California – Page 26

Shipping Container House

2017-Apr-24 adohertyhLeave a comment

Photographing landscapes and structures (and being the son of civil engineers), I’ve become a bit of an architecture fanboy. The trend towards building with shipping containers, whether a do-it-yourself effort or a pre-fab corporate approach, seems particularly exciting. This weekend, I encountered this in-construction house built from three forty-foot intermodal containers. The owners added sloped roof, a permanent foundation, and windows and doors outside, but they liked the shipping container aesthetic and plan to keep all of the original paint and labeling outside. I find that look charmingly authentic.

Inside, however, there’s little hint of the structure’s more exotic origins. Though, like the exterior, the interior is still under construction, there’s a straightforward home inside the three long shipping containers worth of space.

Watching the Gradient

2017-Apr-212018-Jun-01 adohertyh7 Comments

Do you see the lone person, sitting on the hillside, on the right side of this image? People provide scale, but also something more in this context. In addition to watching the literal gradient of the sky at sunset, this picture is part of a set of images of the “civilization gradient” from wilderness to dense city center. I quite like the added layer of a gradient from the individual in nature to the greater mass of humanity in cities. Traveling between rural New York and the crowded Bay Area has made me more aware than ever of the contrast.

Municipal Dock

2017-Apr-20 emceehammrLeave a comment

Seems like the dock goes on forever.

Muir Faeries

2017-Apr-19 adohertyhLeave a comment

A dusty lens can be a cause for concern, but the flares of sunlight scattering from those particles can make for some rainbow-y lens flare. Paired that with the fallen trees and friendly ferns of Muir Woods National Monument. Instant fairyland!

The Text

2017-Apr-18 emceehammrLeave a comment

Crest in the Bay

2017-Apr-17 adohertyhLeave a comment

I imagine the Bay Area like an elementary-school art project bowl, a bit lump and uneven but mostly ringed with hills. And like a proud child filling their handmade bowl with mounds of cereal and milk, there are lumps and liquid in the middle. If I strain the simile to the limit, both the bowl and the Bay are home of delicious foodstuffs. Rushing to the crest of Berkeley’s Grizzly Peak after a rich dinner, I can see the whole bowl. (And avoid the skunk sneaking up on us in the tall grass.)

Old Under New II

2017-Apr-142017-Apr-13 adohertyhLeave a comment

The Transamerica Pyramid is one of my favorite subjects, and I’ve lately enjoyed photographing it juxtaposed with older brick buildings.

Further Motorcycle Imaginings

2017-Apr-10 adohertyhLeave a comment

San Francisco street scenes featuring motorcycles parked provocatively outside bars and cafés have become a recent focus of mine. Blues and reds in bright Sunday sunshine are enticing.

Between Berkeley and San Francisco

2017-Apr-07 adohertyhLeave a comment

I spent this week BARTing back and forth from downtown San Francisco to “downtown” Berkeley for the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting. Bouncing between the familiar and the strange, all tinged with a general sense of familiarity, gave me a sense of dislocation, like an atom in slightly the wrong place in a crystal structure. Beyond meeting scientists and seeing old friends, I can think of one exciting new discovery this week: the new seat fabric on the BART is an enormous improvement over the horrifying cloth of yesteryear.

Industrial “Alpine Lodge”

2017-Apr-05 adohertyhLeave a comment

This physical plant building at Berkeley Lab has the broad A-frame structure and charming attic windows of an alpine lodge. It also has an evergreen-encrusted window to Berkeley and the Port of Oakland. In spite of the appearance and the surroundings, this is a highly utilitarian setting. Quite the juxtaposition.

Old Under New

2017-Apr-03 adohertyh2 Comments

Striking modern architecture next to industrialization-era brick and ironwork makes for a dramatic combination. It’s also the bedrock style of my favorite cities, including New York and San Francisco. In this particular image, the sport bike and the small group enjoying breakfast at front add the perfect hint of scale.

Morning in the Normandy Village

2017-Mar-31 adohertyhLeave a comment

After a night of storm clouds and rain drops, the historical oddity that is Berkeley’s Normandy Village is most charming. Little corner doors and bonus windows peak out from behind ever turret.

Industrial Harbor

2017-Mar-29 adohertyhLeave a comment

The orange hue and misty hills remind me of the poster for Apocalypse Now, but this is just the northern end of San Francisco Bay. In this age of upward-climbing property values and Silicon Valley rags-to-riches stories, I’m continually amazed that there’s room for industry. If these facilities had to be started today, I can’t imagine that they’d wind up in the same position.

Molecular Foundry

2017-Mar-27 adohertyh1 Comment

The Molecular Foundry’s enormous overhang looks alien up close, but the scale of the structure is really apparent with the lighting beneath the gravity-challenging bulk.

Rather Be Sailing

2017-Mar-24 adohertyhLeave a comment

Morning sun provides very stark, even lighting across the San Francisco Bay. I know rationally that gravity forces the big body of water to be (basically) flat, but the curves of the shore and the shadows of the clouds have always made the Bay itself seem to have hills and valleys. I can also confirm that the water feels pretty far from level when actually sailing it.