HDR Photography
As a child, I dreamed of flying over my home town—viewing all of the familiar paths from high above. Visiting that town last weekend, I was able to photographically make that dream a reality. The forests where I hiked and the town ski jump are all laid out before the drone’s lens.
Under the belly of a Navy F-4 Phantom at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky.
Part of me wants to imagine that watching fireworks from the stern of a WWII-era tug would be a perfect summer experience… But another part wonders about the chipping paint and rust, hard corners and suspects that there might be some subtleties to perfecting the viewing location.
My favorite view, run through my new favorite tool: Photoshop’s Super Resolution algorithm. My six-year-old laptop chugs a bit when running it, but the results are worth it; I recommend clicking through to see the detail in Berkeley’s South Campus.
In the era before digital (a.k.a. glass) cockpits, a face-full of instruments are the norm. As I constantly have to remind my students in lab classes, a machine is something that produces things (including movement) while instruments measure things.
To borrow an Internet cliché, “Name a more iconic summer combination.”
An afternoon of hiking merits a rest in the shade before returning to town for schnitzel.
Zoom waaaay in and you can see two bros, sitting on the front porch of this shell-of-a-cabin and relaxing by their truck full of mountain bikes.
More than any of the other Traverse City fireworks shots I’ve presented so far, I think this one captures the essence of summer: little Lake Michigan waves lapping at the shore, soft beaches, boats moored to piers, and the pair of people relaxing on the rocks in the foreground. They’re the most intriguing part of the image, to me: when everyone else is looking to the sky, what is interesting them more than the fireworks?
A wall of white water greets visitors to Laurel Falls. Can you spot the little magenta flashes of rhododendrons in the rocks?
Hiking through Stone Valley to capture a vibrant sunset over long-exposure-blurred rapids really only works if the sunset shows up for the party. What I found instead was a more quiet and contemplative view of early autumn in the Adirondacks.
I recently returned to this shot from 2015 to reprocess the original raw for a calendar of B&W images for St. Lawrence. While it may not have Iwan Baan‘s level of people in the image, the bicycle adds a nice sense of quiet, human scale to the setting.
The mists of Laurel Falls make the rocks just beyond its crashing torrents a perfect home for little flowers and mosses.
The new Sony camera and its drastically improved signal:noise meant the opportunity to capture the Aviation Museum of Kentucky freed from the constraints of tripods.
Coming face to face with a monster waterfall at the end of a hike brings a refreshing sensation: invisible clouds of cool mist.
