HDR Photography
At UC Berkeley, 4/20 is celebrated as a major holiday. At the appointed hour, students and staff gather on Memorial Glade. Today’s shot was taken about an hour later, as folks dispersed and things wound down. The amount of trash and litter left behind was a little sad; it felt like the end of a music festival.
This shot is a single-RAW HDR, derived from a shot I took almost randomly when I was last in San Diego. I loved the muscles of the horse contrasted with the regular pattern on the palm behind it. Still, I’m a little disappointed by how much clutter is in the shot. It’s surprisingly difficult to get “clean” shots in an area like Show Park.
When I last visited Palm Desert, I found a variety of very strange things. (Some of which I’ve posted about before.) This particular lagoon stores water to keep the dust in the show rings down. I was just astonished to find it; wandering around in the desert, I saw no indication of its existence. When I saw the gorgeous turquoise of the reservoir, and the way the netting reflected off the water, I felt like I’d found an oasis.
I previously posted a narrower shot of this heavily-graffitied gun battery in the Marin Headlands. It really is incredible how much time and effort have gone into layering art on top of a concrete structure that began as so monolithic and practical. Adding in the encroaching pine needles makes for one Hell of a juxtaposition.
This weekend, Brendan and I blitzed down to Half Moon Bay (or just north of it) to catch the sunset. The beach was arched and curving from the local currents, the waves were seriously up, and I got the camera on the tripod just in time to catch today’s shot.
My last trip to La Jolla, CA gave me a chance to shoot from the summit of Mt. Soledad. I’m continually astonished by the degree to which nature has been remodeled by the folks who settled California.
My time at San Diego’s Westgate hotel really was delightful. As I described previously, the environs are beautifully refined by the standards of West Coast lodging. Every wall was clad in these wonderfully-texted wallpapers, and every door used (instead of a keycard) the most fascinating electronic keys. It all felt Byzantine and sophisticated and antique.
Just after New Year’s Day, I had the chance to visit the beautiful Legion of Honor fine art museum in San Francisco. Though the museum itself is full of totally stunning works, perhaps the local architecture is even more stunning. The mix of natural and man-made elements in the setting feels so totally elegant.
Brendan and I don’t talk much about graduate school (in part because who wants to hear us complain?), but it still has a big impact on how we view the world. Long hours in windowless lab spaces make us really appreciate how amazing it is to feel the sun on your face.
There’s a particular balcony on the seventh floor of Tan Kah Kee Hall that has a clear and unrestricted view of nearly the entire San Francisco bay, and stepping out onto that balcony after spending all day down in lab can be utterly overwhelming. I think this picture really captures that feeling of the sun on my face at the end of a long, and the incredible relief that brings.
I spent last week trapped in the San Diego convention center for the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. I say, “trapped,” not because the meeting wasn’t interesting (it was), but rather because convention centers give me precisely the feeling of being in an airport without every having the chance to actually leave. The same cheapy-modern design, the same overpriced food, and the same sense of being surrounded by other people who are just as unfamiliar with their environment as you are. It’s all a bit alienating.
Still, the “Historic” Gaslamp District (Come see the 2002 Borders building, a relic of a bygone era!) can be reasonably photogenic at sunset. The area around the convention center, much like Miami, is overfilled with palm trees that always feel a bit odd in comparison with the native plants. In spite of all that, the sun reflecting silhouettes off the polished glass facade of a building makes for a gorgeous skyline.
The environment changes so completely when it rains that I can’t help but run out with my camera in the moments between storms. Today’s photograph is another from UC Berkeley’s Strawberry Creek on a particularly drizzly day. The contrast between nature and the manicured stone walls works out quite nicely when everything is wet and glistening.
This little stream was running by the trail not far from where Brendan took yesterday’s photo. At first, I felt distressed to see that tires had been dumped into the stream, but further inspection made it obvious that they’d been washed there in heavy rain years ago. There was a certain relief in seeing them encrusted in moss and being (at least partially) reclaimed.
The contrast between the blacks/greys of the tires/rocks and the array of greens in the moss, ferns, and trees worked out really nicely for highlighting the contrast between the “static” parts of the image and the encroaching life.
I’ve had good luck and bad with travel sites (e.g. Hotwire) that offer a price for a room based upon its location and general swankiness, but that hide the actual hotel until after you’ve booked. This time, however, I hit the photographic jackpot: the Westgate, built in 1970 and designed to recreate the Rococo stylings of of Versailes.
From the ornate carvings on the chairs to the silky, nearly-luminescent wallpaper, every detail screams “opulence;” spending just a few moments here brings to mind immediate thoughts of subjugating the populace.
I find 1:1 aspect ratio photographs to be some of the coolest, but taking them still challenges me. This particular image was taken in Palm Desert at HITS Thermal, and as you might expect, that means that this is the side of a horse trailer. The way the chrome distorts the other trailers and the bright sunlight makes curves on the ground made it worth trying 1:1 here.
Today is a more unusual shot of UC Berkeley’s Hearst Memorial Mining Building. As with so many other buildings on campus, the terrain and topology of surrounding the building have changed radically since it’s initial construction, with each shift requiring an adaptation to the landscaping and lower structure of the building to maintain access without violating the original design too severely. In this case, however, a fairly functional combination of tunnel entrance and stairs looks uncannily like some sort of ancient tomb. I keep waiting for Indiana Jones to come sprinting out past the ash trays with an enormous boulder rolling close behind him.
Decaseconds 