Photography, Chemistry, Ecology, etc.

Each semester for the past one and a half years, my school, SUNY-ESF, has hosted a stream cleanup and water quality assessment project along waterways in the Syracuse-Chittenango area to help improve the health of the waterways and to educate students, via firsthand fieldwork, about how to accurately assess the quality of a stream or a river. At the same time, we try to help cleanup these waterways in an effort to improve overall water quality, health of the aquatic ecosystem, and the natural grandeur of the waterway by removing trash and debris.

Last year, I helped spearhead the first ever Adopt-A-Stream event hosted by SUNY-ESF and maintained the role as a member of the executive planning committee. It was an incredible opportunity that I was given, to work alongside new people and collaborate on such a substantial project. Aside from helping to plan the event, I helped remove debris and took film photographs with my old Asahi Pentax Spotmatic at one location along Chittenango Creek.

This year, instead of helping plan the event, I was appointed as one of the two photographers for the event. My position was not as high ranking as the previous year, but it was just as integral to the entire project. My friend Anthony and I were the two photographers for the Adopt-A-Stream event and we traveled from one location, where SUNY-ESF freshman and other student volunteers were working, to the next. We traveled with some friends who were initially supposed to be chauffeurs for the freshman, but were instead chauffeurs for Anthony and I. So the six of us traveled in a tiny, five seater Honda Fit all day from one location to the next. I won't say it wasn't cramped, but it wasn't anything to complain about either. We had a great time together, driving around and stopping by locations to shoot some photos.

Fortunately, the weather was magnificent and we were able to make it out to Chittenango and Pratts Falls. Chittenango Falls is a bit larger than Pratts Falls and while we were there, a small rainbow formed at the top of the falls due to the perfect homogenization of ultraviolet light and airborne dihydrogen monoxide. I was able to catch a few nice photos of the resultant and couldn’t have been happier with the day.