Passing this tree on the way home from work each evening, I can’t help but be reminded of the intersections among nerve cells called ganglia.
Inside and Outside
The heights of St. Vitus Cathedral allow for this double-view inside and outside the walls of Prague Castle. I really like finding shots that capture this enormous variation in scale, from individual pedestrians to whole neighborhoods.
Photographing Prague Castle
It turned out that, after a week of bland gray skies, I wasn’t the only person attracted to Prague Castle on a beautiful afternoon.
A Cold, Clear Night in Canton
This post represents a big moment for me: the first image from my new Sony α7R IV. This is only the third serious digital camera; my first was a Nikon D3100, and I’ve been shooting primarily with a D7000 for the past eight years. The capabilities from a decade of technological advancement and the engineering switch to a mirrorless design have pretty-well blown my mind. I really recommend clicking through to Flicker to look at this image at full scale—the tiny pinpricks of each star, the details in the windows of every building. The 61-MP capabilities of the α7R IV maybe be considered overkill by some, but I’m finding it to be the perfect tool for the kinds of “zoom in forever”-detailed photographs that I love to produce.
Alchemist’s Quarters
Okay, so it’s not a real alchemist’s quarters. Nonetheless, I was chuffed to find antique chemical apparatus when visiting the medieval quarters of Prague Castle.
Stairs Beyond Prague Castle
While Prague Castle’s position on a hilltop is apparent from the south side, the opposite side of the fortress is equally isolated from its surroundings by a steep and wooded hillside.
Swamp Reflection
In the winding waters above Lampson Falls, slow currents make for a placid surface. On a still (yet much more wintery day), my mind has wandered back to warm spring evenings in places other than my office.
Castle Yard and Modern Prague
I’ve long looked to capture gradients from nature to civilization in my images, but I think this one captures a gradient, instead, through time. The foreground, among the Royal Gardens of Prague Castle, seems so ancient in contrast with Old Town in the middle-distance and the twentieth-century additions to the city on the horizon.
Lake Michigan Coast
Where Illinois meets Lake Michigan, a sunny winter afternoon makes a natural instance of the “classic” orange and teal look.
Greenhouse
This greenhouse was adjacent to the Royal Gardens in Prague Castle. Though I assume that its mission is to nurture and prepare specimens to join the garden, the exotic incongruity of a geodesic cylinder amid centuries-old castle grounds makes it a far more exciting find than I expected.
Lightness of Being Above Prague
Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place in these environs of Prague, and something of the dramatic clouds and deep black of this image reminded me of that novel.
Rainy Day at Multnomah Falls
Evoking superhuman scale in photographs really requires a human scale bar, and the tiny people on the bridge were obliging enough to wear rain jackets in red, yellow, and turquoise that stand out from the natural hues.
Napa Stone
In the weirder hills of the Bay Area, back yard detritus falls alongside stones pulled into position by ancient glaciers.
Preparing in Prague
This corner of Prague Castle is in an area historically home to women of the castle; I can’t imagine the experience, a couple of hundred of years ago, of dressing in the morning with the view of Old Town across the river.
Prague and Petřín
Much like Manhattan’s Central Park, Prague’s Petřín is (in part) a demonstration of the will and effort required on the part of a city to maintain green spaces. Once they become part of the city’s identity (as in those aforementioned cases), they exist in a space orthogonal to modern real estate development.
Decaseconds 