Deep reds and purples stretch across campus at sunset. My favorite time to capture with my drone is the moment between when campus’s lights come on and the sun finishes setting—that time in which the two sources of illumination are dueling.
Tag: small town
Small Town Clouds
Warm weather is finally returning to the North Country, and “drone weather” with it.
Cantonhenge
Today’s image falls into the category “How have I not posted this already?” This image of a supermoon aligning with the Route 11 principal axis of Canton, New York has been used in the table of contents of St. Lawrence University’s magazine, as well as in several blog posts. In spite of that, I’ve apparently (according to Flickr’s camera roll feature) never shared it to Decaseconds.
Above St. Lawrence’s Campus
I’ve often commented to curious colleagues that the benefit of drone photography is the ability to get images from that “impossible” space: lower than a helicopter or other light aircraft might dare fly, but higher than a photographer could reach with a cherry picker. Those are views that can only be had from building height, and so a drone let’s one (metaphorically) put a temporary building wherever they’d like, at least for photographic purposes.
I’m evidently not obeying that rule here, nearly 400 feet above St. Lawrence University’s sylvan campus. It’s from this height where the taper of from larger halls down to smaller dorms and townhouses, and then ultimately to wooded space at the eastern edge of campus, is visible.
Skies Presage Storm
Small-town America seems even smaller in the face of an epic sunset and the thunderstorm it presaged.
Post-Tornado Warning
There’s spectacular luck involved in a tornado-warning-inducing storm abates just as sunset begins, leaving a rugged magenta sky in its wake. (Plus, I can’t fly the quadcopter in the rain.)
Passing By
The North Country is carpeted in snow (not shown). I like to think back to the lazy, shoveling-free fall days when homes were just beginning to mystically gird themselves for the oncoming blizzard. Life merrily passes by these old, modest homes.
Small Town Survey
Somewhere over America on my transcontinental flight, I spent a lot of time pointing my eyes out the window. (Even calling it staring would probably imply too much attention and effort.) Among the low hills and fields of the whole of North America, I saw this town poking out from amid the rural surroundings. In abusing vignetting effects, the “this is my SimCity!” vibe is transformed to some Cold-War-paranoia-inducing, spy-plane-esque, “Soviet bombers over the heartland” effect. (And in my continuing efforts to document the gradient between urban and rural, this is a new approach.)
Public Library
The public library in Kingsport, TN is housed in a very attractive brick building.
July 4 Special: Muscle Cars and the Dairy Princess
Independence Day is a great time for an extra shot: down Park St. in Canton, NY on the first night of the Dairy Princess Festival. Ice cream and muscle cars and John Deere and music in the street. America!
Snow Is Gone
Spring is late to the North Country, and though the snow is gone and the homes have (mostly) survived, plant life hasn’t yet surpassed the “first hints of green grass” level. There’s nonetheless a certain crunchy, dusty beauty to the sunset now—one that is nicely offset by the glossy reflections from window panes.
Sun Pillar
On those special nights, when ice crystals align correctly in the atmosphere, atmospheric optics get a bit crazy and a sun pillar like the one here appears.
Though, to be honest, even the Rayleigh scattering that makes the sky blue is crazy to begin with. The strange behavior of light and matter (thanks, Richard Feynman!) never ceases to amaze me.
Small-Town Elevator
I’ve always been fascinated by the American colloquialism of calling any feed store an elevator. (Though Canton does have a larger grain elevator of its own, as well.) When the sunset sky is at its most glorious, reality highlights the hyperutilitarian aesthetic of a working building: it has to be painted some color, so it might as well be post-war pastels.
Lynchian Town
David Lynch brings an edge of dark menace to his films; I can still remember the first time I saw Blue Velvet and felt the crisp edge of real and unreal disintegrating. In particular, the director’s visions of Small Town America and the underbelly of that beast (in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, particularly) felt notable in “downtown” Canton last week. With the sky aflame and neon lights in every window, the scene was about 15 minutes away from some Lynch-level insanity.
Decaseconds 