It’s not hard to imagine why folks would go out sailing on a nice day like this on pictured here in the Bay Area.
Category: Berkeley
Miniature Library
I can’t think of an appropriate thing to say about the Bancroft Library at the University of California so I’ll leave a picture instead.
Strange Village
Photo nostalgia for the day: the strange, flat light of the marine layer burning off the Bay. The mix of architectural styles from the early twentieth century makes Berkeley, on a day like this one was, seem like a scale model of itself.
Campus, Bay, and City
The view from atop Berkeley’s Campanile is a nostalgic one, with San Francisco and Oakland popping up in the distance above the sprawl. Walking along those broad, slightly cracked, and sun-baked pathways of Berkeley’s campus never quite felt natural, though. Can a place magnified beyond human scale feel that way?
Miniature Berkeley
After getting some distance I’m starting to find myself missing things about Berkeley.
Murdered Out
Continuing my week-long digression into automotive photography, I brought back this older shot from the damp streets of Berkeley. The glow of the apartment buildings, the light trails, and the older cars on the street all form the backdrop to this murdered-out Subaru Impreza WRX. (Murdered out, meaning black rims and a dark black window tint—though I always thought this look worked better on Cadillacs than Subarus…)
Fire Trail and Fire Sky
Fire trails seem like a friendly, common, down-to-earth feature of many California hillsides. There’s a strange context alongside the blazing sky and the busy city in the distance. When I look farther off and see the Golden Gate Bridge and Angel Island, the juxtaposition feels only more emphasized.
But perhaps I like that vision. We build things both grand and humble.
Into the Sprawl
Triple Rockin’
When I looked out my window to a scene every night, it was easy to dismiss the weird, Californian beauty of the Triple Rock bar/brewery and the rooftops beyond it. Now that I’m 3,000 miles away, this odd-yet-normal/everyday-urban scene seems so much more special.
Graduate Student Workspace
When all of “my space” meant a tiny Berkeley apartment and a tiny grad student desk, things that were important to me and integral to my daily life accrued only in those places. This desk might appear messy, but it’s also stuffed full of books and tables and notes. There are parts of my bike and parts for the laser and parts for making things in the machine shop. There are drawings and computer equipment, and there are cups for coffee and cups for beer. What more does a graduate student need?
The Corner Booth in Aki
Aki is a tiny Japanese restaurant just north of the University of California’s campus, and it was my regular Friday lunch spot with my Decaseconds co-author, Brendan. That corner booth in the back (the one drenched in noontime sunshine) was the very place that the idea and name for Decaseconds were born. Over a steaming dish of katsudon, we hashed out the idea. When I began photography, I captured moments very much in the present, but in looking back to this image (and giving it a processing tweak here and there), I’m exploring my new ability to travel back through time to places and experiences past. That warm corner is one of contemplative nostalgia. 
San Francisco Looming
There’s too much unsettling photography out there to limit my Halloween to just a single photograph! The image of a completely dark San Francisco (in the moment between the sun beginning to set and all of the headlights and streetlights turning on), with its specific skyline rising from the mist of the marine layer, just screams “post-apocalyptic cityscape.” Or do I detect a hint of Blade-Runner-esque “California of the Future” in the angles and orange colors? While I’m on the topic of future and past, I have a question:
Do you George Lucas your work?
This photography is one of the first that I ever took with a “real” camera, in the late fall of 2011. The RAW file was sitting quietly on my external storage drive, fallow and ready to live again. In comparing this image with the original approach I took to processing, I see enormous differences and enormous improvements—or at least an evolving artistic sensibility. I’d call this approach “George Lucasing:” going back to old work and updating or improving as my skills improve. And I’m not sure I like that it’s something I should do. Photography captures a moment, and needs a sense of finality. On the other hand, if I am spatially removed from a place (be it San Francisco or South Africa), without the immediate opportunity to return, can this creation be a healthier expression of nostalgia?
Sci-Fi Garden
Today’s photograph is from two years ago, and what was once my mundane walk home has now become a totally alien scene of science fiction flora and architecture. The overwhelming light of the windows and the sharp geometries imposed by noise reduction algorithms really add to the effect.
Berkeley Marina
Nostalgia views the world from a distance but with specific acuity. A view from Grizzly Peak of the Berkeley Marina might look like a warm, buzzy vision of NorCal, but with my own memories I attribute specific instances and moments to every aspect of the landscape: Kites flying over Caesar Chavez Park. Stories of a ferry to San Francisco that once ran from the decaying jetty. Learning to sail on the tiny boats on the “left” side of the peninsula. Sailing from the Marina to Angel Island, crewing a professor’s 40-foot sailboat. Finding a place to live, driving up and down University Ave. from the hotel to the hills. Crossing the highway on the bicycle bridge for a long, flat, sunny ride along the shore. All of that experience is encoded into the image, but I’ll always be the only person with the key to decrypt it.
Artichoke
In Berkeley, Artichokes are grown as decorative plants and so these bright purple blooms are not an uncommon sight. Seems like a waste to me, though.
Decaseconds 