HDR Photography
Stark winter nights, the kind with a handful of clouds and a lot of bright stars, seem to be when I spend the most time shoveling my driveway. Might as well do a long exposure or two while I work, right? I particularly like the tree in the center of the image that has been completely lit by the adjacent streetlight: it seems otherworldly and special when compared to the other silhouetted trees.
Snow was falling last night. The small houses with highly peaked roofs and additions out back are a characteristic of this part of town, where the mill workers once lived. The wood sheds are another notable characteristic of an area where many people use only wood stoves to heat their homes in the winter.
The New Year is here, and real winter has arrived along with it! Snow flies through the air and ice clings to the branches and sticks of the North Country.
Strange weather persisted, but living in the North Country, I always knew the truth: Winter is coming!
This photograph, from Thanksgiving 2014, looks far more like winter than anything I see out my window today.
One of the good things I can say about grad school is that it gave me the opportunity to travel to and see places that I never would have otherwise, like the Austrian Alps. The Alps really are quite spectacular and there’s nothing quite like flying into Innsbruck.
Information cannot move through the universe (as far as we know) any faster than the speed of light. In the hyperbolically shaped world of spacetime, all factors that could influence my current state are in the “light cone” behind me, and all factors that I can influence in the future are in the “light cone” ahead of me. This photograph, from during a particularly nasty winter storm, exhibits light cones of another variety.
I was not prepared for snow during my first winter in the south!
In this particular corner of Connecticut in early spring, the rain and snow combined to make the perfect storybook fog. This image is so quaint and charming, I could swear I’d seen it somewhere before.
But this brings me to another idea: those particular locations in landscape photography so scenic that they are literally ubiquitous. Take the tunnel view in Yosemite, or shots of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands, or downtown Manhattan as seen from the top of Rockafeller Center as examples: is it even possible to make an original composition from such a photographically saturated place? But these places are also photographically saturated for a reason: they’re really, really pretty. Where does that trade-off between originality and beauty fall?
Traveling through the Adirondacks means passing the semi-abandoned cabins that dot the roads. I particularly liked the image of a basketball hoop hanging above a driveway entombed in three feet of snow.
When it’s a snowy Friday morning and the ski slopes are calling, who can resist the urge to cut class and get to skiing?
Dotting the road to Ogdensburg’s bridge to Canada are tiny, abandoned houses like this one. It’s rather charming, and just a bit sad, but mostly it reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, and the obversations that a society can retreat from the frontiers and back into the cities over time. Sprawl and civilization are not inevitable.
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.)
I present to you a pair of photographs:
The first is from Muir Woods on the Marin Peninsula of California. That morning was rainy and the colors are rich and dark and the setting is some natural/romantic variety of Baroque. Practically overwhelming.
The second is from Stone Valley this weekend, dry and crunchy with snow, the river mostly frozen at the surface, with currents of dark water beneath. More minimal, more quiet, more subdued. But is this trail any less beautiful than the first?
A quaint home, encrusted in snow and accompanied by a Subaru and a stand of pines, makes for a perfect slice of North Country life. Today’s winter storm brought this image back to my mind.
The St. Lawrence University Outing Club always has something interesting set up outside their house, no matter the season. Even when they’re away on break, the frames and supports and ground-work for some crazy stunt of the future are ready. This peaceful moment seemed uncharacteristically placid and I just had to capture it.
Decaseconds 