HDR Photography
A perfect late-summer morning at Mohonk Mountain House holds the promise of a day spent outside. While this image may be a sequel to last week’s post, I think this other angle reveals a far different view of the possibilities a day can hold when experiencing vacation.
Mohonk Mountain House remains a place nestled into both the rocks of the Shawangunk Mountains and a pre-digital era. Nonetheless, delightful new traditions manage to merge into the setting. Breakfast in the open air of the expansive front porch came about during the Covid era but has remained—a just delightful way to start the day.
This image also further exhibits the trend I explored in another recent image, showing both a view and a space for the viewer.
While most of Oscar Wilde’s family home in Dublin is of a fairly traditional architecture of the era, the bright solarium on the second floor seems like quite the outlier. I like the perspective lines converging to Piper, watching from the doorway.
Oscar Wilde’s family home in Dublin features both this lovely solarium and a dramatically centered bust of the author.
The National Gallery of Ireland has plenty of galleries with the white walls that I expected of an art museum; stepping from monochromatic spaces into this deep red room was a figuratively visceral experience.
Whether it’s a hot desert afternoon or a cool desert night, the best seat by the pool appears to be the seat in the pool.
Reflections from the surface of Lake Michigan place fireworks on the same scale with the 80-year-old tug boat William C. Selvick. I particularly like the way the small buoy/float in the foreground is placed within the fireworks’ reflection.
Part of me wants to imagine that watching fireworks from the stern of a WWII-era tug would be a perfect summer experience… But another part wonders about the chipping paint and rust, hard corners and suspects that there might be some subtleties to perfecting the viewing location.
More than any of the other Traverse City fireworks shots I’ve presented so far, I think this one captures the essence of summer: little Lake Michigan waves lapping at the shore, soft beaches, boats moored to piers, and the pair of people relaxing on the rocks in the foreground. They’re the most intriguing part of the image, to me: when everyone else is looking to the sky, what is interesting them more than the fireworks?
A summer sensory triptych: Warm sand, warm breeze, and warm colors from the July 4th fireworks.
The school year has started and now summer travels are memories. The fuzzy, insubstantial people of this long-exposure photograph kind of match the feeling of fading reminiscences.
This expanse of dramatic clouds, Petrin Hill, and the Vltava River was across the street from our hotel in Prague. While always a gorgeous view, most evenings brought rain instead of this kind of skyscape. I was lucky to find this scene on the final night of the trip.
We visited Prague more than a year ago, arriving (without perhaps fully considering it) on the thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Strolling between the shops of Wenceslas Square, my brain worked overtime to connect the place with the images of protests in 1989 and the great changes that had come about in the time since.
There is more than one statue of Franz Kafka in Prague, but this mirrored head with rotating segments (see the motion blur at the jawline) was the most dramatic I visited. At the time, the head was, naturally, the most surreal aspect of the location. In the present, the crowds of people on the night street (also visible in the reflective base) are perhaps more shocking.
It turned out that, after a week of bland gray skies, I wasn’t the only person attracted to Prague Castle on a beautiful afternoon.
Decaseconds 