HDR Photography
From San Francisco’s Embarcadero, looking south a sunset, the water provides a gentle palette. (At least compared with the jagged edges of the office buildings against the smooth gradient of the almost-night sky.) My only regret is that the water could not have been a flawless, glassy mirror. Perhaps next time, I’ll settle for a longer exposure.
Motel, bar, AND diner? What more do you need? The Cascade Inn and Restaurant in Canton, NY has that feel of a building from the post-WWII boom that has remained untouched since its construction. Its charming position over the Grasse River makes it a lovely place to see the sunset.
While I’m on the trend of remembering summers past (and mourning the end of our own summer), I’m also going to reminisce about our trip to the University of British Columbia’s Nitobe Memorial Garden last summer. Look at that lushness. Foliage everywhere. And, as I like to joking call it, the “enormous bonsai tree” framing the soft scene.
How do you write about a boy playing on the beach in southern Brazil without resorting to cliché? I’ll have to tackle it, in any case. Summer is ending, weekends at the beach are numbered, and I wanted to make a weekend post just to show this photograph that so effectively conveys the feeling of being the last person at the beach. Even when it’s time to go home, we can still hope for one more wave.
What is “honesty” in photography? My goal as a photographer is to capture what I saw—the subjective experience of being in a single moment. I want to capture a “truth.” The process of taking a picture is projecting the reality around us onto a sensor and through myriad digital processes to create the photograph you see in front of you now. Every photographer has, in their pursuit of truth in imaging, some lines in terms of image manipulation that they will and won’t cross. HDR, for instance, is viewed as a “cheat” by some, and as a better approach to getting the true dynamic range of the human eye by others.
A less dramatic case, however, is the use of color in an image. Last night, the sky over Canton was this incredible, surreal, and otherworldly pink-orange color that was completely overwhelming and astonishing. When I noticed it out the window, I sprinted outside with my camera and captured the final, fleeting moments. I was in that moment. Nearly the same effect, however, could have been achieved with a simply pink photo filter. To me, this raises two issues:
Along Canton’s Grasse River are all kinds of back yards. This particular one is so small and idyllic in the evening that I just had to capture it when I was out with my f/1.8 prime lens. I think the narrow depth of field it provides produces a nice miniature/diorama-like effect. Is it a real back yard, or is it a part of someone’s model train set?
NO, WALL, YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
But seriously, the textures and depth of the older buildings in Canton are hypnotic. The fonts aren’t bad, either.
This hill in northwestern Connecticut is, tragically, not really named “Dragon Mountain.” That never kept my elementary-school-aged self from calling it that. The way it rises, green and different, from the surrounding winter landscape brought to mind Smaug, sleeping under the mountain. At age seven, I half-wished that it would awaken and soar above the miniature houses below.
Granted, I don’t speak Portuguese—but if I studied the signs correctly, I believe this building is a recreation of the sort of shack used in converting sugar cane into raw sugar. From the outside, it has just the right Brazilian charm. From the inside, the dichotomy at the heart of modern Brazil is even better represented: traditional cane processing equipment, including massive grinding stones, spend time alongside comfortable couches and a television.
Legendary tuned cars abound in manga and anime—the overpowered monsters in unassuming guise who reveal their true (horse)power in the last seven minutes of each episode. In at least two that jump to mind (Wangan Midnight and Shakotan Boogie), Datsun Z cars are the chief culprits.
This particular Z has been hanging out in Berkeley’s South Campus neighborhood as long as anyone can remember, delivering supplies to I.B.’s Hoagies. Each year, it’s modified a little further towards some ultimate form that exists in the mind of its owner. In the mean time, I love the idea of this rough style monster out on delivery service.
I dream of the perfect vacation house, nestled on the shores of some lonely Adirondack lake and stocked with just the right combination of boats and brews and firewood. I project this dream onto this unassuming cabin and its charming beach, nestled on the shore of Mirror Lake.
During the blazing August heat, looking back to winter pictures leads to the oddest “time machine effect.” As you can see from the rapidly filling tire tracks in the driveway, we barely made it home ahead of what turned out to be a fierce storm. The comfort of “I don’t have to go out there” is so amplified when standing on a perfect porch, next to the door to a cozy house, and seeing the frozen, dark contrast in the graveyard across the way.
The eternally-damp shoreline of the San Francisco Bay is the fascinating meeting of quaint docks and maritime randomness with the aggressive mass of a full-scale city. Charming piers abut the grandiosity of the Financial District, and the result is a surreal and unique setting. Amid this hubbub, the Coit Tower and the Embarcadero stand out as red beacons.
My new academic home at St. Lawrence University has involved a serious shift from Berkeley’s urban campus to the bucolic surroundings of New York’s North Country. The gentle flower-and-grass smells waft through the campus in place of petrochemical fumes, and an the evening sun provides just the right bit of warmth.
The use of space, the precision and repeated arches with their perfect alignment, makes the Cathedral of Learning pretty intimidating (but also even more beautiful.)
(The title, by the way, was borrowed from a piece by one of my favorite composers, John Adams, who in turn borrowed it from a William Blake poem.)
