HDR Photography
Students hike the cliffside where geological formations collide. On July 4th, let me compose an overly-ornate sentence about the season and the nation.
“Summer hiking in the North Country of America, at the edge of the Adirondacks: stripes of chlorophyll and aluminosilicate and tanninful water.”
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.)
Campus is (mostly) empty. The longboards and snowboards and ancient bikes are packed away. Any motion grabs attention—even shadows and lens flare.
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!
This was one of those moments of pure chance. I was just coming back from a long weekend and hit rain just outside of the Tri-Cities while on some winding mountain roads. Then all of a sudden the rain let up just as I was passing Watauga Lake just in time to see this incredible mist coming off the lake. Within 10 minutes of taking this shot the mist had completely dissipated.
I wouldn’t say the water was all that inviting (could have been the day) but I thought it was hilarious that the hiking guide I learned about this trek through suggested that if you were in the mood you could go for a “highland dunking.”
Urban campuses are folded up and compact, an array of buildings and narrow pathways between them. Quads are a sacrifice on the order of placing Central Park in the middle of Manhattan. St. Lawrence’s campus is literally thousands of acres, much of which is still fields or forests. College is a different experience for students who can go for a hike or hop in a canoe for the afternoon without leaving campus.
Spring time is one of my favorite times for a hike. The leaves are green but its not too buggy, not too hot, and not too hazy.
It must have been nice to be Washington, being able to hang out in a nice new house while your soldiers had to hang out in slapped together cabins during the harsh winter in Valley Forge.
Suddenly, the grass is infinitely green and thick and the trees have buds again. There’s this fundamentally Scandinavian feeling to the rolling hills and pine forests of the North Country that is best captured in spring and early summer. The world looks like a Bob Ross painting.
On the way back from the Outer Banks, a perfect storm of conditions led to this amazing mist over a Watauga Lake. As the mist lifted this small island came into view like some kind of mini magical realm (or the setting for some kind of horror film).
Puget Sound is great, but the beaches are not exactly filled with nice clean sand.
Ice and snow and real winter have locked down the countryside, but I still have the photographic evidence of our ultra-mild, el-Niño-powered January.
Away from the village centers, the North Country is frozen at an odd point in development. The original farms of early settlers haven’t been completely removed, but not much development has continued past that point. Trailers were installed by the sides of hot-mix roads and everything stopped there. I’m fascinated to think what this area must have been like during the late 1940s—population returning as the nation demobilized, and those people changing things in the North Country. Things don’t seem to change as much now.
The New Year is here, and real winter has arrived along with it! Snow flies through the air and ice clings to the branches and sticks of the North Country.
Decaseconds 