HDR Photography
On the recent trip to Muir woods we took a trip over to an old coastal battery turned park overlooking the ocean. Well, not much really overlooks the coast on a foggy morning like this. It sort of makes one wonder how effective these overlooks were, at least early in the morning. Almost makes you wonder what’s hiding out there in the fog.
Even if it is more Silent Hill than Far Cry the view is a neat one.
Another shot from UBC’s Nitobe memorial garden, this time of water lilies floating serenely on the surface of one of the pools. The arrangement of the leaves above the surface of leaves really does give the impression that every leaf, every petal on each flower has been hand placed for a specific effect.
This shot of, I believe, bridge 3 in the picturesque Muir Woods is proof that it really is the early bird that gets the worm. Early in the morning you feel almost like you’re the only person around, it is really a spectacular place which is definitely a spot to visit if you ever find yourself in the bay area. Having recently experienced it for the first time it really makes me wonder why I didn’t make it up here earlier.
This one’s another from my trip to Obergurgl this past fall and comes from a short hike just beyond Obergurgl proper. The trail was a bit icy and snowy in bits and the three of us weren’t super well equipped for the terrain but man were some of the vistas spectacular, looking up at peaks like this one, or down toward rivers at the bottom of the valley we were flanking.
While on a walk around the suburbs of Seattle in the “dead of winter” (or the nearest that Seattle ever gets) I was amazed at all of the color present, despite the lack of flowers. All sorts of brightly colored berries and these brightly colored leaves.
Sunset over Puget Sound are always something special (assuming its not too overcast!), with views towards mountains and the silhouettes of small pleasure craft anchored just off shore.
At the center of the Nitobe Memorial Garden lies a peaceful pool filled with Koi, and in the middle of that pool lies the “Island of Eternity,” a small island in the shape of a turtle, pictured here.
There’s something magnificent about the views around Vancouver of the hills and the water. There’s something even more amazing about those same views around sunset when the sky just absolutely fills with color. For these reasons, among others, Vancouver’s got to be one of my favorite places on this planet.
That and if you walk around long enough you start to recognize locales featured in MacGyver.
This view of the Olympics towering over Puget sound, from the community beach near where I grew up, always gets me. Just stunning.
There’s something really off about this rocket ship you can find on the SF waterfront. It looks like a strange cross between the 1950’s concept of a futuristic spacecraft and an abandoned nuclear weapon. The shininess and corrosion create a strange dissonance. Works well with the futuristic pier located nearby.
Anyone else reminded of the bomb in Megaton in Fallout 3?
There’s something about the lighting and the way it plays off the curved hand rail that reminds me of a dystopian future in one of Neal Stephenson’s novels or of disembarking from a futuristic space port.
The rooms are not the only thing nice about KITP/UCSB.
UC Santa Barbara seems like paradise compared to northern California, being basically directly on the beach. On this campus the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics stands out as especially great. Take, for example, this room just off KITP’s library, used as overflow office space for visiting graduate student associates. It has a fantastically high ceiling and overlooks the beach. Makes it hard to get work done!
In the same vein as my last post, and captured on the same day even, I present a close-up photo of ice crystals on a hunk of driftwood. Like a miniature forest, I thought it was so peculiar, but so neat looking I had to grab a couple shots.
It’s not everyday you decide to go to the beach and find that it’s covered in frost.
Decaseconds 