Tag: St. Lawrence

Friday Night Lights in the North Country

adohertyh1 Comment

The roars and gasps of the crowd could be heard all over town: Friday night football in the North Country of New York. St. Lawrence’s Saints dominated Morrisville to the tune of 28–0. From quadcopter, the action on the field is just a bit out of range. One of the recurring themes of my work is the civilization gradient between densely human areas and wilderness; I view this picture as another interpretation of that theme. There’s perhaps no urban center in Canton, but there are quaint homes and university buildings giving way to farmland and, eventually, the foothills of the Adirondacks in the distance where the Earth begins to curve.

Friday Night Lights in the North Country

Last Light and First

adohertyhLeave a comment

Night-flying for long-exposure photography seems to rely a lot on luck: How’s the wind? How’s the weather? That’s a lot to consider, but the superhuman perspective (even if it is occasionally a bit blurry) is worth it. I love the times of day when the brightness of building lights and the brightness of the setting sun match each other in intensity.

Last Lights and First

North Country Annealed

adohertyhLeave a comment

Heating up and then slowly cooling a material anneals it, softening the material by allowing the crystal structure to reform to an optimal geometry. Annealing at the correct temperature for a metal produces a characteristic color—often a dull, cherry red like the edges of this sunset. After baking in the hot sun all day, the St. Lawrence University and the North Country are probably feeling lower in energy and ready to relax their geometries, too.

North Country Annealed

Sundown Zen

adohertyhLeave a comment

I’ve shown you St. Lawrence University’s zen garden in the past, but never from above. Down in the middle of Sykes Hall, in front of the clock tower, you can see a hint of raked gravel and carefully cut grass. I’m not sure I ever appreciated how many trees we have until I started flying.

Sundown Zen

Night Above

adohertyhLeave a comment

After playing at low altitudes, I upgraded to a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced last week. This quadcopter can stay stationary in the night sky—like, “long exposures look good” stationary. I’m looking forward to exploring what the little flying robot can do.

Night Above

Fraternity

adohertyhLeave a comment

After what was (I imagine) quite a battle in previous decades, St. Lawrence has only a couple of fraternities remaining. The Beta house is visible in the background, rather mundane and unassuming in comparison with its pearly temple building. Bracketed by trees, the building does a pretty good job of proclaiming its importance in the classical tradition.

Fraternity//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Keep Books Dry

adohertyhLeave a comment

I know the fundamental constants governing physical interactions remain the same (within experimental error). Precipitation isn’t changing the Planck Constant. In spite of that, reality seems subtly tweaked and upgraded on a drizzle-coated evening and shot through a wide-aperture prime lens. I’m sure glad the books in the Brewer Bookstore aren’t being “upgraded” by the rain.

Keep Books Dry

Walk in the Woods I

adohertyhLeave a comment

Urban campuses are folded up and compact, an array of buildings and narrow pathways between them. Quads are a sacrifice on the order of placing Central Park in the middle of Manhattan. St. Lawrence’s campus is literally thousands of acres, much of which is still fields or forests. College is a different experience for students who can go for a hike or hop in a canoe for the afternoon without leaving campus.

Walk in the Woods I

Small College Town

adohertyhLeave a comment

There are a lot of small, rural towns with the odd culture bloom of colleges planted in their cores. I think it’s the ancillary buildings, the old fraternities and club houses with their mix of higher grandeur and shabbier paint, that most signal one of these villages

Small College Town I

That extra school year energy of students wandering the campus at all hours provides an extra energy to a sleepy place. I miss it in the summer.

Small College Town II

Last Sunset of Spring 2016

adohertyhLeave a comment

Semesters mostly end in a slow burn to the end of final exams. There’s a different end date for almost every student; only seniors share a collective terminus at graduation (and they’re too conflicted about the whole thing to really enjoy it, I’ve noticed.) Last year, I used Decaseconds to document the feeling of the campus contracting, like a balloon in liquid nitrogen, at the end of the semester. This year, the sky and the sun seemed ready to provide a dramatic end to this semester’s classes.

Last Sunset of Spring 2016