HDR Photography
Classic Stone Valley! A few minutes and meters down the trail from Monday’s image, I caught my favorite part of the hike at a great time of day. Previous trips to this this spot turned into rehearsals for navigating slippery rocks. This has turned out to be one of my favorite pieces of nature photography, but there’s more to come next Monday.
Still no water, but great sunsets nonetheless.
Except perhaps in winter, I’ve always hiked when the sun was high in the sky and settled in before sunset. I have always wanted, however, to capture some dramatic nature scenes with a crazy sky, so this weekend I went sunset hunting. This shot, appropriately, is from early in the night. Later in the week, I’ll be showing more of the shots as I hiked on and the sun disappeared.
Old buildings of the northeastern U.S. have been repurposed and adapted so many times that they all have odd quirks and echoes of that modification. Look at the patterns in the brick on the back of this building: the skeletons of old walls and structures where they were removed, and windows covered over where there are walls on the other side. What did the back of the American Theatre once do?
If this week on Decaseconds has had a theme, it has been structures suspended over water at sunset. It has also been a week of long-exposure shots that live up to the site’s title. Hoards of gulls riding on the waves are reduced to weird ghost-blurs in the foreground of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, Yerba Buena, and the Port of Oakland.
Summer means hanging out on the dock and enjoying the view.
Adirondack-meets-elven style in this bridge over the Grasse River. The lights seem inviting; that’s probably appropriate, given that this is the bridge connecting SUNY Canton’s campus with the town proper. (I’ve explored the connection from another angle in the past.)
Though the architectural style isn’t as apparent from this shot, I love the sense of multiple pathways vanishing to infinity: down the river or across the bridge. So many places to go and things to explore. (And some proper long exposure to merit this website’s name.)
Walking by Grasse River under a tree-shaded path sounds romantic. As overtly charming as the sunset hour can be, I find that I prefer the photographic version; there are a lot fewer mosquitoes.
Campus is (mostly) empty. The longboards and snowboards and ancient bikes are packed away. Any motion grabs attention—even shadows and lens flare.
Heritage Park (on the left of this image) on the Grasse River in Canton came into existence through the efforts of many people in the community. Yesterday evening, a fundraising event was held to support those efforts. Nature turned up in full display to support the festival.
Summer is here! Chlorophyll-generation reactions abound in leaf and stem; the summer solstice is grand. In a countryside that seems forbidding during the winter months, warm weather changes the attitude of the land. Get out and explore!
The perfect frame appears: trees on either side, gentle river in the distance, and a path to the intersection between them. Canton homes are just around the corner. Civilization can wait. Skinny Bob Ross trees are welcoming the path and the river together. Happy little ferns!
The North Country has rough, glacier-hewn landscapes and a culture of independence. How this area is understood and depicted is often a matter of choice on the part of the photographer. Case in point: the path of the Grasse River, on its way to the the St. Lawrence Seaway. Look at all that beautiful early-spring nature!
But cropping can deceive: if I pan the camera to the right, you see a much different image. The Grasse River travels through downtown Canton, past parking lots and apartment complexes. I think I might prefer the more honest juxtaposition.
Decaseconds 