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.
Crepuscular Rays
Industrial Harbor
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.
Custom House
Molecular Foundry
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
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.
Crossroads
Where two trails converge then diverge.
Coit Tower Blue Hour
Coit Tower, on its leafy green (i.e. unlit at night) hillside, makes for an odd break in the structure of the more northerly parts of San Francisco. I particularly like this short of the juxtaposition of the Tower’s aesthetic beauty with the utilitarian structures of Treasure Island in the foreground.
River
Microbus Foliage
Berkeley’s seasons are a weird, fractured, microcrystalline version of their East Coast equivalents. There’s a nice congruence between the variable season a given tree might be experiencing and the variable model year any street-parked vehicle might be representing. Having autumn foliage gently localized around this classic (if oxidized) VW Microbus makes for a delightful combination.
Launch Spiral
I’m sure there’s a perfectly mundane aeronautical explanation for the spectacular spiral trail weaving between the sunset clouds over San Francisco. I’m also sure that I prefer to imagine something much more exotic and high-performance.
Mist
Some of the most magical photos come at the most unexpected times.
Vertical City
San Francisco’s verticality comes from its steep hills. Increasingly, however, that z-dimension size is being joined by towering additions to the skyline. Though I know it’s a contentious issue locally, I’m excited to see the new construction in downtown.
Organic Hot Apple Cider
Leafy Window to Oakland
My past couple of posts have been images of San Francisco, foregrounded by nature and suburbs—the style I like to call a “civilization gradient”. This image similarly presents downtown Oakland, California, past the hilltop homes and Cal fields of Strawberry Canyon and through the invasive alien leaves of Berkeley Lab’s eucalyptus trees. The HDR processing techniques that Brendan and I use are perfect for settings like this, with an array of light intensities across a broad landscape.
Decaseconds 