Rural college campuses have components I’d never considered: rivers and boathouses and forests. The arrival of (slightly) colder weather means the canoes and kayaks will be closed away for the winter. Autumn, here we go!
Tag: Reflection
Two Views of the Hudson
Structures along the Hudson River mark eras of American practicality and industrial life. There’s a great combination of aesthetics and practicality.
The mid-century (1955) Tappan Zee Bridge is from a different era from the lighthouse above, but it also represents this aesthetic/industrial impact on the Hudson River.
Views of Lake Louise
Piper‘s trip to Alberta, Canada led to some incredible images of Lake Louise. The scale of the setting is almost incomprehensible—except for the tiny canoes by the shoreline.
The composition and content of the photographs brought to mind the works of early/mid-twentieth century naturalists, and I tried to envision what their take on Piper’s work would have been:
Real-World Zen Garden
Ottawide 2014
Visiting nearby Canada means looking at a mirror-version of the United States, reflected across the border. Like looking in a mirror, everything is still recognizable. Up is still up. Down is still down. But the brands and the metric units and the nationalism is different. Does looking in the reflection of Ottawa in the Shaw Centre reverse the transformation?
An added bonus: this is technically a self-portrait, with my tiny self down in the foreground.
Reflecting Rings
I love the way the rings and building reflect off the pool on quiet mornings like the one when I captured this shot.
Superstructure
New buildings are rising constantly in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon. The reflective surfaces and exposed structure have me waiting for James Bond to send a villain tumbling over the edge of the top floor.
The Beast Awakens
The arcing forms of burning steel wool, mirrored and displayed in a “tiny planet” polar projects, put me in might of science-fiction technology or some demonic portal.
Buckeye Sunset
You may not be able to get your boat out on the lake right now, but the upside is that you have a plot with a view west over the lake that’s not all bad.
Reflective Reservoir
Bays Mountain in Northeast Tennessee is home to a large public park with a cool nature center, some pretty hiking trails, and a large reservoir. Sitting in a little bowl on the top of the mountain, and allowing only a single boat (a barge for showing guests around the lake) means that the water is often exceptionally smooth, leading to amazing reflections on days like these.
Geometry of Madness
I was told to go to the Seattle Public Library, and gaze into the eldritch angles of its geometry. I rather like the reflections on glass and water in this image, and I think the gridwork is quite cool; still, the idea of sneaking some kind of Lovecraftian building into the architectural melange of a city sounds like the plot of Ghostbusters. Excellent.
Chrome Tower with Breakfast
Portland’s Pearl District is colonized by construction like some sort of reverse-termites; shiny new buildings add to the skyline each day. As impressive as the reflections and the bridges and the gorgeous dawn sky is, I rather love the image of the man reading the paper in the bottom-right corner of the image. He’s literally on the edge of this dramatic image, but so thoroughly unfazed. Reading the paper and eating cereal has to happen sometime!
North Country Wetlands
Early spring is a great time to be in the North Country—all of the nature, none of the mosquitoes. The latter half of that equation has shifted as we enter July.
Ending on Little River
Friday marked the end of exams, and students and faculty alike celebrated by checking canoes and kayaks out of this little boat house on St. Lawrence’s campus. (If it’s true that our school resembles a ski resort in the winter, it also resembles a summer camp during the warmer months of the year.) Nothing really says the year is done (and grading with it) like floating along in complete relaxation.
Hydroelectric on a Blackwater River
There are few natural features that look colder than a rushing blackwater river when the air temperature is below 0ºF. The convergence of this little reservoir to the far-off (and equally miniature) hydroelectric station neatly contrasts the frigid setting with the optimism of twentieth-century technocrats. (The Adirondacks are dotted with an improbable number of tiny hydroelectric stations.)
Decaseconds 