HDR Photography
When it’s time for their rounds, riders have to be ready to head into the ring and perform. Being late is not an option, so “hurry up and wait” is the standard: Lots frantic action to prepare, followed by lots of waiting. The sense of stillness amid chaos that goes with that waiting are captured well, I think, in this image.
Views like this one, capturing the marine layer rolling across the San Francisco Bay towards the Port of Oakland, are the kind that first attracted me to photography. I took this picture nearly four years ago, during my sabbatical to the Bay Area, when I was still shooting with my Nikon D7000 (already antiquated tech in 2017); I can’t want to be able to safely revisit Berkeley’s Grizzly Peak to capture more cityscapes with my new Sony a7R IV.
The castle is the other way! Of course, this sightseer is aiming in just the right direction to see the Dancing House upriver.
I remember thinking at the beginning of my “serious” return to photography in 2011 that I’d someday look back to those pictures of a particular place and time (Berkeley in the early 2010s) with a sense of nostalgia that then random street scenes didn’t necessarily offer at the time. This view of a 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV parked outside the Cheese Board has now become one of those images: in 2020, the prohibition on diners in the road median is now being enforced, while the parking for the cars see here has been largely removed and replaced with additional sidewalk seating.
This expanse of dramatic clouds, Petrin Hill, and the Vltava River was across the street from our hotel in Prague. While always a gorgeous view, most evenings brought rain instead of this kind of skyscape. I was lucky to find this scene on the final night of the trip.
Though St. Lawrence’s students are arriving to campus in a safety-mandated trickle over the next few weeks instead of a single-day flood, there’s still a sense of the snow-blanketed halls coming back to life. I love the energy of a college campus in full swing.
Citizens of the North Country spent much of their spring quarantines in the woods; the campfire smoke from just beyond Lampson Falls attests to the family spending the night below.
My hope for the New Year is more opportunities to travel to places like Prague and capture views like these.
The apparently slow and placid water above Lampson Falls seems out of character with the dramatic torrent downstream.
After days of rain, show finally settled over the North Country on Christmas afternoon. With little bits of grass poking above the snowy hillsides, I’m reminded of a sort of low-rent English countryside equivalent.
The holiday season in Bohemia is ideally appreciated from a heated outdoor table on the Vltava River.
Along Prague’s Vltava River, this pattern of one-bird-per-piling appears to be very strict throughout the day. At sunset, however, the pattern reaches its most dramatic. I guess everyone wants a view.
Just before the solstice, I most appreciate processing my pictures from spring. The needles and fallen leaves of winter are still on the ground in this image from Lampson Falls, but new life is pushing through.
(Can you spot me on the left side of the picture, at the top of the falls?)
This week’s theme on Decaseconds is apparently athletic fields. In the suburban Chicago grid, little park oases like these are a delightful break from the monotony.
We visited Prague more than a year ago, arriving (without perhaps fully considering it) on the thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Strolling between the shops of Wenceslas Square, my brain worked overtime to connect the place with the images of protests in 1989 and the great changes that had come about in the time since.
