There is something dramatic about the bay area around sunset.
Category: California
Golden Gate Rocks
There is something very dramatic about the rocky beaches around the San Francisco bay area.
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.
Come On, Street!
Having been outside the crazy-sphere of city life for a year now, I like looking back on the outrageous geometries that San Francisco calls reasonable. (I’m guessing the number of patches are repairs to that very steep street is a testament that road crews are just as uninterested in climbing it as the average pedestrian.) It’s really not surprising that so many classic movies take place in San Francisco: drama and strangeness is built right into its structure.
Span Aside
This photograph is a double-case of finding interesting details by looking away from the obvious. On one hand, this subtler image was captured opposite an intense sunset over San Francisco. The color palette is heavy with pastels, but accented with a few harsh reds from Oakland in the distance. In the image itself, there’s a tiny building under the right-hand span of the bridge. Seeing something so (let’s say) adorably sized next to something so dominant and enormous makes for a charming contrast.
There’s Another San Francisco
Though most pictures show the San Francisco of gleaming buildings like the Transamerica Pyramid, there’s another San Francisco of a perfect grid of squat buildings clinging to undulating hills.
Into the Sprawl
Sea Rocks
I haven’t been away for more than a couple of months and already I miss the California coast.
Two Trails
I present to you a pair of photographs:
The first is from Muir Woods on the Marin Peninsula of California. That morning was rainy and the colors are rich and dark and the setting is some natural/romantic variety of Baroque. Practically overwhelming.
The second is from Stone Valley this weekend, dry and crunchy with snow, the river mostly frozen at the surface, with currents of dark water beneath. More minimal, more quiet, more subdued. But is this trail any less beautiful than the first?
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.
Bricks and Birds
The contrast of textures and shapes really attracted me to this shot: glossy glass and steel in the background buildings in contrast to the Harbor Court Hotel’s matte brick, and ephemeral sea birds in contrast with the solid structure of the hotel.
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. 
Rocky Beach
The rocky beaches around San Francisco look so dramatic in B+W.
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?
Decaseconds 