The club competition for the month had a theme and I almost EVER shoot architecture. Frankly, it doesn’t interest me.
Even still, I wanted to a least try to capture a couple images that I could capture in an effort to participate, so I capitalized first day in more than one week without heavy clouds or snow and I drove to the Syracuse University campus to see what I could capture after a night of fresh snow.
As I drove in at 0500, I could see that the clouds were very sparse, so the sky was going to be of little to know help and any light that would hit a building directly would have to clear the surrounding buildings, so (if I were going to be out long enough) the shadows would be too harsh and the reflections off the snow too bright. It was all the same to me, though … it was 10 degrees as I was not eager to spend too much time walking a university campus in such conditions.
When I arrived I parked next to a round building that I had thought might be nice when I was researching the satellite view of the campus, but I couldn’t find a way to make it photographically appealing, so I made my way to the second of the two that I had in mind when I left the house only 45 minutes earlier: Crouse College (commonly referred to as the Women’s Building, I am told). After walking much of the perimeter, cursing at the students who dared to sled on the hill, and lamenting the different temperature of the lighting, I arrived at the best composition that I could in the moment.
I captured this knowing what I needed to do to achieve my vision: I would shoot with a narrow aperture to achieve the starbursts and then spend a bunch of time on the computer later in the day to get the image to eventually look like this:
To be honest, I was really, really pleased with the final result, even if I didn’t think it was going to garner much attention from the photo club. I achieved what I wanted to and was able to massage from this image everything that I had envisioned.
Later, when the sun was rising, but the light was still soft, I captured an image of Crouse hospital in the distance too. I like that the image (after manipulating the image to create steam along the right two-thirds of the bottom frame) conveys a sense of stark coldness, but I am well aware of it’s near-snapshot aesthetic.
Oh well … I’d say, “Better luck next time,” but I don’t think there is going to be a next time. Or at least not for a while. I enjoy walking around with my camera and making images, but walking in the city ain’t my idea of fun.