HDR Photography
I recently returned to this shot from 2015 to reprocess the original raw for a calendar of B&W images for St. Lawrence. While it may not have Iwan Baan‘s level of people in the image, the bicycle adds a nice sense of quiet, human scale to the setting.
Procrastinating a proposal is a great time for a quick drone flight. Though the camera quality is still around “potato,” the sight of St. Lawrence’s campus as autumn colors seep in, with foothills in the background, was too good to pass up.
If you’d like to watch the full flight (complete with overly trippy guitar music in place of screaming drone prop noise), I uploaded it to YouTube. The need for a gimbal on the camera is evident.
This weekend’s inescapable event was the once-in-a-decade super blood moon, a simultaneous lunar eclipse and supermoon. I snuck away from working to get a shot of the moonrise over the campus and the Adirondacks.
Later in the evening, the lunar eclipse was in full swing and I shot it as it passed the newly restored steeple of the campus chapel.
On this through-arch bridge going into Canton from the Adirondacks, I used the Brenizer Method to make a super-wide, narrow-depth-of-field image that brings to mind some slightly sinister movie scene.
This image from inside Herring-Cole Hall at St. Lawrence University reminds me of the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey: All bright white surfaces and traditional motifs, but with a shape, geometry, and brightness that doesn’t seem quite of this Earth.
Camp Canaras has a central lodge, a merry place of varnished wood and Scotch served neat. Late at night, long after the campers are tucked in, the place takes on a ghostly, abandoned vibe.
Inside, the minor remnants of the party still remain, along with the major remnants of large animals.
Camp Canaras has some remarkable views during day and night, but especially in the morning. There’s a weird collision of action-movie-preparation scene with rustic vibe to a boathouse; the scene captures the sense of possibility for the rest of the day.
Rainy, early-summer mornings in the Adirondacks seem to go on forever. That first step into tremendously cold water, on the other hand, is anything but foggy.
I spent the early part of this week at St. Lawrence University’s Camp Canaras (like Saranac Lake spelled backwards) for a retreat. Cold and rain tamped down expectations of canoeing; instead, I had an early morning hike in the sound-dampened world of fog.
At night, the camp took on the otherworldly quiet of the Adirondacks after dark.
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.
NCAA Div III Track and Field Nationals were held at St. Lawrence this weekend; this was a big deal for a town of fewer than 10,000 people. Extra seating was brought to the field, the whole thing was fenced off, and tons of extra staff were on-hand. This particular event, the last in the decathlon, was particularly amusing. The all-arounders who are decathletes are so much larger than the average track star that the event makes for an interesting comparison.
As part of my continuing series documenting the end of the school year on St. Lawrence’s campus, this image was taken on the same night as this one, just before the addition of the renovated steeple to Gunnison Memorial Chapel. As students say their goodbyes and party their way out of the college lifestyle, the campus is also being polished and prepared for commencement.
Continuing my observations of the end of the year are a couple of photographs of campus buildings that have a bit of literal spirit to them. First is Sykes Hall, one of the older dorms. With the full moon by the tower and the HDR’ed light trails (a happy accident), the scene says “Halloween in May.”
ODY Library doesn’t have the same old-school creepiness, but rather that brutalist, Soviet vibe that says the ghosts must be a bit more modern.
For my little mini-project of documenting the end of the school year at St. Lawrence (previous days showed the cars, and the dorms, and the boat house, and the emotional remembrances), I also wanted to capture the interior of the slightly creepy Herring-Cole Hall at the end of finals week. Only a single student is still toughing it out to the end.
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.
Decaseconds 