A nearly winter morning marks the end of the semester. Light reflecting from the Connecticut River adds some energy to a monochromatic world and I head to work to submit final grades.
Pre-Sunrise Hartford
Tag: sunrise
Interstate Crosses South Elkhorn Creek
Morning light shines over Interstate 64 crossing South Elkhorn Creek in Midway, Kentucky.
Cold Dawn Nucleation
There’s some sang about the photographer, not the camera, mattering to a great shot; while I appreciate the value of having the right tools, this sunrise image captured in a quick moment with my phone on a 1ºF morning provides some evidence to support the theory. The low temperatures quickly nucleated ice crystals from towers across the city and produced this dramatic array of miniature clouds.
Exam Dawn
Waking pre-dawn to be sure an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant and a Statistical Mechanics exam are both finished when they need to be turns out to have some upsides—namely, this gigantic panorama of an incredible Hartford dawn. (This one is definitely worth clicking through to Flickr and further clicking to zoom to 100% scale.)
Sun Peaks Around the Mountain
Though I missed it when I originally processed them, I was entertained to look back at this pair of shots from early spring in Salisbury, Connecticut—one pointing northeast and the other pointing southeast. The light of the rising sun is visible in the distance in both directions where the shadow of the mountain over town is absent.
Sunrise at the Golf Course
Warm morning light on palm fronds and mountain faces, placid reflections in the water hazards: I’m not much of a golfer, but images like this one help me to understand the appeal.
Zenda Drive at Dawn
Though a photographer might briefly visit many locations, actually staying in a location means being present at the moment when the light is just right. In this case, sunrise pouring into Coachella Valley lights up the mountainsides and the rooftops, but not yet the valley floor itself.
Being there to capture the sunrise picture is great, of course, but being on location in this case also meant being able to follow it up with a sunrise dip in the hot tub.
Interruptions in the Coachella Valley Array
The dry seabed that is Coachella Valley provides a very flat surface for construction; as a result, modern constructions mostly fall on whatever pattern/array is convenient to the developers. In a few places, however, interruptions in those arrays stand out in an aerial view.
The palms on this golf course, for example, are on a clear grid, with the fairways and greens cut into it. Was this a palm plantation before the course was build?
Here, the green lawn of a larger home stands out, covering multiple grid positions, while neighboring homes cluster into smaller, more regularly arrayed lots.
Though this subdivision isn’t itself on a grid, the clubhouse nonetheless interrupts the pattern.
Coachella Valley Sunrise
A big, broad, western-America sunrise may feel summer-y, but this one was taken in the depths of winter.
Time Series: Travelers Tower
The move to Hartford has offered me the opportunity to capture this time sequence (like the ones I took in Kentucky and the North Country) with a dramatic view of Travelers Tower over the course of a day. If the image appeals, it’s also available as a dynamic wallpaper for macOS that will change your desktop with the time of day.
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Two Spontaneous Alignments in San Diego
With so many tall, vertically oriented structures in a city, it’s probably no surprise that some of them should fall into pleasing alignment with one another. The modest glow of sunrise light through the gap between the clocktower and the adjacent building provides a friendly spark to guide the eye to the center of this image.
In this second case, it’s harsher Sun, rather than palm trees and clock towers, that has found its way into a special alignment through the streets of San Diego. Bright light falls into this canyon that should otherwise be dawn dim.
Sunrise in Southern California
High above the hills and mountains of Southern California, there is a moment, right around dawn, when the dark hues of earth and the reflected light from the lakes lets one image what the area looked like before human structures sprawled through the valleys.
A E S T H E T I C Rail
I’ve played with that 90’s vaporwave aesthetic in the past with aggressive color grading; on this particular San Diego dawn, those steps were hardly necessary. Palm trees and magenta hues do most of the hard work for themselves. I can hear the synths already…
San Diego Runners
I last traveled to San Diego to present at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society—but while that meeting took place during the day, early morning was unaccounted-for time. I went exploring in the area around the San Diego Convention Center and found that most of my early-morning compatriots were runners.
In this quartet of images, I’ve captured a few of those runners in the dramatic early-morning California sunlight.
Skyhook Above Key West
The New York Times, ever the Gen Z style-watchers, have decreed 2000s-era point-and-shoot cameras and their attendant nostalgia to be the next big thing. I was inspired to go back to my own point-and-shoot-shot originals from the era, and uncovered some surprisingly good shots that I’d somehow never before considered. Just look at the tower-like cloud in this sunrise from a 2005 trip to Key West; how did I miss this shot?
Decaseconds 