HDR Photography
After a (relatively) warm weekend, the North Country is set to be entombed once again in winter. Though we’ve been promised by the false weather prophets that this cold spell won’t match the ferocity of January’s efforts, I can’t help but think back to mornings of almost unreal atmospheric thermal energy. On the edge of St. Lawrence’s campus, the sky was clear and the sun rose and cars puttered to work as though everything was normal.
Johnson Hall of Science is an unusually green building—particularly for one filled with hoods and hazardous chemicals. It also happens to have a truly surreal geometry that messes with your head a bit, if you let it. The ceilings have been sloped to better reflect daylight, reducing the need for electric lighting. The result is this Alice-in-Wonderland-esque lab space.
In a moment of digression from my normal focus on landscapes: I’ve been inspired lately by the street photography of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who captured images of humanity in the “real world.” People living their lives. Perhaps it’s not traditional street photography, but for today’s photograph, I have this shot from Saturday night’s hockey game: SLU vs. Yale. Though the Saints lost, they looked great doing it. The ferocity of this imminent check captivates me.
Today has been swamped under constant, freezing barrage of rain that carries dreariness in every drop. I prefer to remember the campus as it was in the last moments of aumtun, when one last sunset blazed through the crisp air.
A “casual blizzard” hit the North Country this weekend, and after I excavated around the house, I went exploring. St. Lawrence’s Zen garden was looking particularly peaceful under its (pardon the cliché) blanket of snow. The tiny structures seem to amplify the effect.
Sometimes, ghosting is a gross byproduct of taking HDR brackets in an imperfect world. Other times, it can be used to create a ghostly Schrödinger’s Cat elevator door, neither closed nor open, forever in flux. Different moments in time and space, overlapped, with brain-twisting results.
November snow can’t hold the title “unseasonable” in Canton, New York, but it adds a gentle blanket to the campus, just the same. The soft dusk ceiling of pastel clouds and the quiet campus converge at the end of the day.
Where earth meets sky at the edge of the horizon, the foothills of the Adirondacks oscillate under the autumn colors and I use increasingly baroque adjectives to describe the North Country.
St. Lawrence University’s Avenue of the Elms is notable for being:
(1) Very lovely.
(2) Very long.
(3) Very colorful (at least when autumn arrives.)
The sense of space and hue and Alice-in-Wonderland surreality pervade the space. On the Avenue of the Elms, the “regular rules” don’t apply and crisp fall Saturdays are forever.
With dusk arriving earlier and earlier each day, I feel that the time is right to extoll the glory of clouds stretching off to an infinite (or at least periodic) horizon and the first hints of yellows and oranges in the sky matching the hues of the trees.
Snow comes early to the North Country. Nothing quite justifies a cold morning more than waking up to a lovely dusting of snow and flakes in the air. The oak trees are still stubbornly holding onto their leaves, and thus there was a cozy snow-free zone (and a welcoming bench) from which to watch the snow this morning. Johnson Hall of Science looks friendly in all seasons.
On the dawn of SLU’s homecoming weekend, the sky was filled with appropriately dramatic clouds and the campus was dotted with all sorts of exotic temporary structures. (Or really only one sort: tents.) The attraction of a liberal arts campus on a crisp autumn weekend jumps from the screen.
I’ll sneak in one more unscheduled weekend post with this photograph from St. Lawrence University’s Avenue of the Elms. Some fall afternoons are so perfect that they must be shared.
Rising before dawn (and posting shots of buildings taken from slightly below and to the right) seems to be a recent trend for me. When I struggled out of bed to shoot a Saturday morning horse show on St. Lawrence University’s campus, I had the opportunity to capture the predawn North Country roads. No HDR, no fancy post-processing here (beyond some simple noise reduction). I present a quiet Saturday morning moment that captures the whole “stuck in time” 1980’s vibe of northern New York. You can almost hear Bruce Springsteen tracks playing in the background.
The benefit of teaching early morning classes: I’m finally (routinely) up for the sunrise. Even when the morning is cold and my fingers don’t want to be operating a camera, the fall and the clouds and the trees conspire to make Johnson Hall of Science (a frequent subject) look like paradise.
Decaseconds 