to pass up.)
The Turtle
At the center of the Nitobe Memorial Garden lies a peaceful pool filled with Koi, and in the middle of that pool lies the “Island of Eternity,” a small island in the shape of a turtle, pictured here.
Pool Bar
The colors in Brazil were incredibly intense; the oversaturated blues and greens are just inescapable. Even in winter, everything is lush. But here, at the elegant, 1960s pool bar, the season is more obvious. There’s no way a scene this gorgeous would be so eerily abandoned at the height of summer.
Decaseconds 