Hazel Duvall's Photography

2025: NYC

Mon, 11 May 2026 21:38:45 GMT

This year, I’ve continued to take lots of photos, switching it up between all 3 of my available cameras. With this set, more than trying to take good stuff, I’ve tried to capture the feeling of what it’s been like for me that year:

Pickleball Roof

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm, 1/1000s, f5, 100 ISO. 2025-03-23 13:30

Under The Bridge

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm, 1/1000s, f2, 100 ISO. 2025-03-23 13:55

Industrialism

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm, 1/1000s, f2, 100 ISO. 2025-03-30 17:49

Buildings Have Angles

Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 55m, 1/80s, f8, 125 ISO. 2025-11-22 17:00

Soft Haze

Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 55mm, 1/250s, f8, 1600 ISO. 2025-11-09 16:34

Water On Lens

Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 18mm, 1/80s, f8, 800 ISO. 2025-11-09 16:17

Dirty Wall

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm, 1/1000s, f3.5, 100 ISO. 2025-03-23 12:56

Average Brooklyn Night

Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 55mm, 1/100s, f5.6, 12800 ISO. 2025-10-26 18:36

Average Manhattan Night

iPhone 16 Pro Max. 2025-09-05 20:24

I WANT TO THANK YOU

iPhone 16 Pro Max. 2025-09-13 09:56

NT TO TH

iPhone 16 Pro Max. 2025-11-22 16:40

I WANT TO THANK YOU 2

Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 29mm, 1/40s, f9, 125 ISO. 2025-11-22 17:30

Pacific Rim Poster

Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 29mm, 1/40s, f13, 125 ISO. 2025-11-02 11:24. I liked this poster a lot. Unfortunatly, it has now been replaced by a very generic ad for Hulu.

Fort Greene Park

Canon EOS 5DS, 70mm, 1/200s, f5, 320 ISO. 2025-05-10 18:12. I don't often to go this park after moving away from Downtown Brooklyn.

Compared to last year, I am much more satisfied with these. There were a lot of ones that I really liked that I had to cut because otherwise there would be too many here!! Still growing & learning how to do more things with my camera. Next up should be more wide-angle stuff, I’ve been relying on these tight lenses for a while now.

2025-04: Pittsburgh

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I visited CMU for Spring Carnival! I had a blast doing the classic Carnival activities like Booth & Buggy, but really I had the most fun when hanging out with friends. These first set of photos are from when I went with some friends to the nearby Phipps Conservatory:

Flowers

iPhone 16 Pro Max, 2.22mm & 6.765mm lenses. A bit maximalist, not a great collage but still pretty fun I think.

The rest of these images are from a party where I helped Holly tear apart her Surface Book 2, a very challenging task as you soon shall see. They were taken with a very bad digital camera (Canon PowerShot SX230 HS) that was lying around, mostly because I thought it would be fun and indeed it was quite the fun challenge to work with it to get usable pictures. I had a blast that night; catching up with old friends, tearing apart a laptop, and photography, what more could I ask for?? I hope the joy I had comes across in these photos:

Laptop "sous vide"

The Surface Book 2 has no external screws. The only way to take it apart is to soften up the edges of the screen & pry it apart with an x-acto knife. Our first idea to soften the edges was to submerge it in near-boiling water, hence "sous vide". Unfortunately, we did not have a large enough pot, so we had to do one edge at a time.

Laptop "card cushion"

Honestly, it's probably a good thing the sous vide idea didn't end up working out; we would have been stuck with the fact that, once out of the water, the laptop cools quite quickly, and there's only a limited time window to slide the knife thru the adhesive before it "hardens" into an impossibly sticky mess again. And once open, it's much harder to sous vide, so yeah we found a better solution: microwavable heat packs that we could lay on just the next area to slice, with increasing numbers of cards pulled from our wallets prying the already-sliced parts open.

Screen Removed!

Finally, after a lot of work, we were able to get the screen fully off! We thought it would be smooth sailing from here, so we took our "success pose" shot a bit early.

Money Shot

This is my favorite shot that I was able to get with this camera. It's actually incredible how close the focal plane can get!

Documentation Shot

Turns out, the screen was just half of it. I forgot to bring my iFixIt repair kit, and no one else had the tiny Torx bits needed for the security screws inside laptop (that you could strip extremely easily if you weren't careful), so a 9PM Home Depot run it was. This photo was taken a bit of the way through that process, after removing some of the screws, and yet more adhesive that was hiding yet more screws (required btw). I can understand why iFixIt gave this laptop a 0/10 fixability rating now!

Motherboard Removed!

Still, after much perserverance, we acheived our goal: motherboard removal! Or more importantly, SSD removal from the motherboard, for which motherboard removal was basically required because wow that thing was stuck in there. As you can see, we were ecstatic to have finally accomplished our goal after 2:30hr of concerted effort. All in all, though, effort well spent: it makes for a helluva story!

2025-02: Japan

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:08:33 GMT

For a long time, I’ve wanted to go to Japan. I’m a big fan of manga (did you know that Viz publishes Shonen Jump Weekly in English every week? I read the whole thing!) & anime, their aesthetic & their food, just yeah seemed like a cool place. One day, I made an offhand comment about it to my roommate, and we somehow ended up planning a whole 2-week thing, centered around hiking the Kumano Kodo, with plenty of time in Tokyo too. And then we made it happen!

Most of the trip photos I took were quite tourist-y, but I still had a good selection to choose from when compiling these. Hope you enjoy!

Hongu Grand Shine Walkway

iPhone 16 Pro Max, 24mm. Talking with a friend who lives in Japan, we found out later that these banners are likely advertising an upcoming Setsubun festival.

Site of an Old Teahouse

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.0, 1/800 @ 400 ISO. Taking photos on the Kumano Kodo, in the shade & with that low winter sun, was a bit tricky. This one turned out the best I think, tho in the future I should really push the ISO more.

God Rays Over The Mountain

iPhone 16 Pro Max, 24mm. There was some sort of persistent haze over the mountains that I could never figure out what was made of, but it sure made for some pretty nice views when the sun just barely peeked over the peaks.

Crystal-Clear River

iPhone 16 Pro Max, 24mm. The rural towns we stopped in along our way on the Kumano Kodo were all so beautiful, nestled along the riverbeds surrounded by mountains. Our lodging was mostly guest houses ran by the owners directly, with a few hotels at the more popular start + end.

River & Bridge

Left: Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.8, 1/800 @ 400 ISO. Right: f2.0, 1/6400 @ 200 ISO. At one rest stop area, a Black kite (hawk-like bird) started circling really close to us, but unfortunately had started to go further away by the time I pulled out my Canon. I took these (& other) photos in the next hour while waiting for it to come back around (it never did).

Gutter & Train

Left: Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.0, 1/4000 @ 200 ISO. Taken in Nara park. Right: 1/5000 @ 250 ISO. Taken overlooking the trains coming out from Ueno Station. I thought the parallels here were neat, especially when juxtaposed with the previous parallels.

信徒会館

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.0, 1/640 @ 200 ISO. This building is part of the Kumano Nachi Taisha complex. I couldn't find much good information about it in English, Google says the name roughly translates as "Congregation hall", pronounced as "Shinto Kaikan".

Nara Deer Up Close

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f14, 1/1000 @ 1000 ISO. The deer in Nara park really live up to the hype! They will do literally anything if it means they can have Shika Sembei (deer crackers), from bowing their head to headbutting you to nibbling on your jacket to just gathering around you really quickly. So quirky... I found them adorable because despite some misbehavior, overall they were very calm & able to get along well with humans. And there were so many!!

Nara Deer From Further Away

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.0, 1/2500 @ 200 ISO. Nara park has a pretty good set of shrine complexes, and of course the deer wander around there too. Also can I mention: I love how small & boxy Japanese cars are, with their thin little wheels b/c they're so light!

Kyoto Station From Kyoto Tower

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f4.0, 1/800 @ 400 ISO. We went up Kyoto tower on a whim, and oh wow was it worth it. Really great views of the city, and not crowded at all! Kyoto station is beautiful too btw. On the other hand, we heard Tokyo Tower & the Skytree were effectively scams by comparison, so we avoided those in favor of seeing everything by foot there.

Temple & Stairway

Left: Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.5, 1/1600 @ 250 ISO. This is the Sensō-ji Five-Storied Pagoda, which I thought I could juxtapose against the Skytree but the angles just didn't work out whoops. The Sensō-ji marketplaces & Kappabashi street right nearby were a real treat to see, regardless. Right: f5, 1/2500 @ 160 ISO. This is back by Ueno station again. I also thought these looked good juxtaposed, this is the last pairing :)

Kyoto Station

iPhone 16 Pro Max, 120mm. I took this after arriving from the day trip to Nara. The train we took, あをによし (Aoniyoshi), was a sightseeing train, with plush seats and massive windows. Japan's trains & railways are so cool, man. Both the bullet train (Shinkansen) & the Kyoto railway museum are excellent too, but unforuntately all those photos I took of those were touristy :(

Infrastructure

Canon EOS 5DS, 135mm f2.0, 1/2500 @ 250 ISO. From the bridge overlooking Ueno station again. Yes, I really liked that spot, I love how all the infrastructure there was just exposed & so readily accessible (lighting was great then too). Really reminds me of my favorite anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion—*ducks thrown tomato*

Pretty Lights

iPhone 16 Pro Max, 24mm. This was inside Teamlab Planets Tokyo. When it says "immersive large-scale artworks that will capture all your senses", they really mean it. They love their infinity mirror gimmick, but it works so well and honestly I was completely transported. I highly recommend you go if you can, pictures don't do it justice in the slightest.

In short, I had a blast on this trip, and can’t wait to go back in the future. We saw so many things, but didn’t see nearly everything, and plus, that food… I gotta eat more sushi…

2024: NYC

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 15:53:00 GMT

Summer of 2024, I received a fancy DSLR from my dad, as well as two lenses to go along with it. I was really excited to go use it right away and then… I got covid. I took a few pics with it mid-July once I had recovered, and then… I got covid again. And then more stuff happened, and I got covid a third time, which is all just a big excuse for why I only did the two weekends with the DSLR in New York City instead of more, with the rest being scattered shots on iPhone.

Still, even in those few weekends, I got a lot of good shots. So many, in fact, that I’ll be releasing two other, more “thematic” collections after this one. In some sense, these are the dregs, but in another sense, these photos are the very best I took in the city this year. Please enjoy.

Heal Me

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 2024-03-15 7:17PM, in Dumbo. I like the mysterious aura. I took more graffiti shots after this, but this is the only one that made it in.

Under Construction

Canon EOS 5DS 135mm, 2024-07-13 2:18PM, right outside Grand Central. I took more here with some awesome reflections on the underside of this building, but this one has the best shapes.

A Reminder Of Where You Are

Canon EOS 5DS 135mm, 2024-07-13 2:14PM, Madison Ave & E 44th St. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that standing in the middle of the street can be good sometimes.

Rooftop Garden

Canon EOS 5DS 70mm, 2024-07-20 6:27AM, Brooklyn Bridge. I woke up real early for this one. And yes, I did get the iconic bridge shot, and I do still think this one is cooler (+ lined up better).

It's Art

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 2024-02-18 2:22PM, Dia Beacon. Technically not NYC, but it's a nearby art museum in the same vein, so I'll count it :P

Call Box

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 2024-11-17 1:25PM, Manhattan Bridge. I took this walk while still a bit sick from my third bout of covid. I just barely got this far, a bit over a mile from my house, feeling like I was going to die of headache on my way back. Despite this, I feel like this is a positive note to end on.

I’m not 100% satisfied with these photos. They’re pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but “pretty good” is not good enough for what I want to do with a camera. I’ve seen what some pros can do, and boy howdy I wanna start doing that too.

I’m definitely still learning the lessons I got from Dylan Vitone’s Digital Photography I class, in the Fall of 2022. I have a feeling I won’t ever stop learning those lessons. Here’s to another year of learning photography.

2024: Empire State Building

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 15:50:00 GMT

When I visited London, I had the chance to go to the Tate Modern. Really cool museum, very glad I went. Anyways, while I was there, and already thinking about photography lots, I stumbled across an exhibit about American photographer Joel Meyerowitz.

It was a cool exhibit! Big inspiration while I was there, and I think also in Dylan Vitone’s class. One small series in particular caught my eye:

Hey I know that place! I live there!! Energized on the ride home, I traced back the exact locations of each of the shots and made plans to take photos in each location. For completeness’ sake, here are those locations, read right-to-left:

7th Ave, W 44th, from inside the building
Broadway, W 29th
9th Ave, W 34th
11th Ave, W 34th

I was planning on scoping out the locations with my iPhone, and then taking “finals” with my Canon once I nailed down the exact angles and lighting I would need to replicate these photos exactly. Unfortunately, life gets in the way, and I got sick with Covid before that could happen, and then I dropped the project :(

Still, I do have some iPhone images! I couldn’t get (1) because it’s tricky to figure out how to get inside a locked building (do I email the property managers? and tell them what story??). I hope you find these cool anyways, because despite everything, I still do :)

Missing :(

2024-09: Montreal

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 02:56:00 GMT

There was a bit more of a break between this and the last trip, during which I may have focused on various non-photography things. I had tried to go out with my DSLR in NYC (at this rate I’ll get that album out next year lol), but sort of grew weary of the standard city shots. To be frank, I took a lot of city shots on this expedition, and Montreal is a beautiful & photogenic city. But only by getting a little experimental with the crops could I feel like I got something worth sharing.

Anyways, enough prelude, here’s the photos. I had to modify my blog’s code to properly handle images this tall/wide lol

Obelisk

Another attempt at a "traffic cone" composition. Looks much better cropped in like this for the angles imo

Blocks

Neat view. Again, crop made this was better, able to focus on just the interesting part of the image (all the blockiness)

Squid

This image is scrollable! Just thought this view was funny :) Had plenty of time to take in this part of town, walking along the docks. Seems to be gentrifying.

Industrial Tower

My second favorite (but most people's first favorite?), only diminished in my eyes because it's a bit too tall. Still, very fun reflection in the water, and I am a sucker for industrial-looking stuff

River & Bridge

By far my favorite photo of the trip. Walking across this bridge I knew I had to get it perfectly lined up, and I'm so glad I did because I think it turned out really well

Yep, another all-iPhone 11 Pro Max one… And so is the next one probably… I swear I’m going to upgrade cameras eventually, it’s simply too darn easy to point-n-shoot with this thing tho!!

2024-10: Rochester

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 20:04:00 GMT

Recently, I decided to visit an old friend who’s currently at RIT. I had a blast handing out with them, going to various places & seeing various things, and I took lots of photos to commemorate. However, only a few photos ended up being good enough to showcase as “art photography” rather than “personal photography”. Still, glad I got some, and very very glad I went!

Parking Garage Stairwell

This was at the Museum of Play, which is definitely targetted towards a younger audience, but we had fun there anyways, playing their DDR & pinball machines.

11010011001100110111111101101100101101100111011111110101

Just a cool-looking panel! I don't think there's any meaning to the sequence of numbers, haven't checked tho

Empty Hallway

I saw this lighting and HAD to get a pic. Took a lot of fiddling with the shutter speed/exposure on my phone to get it to come out like this. Also had to want for it to be empty, people kept coming juuust as I thought I had the shot. Got there in the end :)

All shot on my iPhone 11 Pro Max, as usual. Lightly edited in an attempt to make the lines perfect (the lines are not perfect). Not too much else to say about these; you can tell I didn’t quite have enough material lol. Went for “abstract blocky” because I couldn’t quite handle building or people shots here. Def gonna have to work on those going forward I think.

2024-06: London

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 19:15:00 GMT

High off my success in Chicago, I resolved to continue taking photos during my big trip to London. I had a blast there, and honestly a majority of my free time was spent just wandering around the waterfront, Central London, or even just right by my hotel, admiring all the cool architecture. Really great city, can’t wait to go back sometime!

Morning

Did not expect this composition to turn out as well as it did

3.8m Height restriction ONE WAY 5

The only sunny morning I got while I was there, lol

Ducks

They quacked at me but didn't move! Neat "secret garden made of money" feeling here.

St. Pancras Station

Pictures still don't quite do this justice. Best railway station I've ever seen.

Bus

I took this as a joke, to remember the route name. WHY DID IT TURN OUT SO WELL??

Except cycles

This was near the Tate Modern, which was one of my favorite museums and favorite areas, because of all the architecture naturally.

Happy Pride

This building was right near the hotel and it drew my eye every time. This piece is about the shapes it makes.

Tower Bridge

This was taken from the porch of the hotel I stayed at! All paid for by work 😎

In this excursion, I took over twice as many photos as I did in Chicago, yet ended up with less I was actually proud of. I think this is due to a couple things:

Overcast lighting makes things look flat, which is not what I was going for.
Really starting to feel the limitations of the iPhone camera platform; I was itching to do something “more”, but time crunch and hardware limitations got in my way.

Overall, still pretty happy with the ones that did turn out well, but my next project will be on a “real” camera for sure lol.

2024-05: Chicago

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:31:00 GMT

Since taking Dylan Vitone’s class in college, I’ve always been thinking about photography. The introductory class didn’t instantly make be a better photographer, but it did give me the bare basics of photography fundamentals and a taste for what a good photographer’s eye can produce.

However, I hadn’t really gone out anywhere with a specific photography goal in mind, often only taking one or two photos at a time, which isn’t really enough to build a compilation off of. What changed this time around is that:

I had seen a really good photography exhibit, An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières somewhat recently, quite a few times actually, and was feeling an urge to take more photos.
Chicago is a beautiful city, so I was feeling extra inspired.
I had lots of downtime before the work event happening later that day, so I had the opportunity to act on my inspiration.

With all that in mind, please enjoy the images I’ve chosen present for my “return” to photography as it were, all shot on iPhone 11 Pro Max with only the default post-processing.

Under a bridge

The water is unnaturally green all the time I hear.

I Am Here

I swear so much of modern "clean" architecture just looks like a video game render.

Courtyard

Looking away from Millenium Park.

The Bean

Can you believe they closed the bean???

Post Office

I find it amusing they put a post office in such a cool building. The post office is really cool, though!

Lake Michigan

Photographer-ception, how original :P

Traffic Cone

Dylan Vitone loved to talk about compositions like these, I think? I may have misunderstood and/or interpreted the Traffic Cone idea too literally.

Triangular Building

Taking photos from an architectural boat tour is hard! You only get one chance to line a shot up, but the same angle repeats over and over since you're so close to all the buildings. This one turned out cool tho.

Memorial Park

Cool park. Love out-of-the-way liminal spaces like these.

Shooting only on iPhone didn’t feel like a restriction this time. If anything, the point-and-shoot nature was really freeing this time around, getting back into the swing of things. Doesn’t make great photos when blown up to very high resolution, but they look fantastic on a monitor, which is how most photos are viewed I think.

I continue the trend of iPhone shooting during my next trip, to London.

Fall 2022 Assignment 6: Final

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:51:00 GMT

I thought I would need to dig more heavily from past assignments for this one. As it turns out, I didn’t actually like as many of my old photos anymore and was able to shoot some pretty good new ones!

This can sort of be viewed as a compilation of everything I learned this semester, story is much less coherent than other works however and are sort of more just based on vibes :) anyways hope you enjoy!!

Missing

Nikon D300 50mm, long exposure

Misting

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure. Photoshopped to get more orange lol

Walking

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure

Flying

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 1x zoom

Stairing

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 1x zoom

It's Over

Nikon D300 50mm

Let's Go

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure

Where?

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure

School

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 0.5x zoom

Photography

Nikon D300 50mm

And with that, so concludes all the photos I shot for my very first photography class. It was a ton of fun, Dylan Vitone is a great professor and human being, also shoutouts to all my classmates for being great inspirations through y’alls work and conversations! I’ll never forget this class and what I learned there.

Fall 2022 Assignment 5: Something I Love

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:50:50 GMT

My idea for this assignment was “home” which meant I basically had just a few chances to do shoots while I was at my parent’s house over Thanksgiving break. I hadn’t been back for a while at this point and was feeling very nostalgic to be there and I hope that shows through in these images :)

Waking Up

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 1x zoom

Seemed to be received OK. This actually isn’t the full set of images, just the best few I liked, and I don’t plan on uploading the video because it’s not actually that good…

Still, I guess I really proved you can do a photography assignment with just an iPhone lol

Fall 2022 Assignment 3: Sequencing

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:50:30 GMT

I sort of ended up doing this for my second assignment too. I tried to replicate some stuff I liked best I could, but a few of these were rushed so I’m not terribly happy with how it turned out, oh well.

Welcome to Family Weekend

iPhone 11 Pro Max 1x zoom

A View From Afar

Nikon D300 50mm. I took this from the Cathedral of Learning on UPitt campus

PUSH FOR HELP

iPhone 11 Pro Max. Lots of postprocessing needed on the raw, can't believe I held the phone steady for that long of a shutter, the regular camera app's auto-stabilized 1s exposures are a lot better but this still looks cool I think

Somewhere Else

Nikon D300 50mm. I forget exactly how i got this shot, the light effects are really cool

Where To?

Nikon D300 50mm

Here?

Nikon D300 50mm

Made it :)

Nikon D300 50mm. Got a little boring with the composition on the last 3 but I think that reflects my intentions? idk

Classmates called this one a little somber yet hopeful, that is sort of what I was going for so overall not too bad I think.

Fall 2022 Assignment 2: Artificial Light and Post-Post-Modernism

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:50:20 GMT

My second photography assignment! I was kinda super inspired for this one, this is one of my more unique pieces.

Beginning of the Hero's Journey

Nikon D300 50mm

Leaving the Known

Nikon D300 50mm

One Last Look Back

iPhone 11 Pro Max 1x zoom. I'm not too happy with the photoshop on this one, but I have to leave it in for the sequencing I think, class liked it better with

A Leap Of Faith

Nikon D300 50mm. This shot was taken from the previous angle lol

Death

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure, I laid down halfway through the timer

More Death

Nikon D300 50mm. Slightly long exposure, on a timer

At Peace With It

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure, some photoshop to get things just right

Can’t believe I was feeling the effects of burnout so soon into the semester

lol

Fall 2022 Assignment 1: Quality of Light and Time of Day

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:50:10 GMT

My very first photography assignment! Sure, I had taken photos before, but not really with such purpose. This shoot had by far the most photos in it, but only a few I really liked.

And thus, we begin

Nikon D300 50mm. very photoshopped

It's here

Nikon D300 50mm. Spot has been photoshopped to be lighter than it appears

It's still here

Nikon D300 50mm

We're inside

iPhone 11 Pro Max, 1x zoom

We're still inside

Nikon D300 50mm. Long exposure

It's coming soon

Nikon D300 50mm

Can we go back?

iPhone 11 Pro Max. 1x zoom

Get used to these camera names, since that’s all I’ll be using for the rest of the semester too lol