HDR Photography
I captured this image more than a decade ago to show the pleasing trio of power receptacles mounted to the wall behind our boxed-up laser system, but I was also inadvertently capturing a kind of self-portrait in the reflection of my legs and tripod in the polished laser box panel.
For all of the fancy-looking holders and posts and hardware, an optical table is ultimately designed to put specific optics in front of the laser beam as it travels to generate a desired effect. This view of the space leading to our detector shows how many parts can accrue in pursuit of a given goal.
Scenery of Berkeley’s campus from Oppenheimer had me looking back again to my RAW files (as I’ve done recently) and finding exceptional images that benefited from my evolution in processing skills over the past decade. This particular December 2012 day marked my first walk to work with my then-new Nikon D7000, and so it was a moment in which I was viewing my quotidian surroundings through a literal new lens.
The light shining down on the little bridge over Strawberry Creek to the Faculty Club, for example, is a far more interesting image to me as a memory than it was at the moment I first processed these in 2012.
Quiet monuments, dappled by sunshine, feel different from a decade away.
Big, dramatic, and green are the themes of this bridge.
I was struck by how many portrait-orientation shots I had initially bypassed. The curving stairs in front of Latimer Hall always looked charming beneath late-autumn foliage.
These stairs down to Hildebrand Hall’s D Level were my typical path to my office. They were about as intimidating in real life as they look in this picture—squeeze between the edges of different intersecting buildings and utilities pass-throughs.
Leaving again at the end of the day, the afternoon sun on Latimer’s facade is starting to shift to an oranger hue.
The trip past the architecture school wasn’t one I typically made by 2012 (I moved from an apartment south of campus to one on the west side), but the light on its concrete architecture wasn’t to be missed.
Trinity College Dublin’s campanile was the subject of my last post, but today I’ll bring it back to one I know a bit better. This photograph is another from my series of Berkeley pictures that I’m only now able to reveal with improvements in noise reduction technology. The effect of seeing this “lost” image recovered has me wondering what other moments—
For the past decade (nearly, anyway), I’ve been bringing you pictures from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. With my move to Trinity, I’m running through my final stock of my favorite images. I suspect these will be the last images of St. Lawrence I post (no promises), so it seems fitting that they capture the campus at its most St.-Lawrence-y: crisp autumn evening, foliage lit up by campus fixtures, with a big North Country sunset on the horizon.
These bright oranges around the quad last fall marked the formal inauguration of St. Lawrence’s latest president, Kathryn A. Morris.
I upload pictures to be future Decaseconds posts as I find images I think are worthy. (Only the best for my readers.) During most of the year, a three-photographs-per-week pace keeps up with my new acquisitions. This fall, however, was a time of plenty, powered by my DJI Mini 3 Pro’s incredible range and low-light image quality. To keep up with demand necessitates a triple-play today.
Three views of Canton, New York begin with this image over the Grasse River, with islands in the foreground and SUNY Canton in the distance.
Farther south, St. Lawrence University’s campus is lit up for the evening.
And the quad by Kirk Douglas Hall looks warm and inviting. (It’s currently beneath a layer snow.)
Deep reds and purples stretch across campus at sunset. My favorite time to capture with my drone is the moment between when campus’s lights come on and the sun finishes setting—that time in which the two sources of illumination are dueling.
Autumn went by quickly this year; the thermodynamic realities outside my door make clear that the adaptations of the North Country trees aren’t coming any too soon.
When one of my research students needed to dose a large number of samples with bipyridine, they came up with this ingenious approach to running the process in parallel in our sonicator. I was impressed.
When the weather turns warm (in spring, as in this picture’s case, or in autumn, as in this week’s reality), St. Lawrence’s students do love their hammocks. I think this particular pair of trees may have reached maximum capacity.
Park Street might have been named for a different park (the one up the street), but the glow of St. Lawrence’s campus at night (the reverse view of this shot) has a delightful Central Park vibe that matches the street name well.
Following principles of green design, St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall of Science was built facing north-south, such that light throughout the day could be used to light rooms on both sides. The inner courtyard even features a light stone facade to help bounce more light into the inner offices. (I can attest that this works.) When the rest of the campus was constructed along the local street grid, rather than the compass points, the result is that JHS looks like a bit of a rebel among its neighbors.
Fall brings both fantastic foliage and dramatic sunsets to the North Country; my favorite evenings are those in which the hues of the the sky and the leaves match the red brick of St. Lawrence University’s Richardson Hall.
One of St. Lawrence’s monikers is “A Candle in the Wilderness,” and this drone shot of the bright campus with the dark forests beyond explains the name.
Decaseconds 