HDR Photography
Good landscape photography is all about finding the perfect vantage point and being patient. Sometimes, however, real life demands a bit more serendipity. While there are incredible views to be had in the Adirondacks, there are also long sections locked between walls of forest. When there’s a once-in-a-summer sky overhead, patience gives way to reaching a lake before the moment disappears.
After the big Traverse City fireworks show over Lake Michigan, Americans on the shores continue to set off their own fireworks. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is pretty much the equivalent of kids in the movie theater parking lot hitting each other with plastic lightsabers after a Star Wars movie lets out.
The Sun sets on progress through central Oregon’s midsummer grass harvest.
Photoshop’s Super-Resolution algorithm strikes again! This 2012 shot from Timberline Lodge was taken using my beginner-level D3100, but now has all kinds of delicious pixel-peeping detail.
Reflections from the surface of Lake Michigan place fireworks on the same scale with the 80-year-old tug boat William C. Selvick. I particularly like the way the small buoy/float in the foreground is placed within the fireworks’ reflection.
As a child, I dreamed of flying over my home town—viewing all of the familiar paths from high above. Visiting that town last weekend, I was able to photographically make that dream a reality. The forests where I hiked and the town ski jump are all laid out before the drone’s lens.
Under the belly of a Navy F-4 Phantom at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky.
Part of me wants to imagine that watching fireworks from the stern of a WWII-era tug would be a perfect summer experience… But another part wonders about the chipping paint and rust, hard corners and suspects that there might be some subtleties to perfecting the viewing location.
My favorite view, run through my new favorite tool: Photoshop’s Super Resolution algorithm. My six-year-old laptop chugs a bit when running it, but the results are worth it; I recommend clicking through to see the detail in Berkeley’s South Campus.
In the era before digital (a.k.a. glass) cockpits, a face-full of instruments are the norm. As I constantly have to remind my students in lab classes, a machine is something that produces things (including movement) while instruments measure things.
To borrow an Internet cliché, “Name a more iconic summer combination.”
An afternoon of hiking merits a rest in the shade before returning to town for schnitzel.
Zoom waaaay in and you can see two bros, sitting on the front porch of this shell-of-a-cabin and relaxing by their truck full of mountain bikes.
More than any of the other Traverse City fireworks shots I’ve presented so far, I think this one captures the essence of summer: little Lake Michigan waves lapping at the shore, soft beaches, boats moored to piers, and the pair of people relaxing on the rocks in the foreground. They’re the most intriguing part of the image, to me: when everyone else is looking to the sky, what is interesting them more than the fireworks?
A wall of white water greets visitors to Laurel Falls. Can you spot the little magenta flashes of rhododendrons in the rocks?
Decaseconds 