HDR Photography
This particularly gorgeous flower was spotted in the garden of a particular Berkeley professor. I’d like to think that adds to the mystery.
On the beaches of Florianopolis, the waves crashed on the broad black boulders and the sun dropped into the hills behind me. Not another person was evident, the water was impossible blue, and I said to myself, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
Everything is parked, arrayed, and prepared in precisely the right position for maximum efficiency. This might not really be the case, but when I stare through the airport glass, I see a ballet of criss-crossing tools and machines harnessed for travel.
My grandfather’s farm in Sherborn, MA is perhaps the only unchanging place in my life. Since before I can remember, I’ve sat on this screen porch and looked out through the trees and fields. The flora and fauna of the homestead keep growing and multiplying, but it’s all kept in check.
The midwest is a flat region, but the true two-dimensionality doesn’t hit you until you until you see the region from above. The tallest things for miles around will be water towers. Each town’s tower marks it, like a piece on the world’s most beige chessboard. Still, they have a certain beauty in the evening.
Costao do Satinho fills almost an entire end of Florianopolis’s island, and the hotel pictured here represents just a small bit of it. There are villas and beaches sprawling out over acres. Still, this part (at night) was one of my favorites, with its 1960’s style and very jet-set-minded architecture. This is a place that caters to a group from the past.
Little pockets of calm exist all over Berkeley’s hustling campus, but Strawberry Creek on a rainy day is a particularly superlative example. The leaves and water take on this lovely green that perfectly offsets the red needles from the Redwoods above. Against this palette, the textures of the mud and roots are all the more striking.
Evening is finally rolling around, low tide has rendered the waves gentle, and the beach is pockmarked by the day’s footprints. If you let yourself get lost in the sky and the mild surf, the sights of people disappear and the mind wanders into the sea.
Saturday isn’t a normal posting day, but I was so excited by this shot that I thought I’d bring you guys a bonus. I’m currently in Florianopolis, Brazil, home of (they claim) the best surfing in the world. The waves weren’t quite that impressive yesterday, but they were pretty close. The blue green-ocean, black rocks, and golden barnacles make for the perfect “Royal Surf.”
Walking through the forest with family on Christmas day always has a special crispness to it. The roads are deserted, the days are short, the trees are bare. If the weather is chilly, the whole experienced is sharpened with red noses and warm drinks afterwards. That was the experience on the day I took this photograph.
Today’s photograph was taken by Piper Klemm (who has previously been on the other side of the camera), and really conveys the way quads and paths carved into the trees of Berkeley’s campus. The flow of students between classes gives the image the “campus” feel.
Berkeley’s college radio station, KALX, recently had me in the studio for an interview about one of my other projects, the Berkeley Science Review. While I was there, I snapped a few shots of their mammoth 100,000 record collection. The size of it really was staggering; it’s sort of amusing to remember that it could all fit on a couple of cheap hard drives. What would be missing, of course, would be the gorgeous, enormous album art and the feeling of vinyl in your hands.
This little canyon ends at the beach, and its miniature stream flows back and forth with the tides. On this particular evening, it was starting to rain as the sun set through the clouds. The beach was abandoned, and whole scene felt post-apocalyptic.
Though Woodside is a particularly lovely place to begin with, my favorite photographs from the show were from the jumper ring. In the same event that produced this shot, there was more than just jumping. The event is timed, and the agility and speed of the horse/rider team is apparent as they hussle around corners on loose footing.
Decaseconds 