HDR Photography
This is an old one of mine that I thought would be nice to put up on the blog. Pictured is the Palo Alto, a concrete ship sunk off of Seacliff State Beach, as shot from New Brighton State Beach. I would highly recommend a drive down California’s Central Coast for anyone looking for some great photo ops!
UC Berkeley has an enormous number of greenhouses just to the west of their main campus. The glow from inside them at night fit nicely with the streetlights reflecting off the low cloud cover on this particular night.
A recent trip to San Diego gave me a chance to wander around the gorgeous La Jolla Shores neighborhood, home of UC San Diego and the Scripps institute. The salty air on the beach really speeds the degradation of structures; when you take that in combination with the minimalist concrete structures favored by UCSD, you can get some really dystopian looks. When you combine this with the traditionally “idyllic” beach, it makes for a disturbing contrast.
Hearst Mining Building is one of the prettier buildings on UC Berkeley’s campus, so you can expect it will probably show up a few more times. This is a picture of one of the skylights in the main hall. The mixture of textured brick and painted steel has always appealed to me.
The coast near Pacifica, California has some gorgeous, craggily coastline. All kinds of people were out walking their dogs; if I were a little braver, I would have gone over to shoot portraits of them, as well. Still, composing everyone together into a landscape produced a pretty satisfying result. The old man on the log looks more idyllic than I could have hoped.
I was initially disappointed that it was such a misty evening, but the upside was that the contrast was lowered to the point where I could produce HDR images from a single RAW photo.
Here is another shot of the advanced light source, previously featured here. This time we have a wider shot which includes part of the San Francisco skyline, the bay bridge, Treasure Island, the Golden Gate bridge, and the city of Berkeley. The lighting on the hill makes the ALS look particularly science-fiction-y.
I took a walk through suburban Berkeley at dusk. There’s a great moment, right as the sun sets, and the scattered light from the sky lights up every window. Try clicking on this photo and viewing the full size–there’s a different interesting reflection in almost every window of the house. The Edwardian architecture that influenced many of Berkeley’s older homes is on display in this photo, though it’s a shame to see such a beautiful house a bit run-down.
While I was walking, I also met these young gentlemen. They wanted me to take their picture, and I agreed to post it on the blog for them.
This is another shot from the same night as the previously referenced environmental calamity (read: massive diesel spill) this time of ground zero. The iridescent facade looks interesting in the low light.
These little alcoves on Berkeley’s campus are apparently great places to study. At night, in particular, their lighting makes for some fairly spectacular effects. This is the same area where Brendan found that great shot of the chessboard yesterday, and I thought it might be nice to show a broader view, too.
My favorite part of this shot has got to be the contrast between the stone wall in the background and the brightly illuminated foliage just behind the table, providing an interesting backdrop for the aging wooden chairs and table.
Different types of lighting (e.g. incandescent, fluorescent, sodium vapor, mercury vapor…) produce light of different colors. Though that’s pretty common knowledge, mixing lighting types in one picture can have striking effects and add color to scenes that might be drab in daylight. I say, “scene,” because this picture strikes me as a bit cinematographic–or perhaps even like the set of a play. I can just imagine Sharks and Jets preparing to rumble around the corner…
Another in our set of shots of San Francisco Bay in the evening, this shot features prominently the Bay Bridge as well as Yerba Buena island and the San Francisco skyline including the silhouette of Sutro Tower appearing to rise above the cloud cover rolling in over the city.
Berkeley isn’t particularly urban, and, as such, doesn’t have much of a skyline to speak of. Still, its taller buildings offer an interesting contrast in construction techniques and styles. I like the reflection that can be parsed out from the sum of the windows.
Here’s a shot where the power of HDR photography is really evident. We have regions, like the street lights and the lights on top of the gate, which are over-illuminated and other regions, like the trees and the texture of the gate pillars themselves, which are under-illuminated but when you apply some tone-mapping you get a great image where you bring out the cool lighting while still picking up the cool little details.
Last post for today (making up for a lack of posts all week) is this shot of the Advanced Light Source (the domed building) at Berkeley Lab as seen from the Berkeley hills shortly before sunset. With the haze it sort of reminds me of some sort of mountain top compound used for nefarious purposes.
Decaseconds 