HDR Photography
A full-scale fireworks display is usually “far away”—over a park or a body of water, perhaps. When St. Lawrence University puts on a fireworks show for graduation, however, the fireworks are right on campus. Imagine watching that show from your dorm-room window!
When spring shades into summer and the students go home for break, the campus is oddly empty for the best weather it ever sees. The empty dorms feel a bit like the result of a very tidy zombie apocalypse.
In the past, I’ve photographed several Japanese gardens, and even St. Lawrence University’s own North Country Japanese Garden, but I’ve never been able to capture it like this before. From my quadcopter’s vantage point, I captured the geometry of Sykes Hall and the North Country Japanese Garden in the grids of streets and campus paths.
On a clear summer night, with the campus quiet and mostly studentless, St. Lawrence’s Japanese zen garden reaches its most silent and, well, zen.
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.
Having lived in dorms with entrances under archways myself, I’ve always found them friendly and inviting places. Perhaps that effect stems from the Batcave effect of having a “secret” entrance in a cave-like stone structure. Good place to store the batmobile.
Decaseconds 