HDR Photography
This shot is amazing if only because I was able to combine three exposures of this plant taken on a day with intermittent gusts of wind which have the effect of blowing flowers like these around, typically foiling any attempt at blending multiple exposures.
This is the imposing Latimer Hall in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry. On this stormy afternoon, the sky and the bare tree and the building itself all took on this similar cast, but with such radically different textures and shapes. If you look carefully, the cracks and stains under each balcony level begin to resemble the geometry of the tree.
This shot comes from Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve.
Today’s image is a shot up a telephone pole on a quiet night. I love the way the lens flare massively amplifies the oranges of the sodium-based streetlight in contrast with the blue-purple hues of the sky. This smeared palette looks particularly interesting against the pattern of cables and wires.
This shot comes again from the Maintenance Building over the Caldecott Tunnel. It was a gray day and the building is all gray so I decided to play with some HDR in black and white.
Back in January, when I was visiting San Diego, CA, I had a chance to drive to the top of Mt. Soledad (near La Jolla) to see the sunset. Ultimately, the day was too hazy to get really good sunset pictures, but I was able to shoot these surreal radio towers at the top of the mountain. I really like the way they stand in contrast to the bushy trees around them. Having played a lot of the fantastic Mass Effect 3 lately, seeing this photo put me in mind of some sort of sinister signal broadcast center.
This shot comes from a maintenance building over the Caldecott tunnel through the Berkeley Hills. The whole building is sort of interesting looking in a really drab way and will surely be featured further but for now I thought that the way that the NFPA diamond in all of its colorful glory contrasted with the lack of the color in this stairwell which is an access way to one of the bores of the tunnel.
A few days ago, I posted a photograph of an enigmatic pillar in the desert; perhaps today’s image can provide a bit more context to it. Off in the distance, you can see dozens of horse trailers associated with the HITS Thermal show, but other than that the environment is completely desolate. Out in the blistering sun, it was pretty intimidating.
I know I’ve posted close up shots of these roses before but here I’ve processed the shot as a single exposure HDR (so manually adjusted the exposure of a single image in post and then combining them) and I’m happy with the result.
When the weather turns cold and blustery and rainy, a warm place (e.g. library, cafe, bed) feels like a fortress. On this particular day in the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, it was definitely cold, blustery, and rainy, but without a warm place to retreat to while shooting, I made do with a literal fortress, instead.
Here’s a shot I took a while back of one of the Bay Area’s most infamous landmarks. It was sort of a gray, hazy day but with a little judicious tweaking I feel like the island really pops.
Brendan and I have both posted before on how fantastic night shots look in HDR. Today’s photograph comes from Grizzly Peak, looking down over Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the South Campus area of Berkeley; the contrast between these two areas couldn’t be more stark. LBNL is flush with trees and tiny pockets of light along gently curving roads, while Berkeley itself is a foreign grid by comparison.
This is another example of how Berkeley’s campus can fool you into thinking its not in an urban/suburban setting. The wooded groves on the banks of Strawberry creek are some of the most picturesque places on campus. This a Eucalyptus grove on the northwest side of campus with Strawberry creek in the foreground.
I spent last weekend in surreal Palm Desert, California at a particular horse show, but had some time to sneak away from the action and wander the desert. I found this enormous, concrete pylon surrounded by desiccated shrubs and was almost intimidated by the whole sight. I kept waiting for the apes to start fighting around it.
While I’ve posted a few close up shots of flowers on the blog so far this is my first attempt at a multishot HDR shot of flowers. I’m really impressed with the results.
Decaseconds 