HDR Photography
Today’s shot has some pleasant symmetry to it: the careful lines of the trellises, the interplay between the blue of the sky and the creamy colors of the gravel, and the complete contrast of the curving and unruly hills running behind it all. There’s something personally satisfying about the way humans carve out little areas of neurotically-aligned geometry, but in the end, it’s nothing compared to the scale of the randomness produced by plate tectonics.
Today’s shot is one of my earlier attempts at HDR; I really like the composition of dark, absolute trees against the dappled sunlight, but with the benefit of time… Well, there are a variety of changes I’d have made in both the shot I took and the post-processing that followed. Reflecting on my past can be quite the learning experience–I’d like to think I’m more critical of my own work than anyone else’s.
I was out on some of the nice walking trails in the hills about Berkeley when I came across this stand of shrubs full of song birds. I caught this one climbing all over this plant, as well as hanging upside down from the stalks. I was able to approach surprisingly close before our friend got spooked and flew off but in the mean-time I was able to grab a few choice shots.
The geometry of a horse and rider launching over a five-foot jump is so filled with muscle and agility and velocity that I find the whole event to be hypnotic. It’s over in a fraction of a second, and this makes me all the more glad that I’m a photographer. Though Piper would tell you that this isn’t quite a perfect jump (it’s a bad idea to put your groin above the saddle’s pommel–that can have painful consequences), I can’t help but respect the athleticism on display.
From what is becoming a series, “Piper relaxing,” today’s work: Piper relaxing on the roof, reading Rolling Stone on the most fantastically red, fuzzy blanket ever manufactured. A ray of sunshine for Monday morning.
Once you venture even a few miles from the suburban world of the East Bay into the hills surrounding, all sorts of weird little “model train set” vistas appear. On a rainy, gloomy day, with low cloud cover penning in the view, you could almost be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled into a giant’s basement hobby space.
Here‘s that same sculpture shot from down below near the actual entrance to the engineering library, in the depths below Bechtel hall.
Another one of those hidden spaces, the engineering library in Bechtel hall on Berkeley’s campus is surprisingly off the beaten path. This portal into the depths is located off one of the main routes onto campus from the north, and the sides are about chest height and so it’s easy to miss the hanging sculpture which hangs above the entrance to the library.
Today’s photograph comes from the Spotlight Club tasting room at Robert Mondavi Winery. Everything in wine country seems manufactured to create the faux-rustic, comforting charm; though part of me rebels against being manipulated, I have to admit that there’s a powerful nostalgic feeling summoned when I see big leather arm chairs and maps on the wall and wood-panelled display cases filled with the artifacts of a vintner’s existence. Though the room itself maybe be just as carefully manufactured as some Baroque chamber, the sense of again being a boy in my father’s study is no less potent.
It’s amazing how quickly Campbell hall (previously featured in various stages of its deconstruction here and here) has been reduced to a pile or rubble. Just this past week they have completed the demolition but I was able to capture this shot, with the Campanile in the background, just before it stopped looking like a building and started looking like a pile of rubble.
Watching the sun go down on an empty beach can make me feel like the only person on the planet, but little signs of life will always remain–be it foot prints or, in this case, a sand castle. In comparison with my previous sand castle post, this particularly little fortress is so much calmer, smaller, and more considered.
Berkeley’s campus becomes oddly, frighteningly empty during the late spring. By the time summer rolls around, more students return to attend summer classes and the campus runs on a skeleton crew. In the time between the end of final exams and the start of the summer semester, however, only professors and graduate students dare to roam the halls. In this context, the enormous (but now mostly-empty) buildings remind me of the decaying palaces of some deposed monarch. School is dead! Long live school!
One of my favorite places on campus (or it used to be before the flurry of construction activity around it) is the Hearst Mining Circle, just opposite the chemistry quad on U. C. Berkeley’s campus. In particular the reflecting pool and lawn in front the historic (and fascinating — there used to be a tunnel to the Hayward fault from there) Hearst Mining Building make a great combination, especially on a sunny day such as the day this shot was taken.
Berkeley Marina is a wrench-shaped peninsula in the San Francisco Bay; the “handle” supports a bumpy road to the area itself, while the “head” has docks and a smattering of yacht clubs, restaurants, and smaller hotels aimed at the people mooring there. The larger boats (mostly of the sailing variety) are in the center of the Marina, but on the southern side, in a slightly-sheltered area, are the docks for the much smaller boats. Here, locals come to learn the basics of sailing and wind surfing in the shadow of the Port of Oakland and its massive container crains.
Having taken sailing lessons here myself, I can confirm that the placidity is an illusion. In a boat with a center board instead of a keel, the degree of resistance to the wind is much less, and the crew is required to really use their weight to control these little boats. Today’s shot captures the boats as I prefer to remember: ready to sail, but sitting calmly at the dock.
Decaseconds 