HDR Photography
Given that most of my research is focused on renewable energy, I love to pick up relevant pictures to include in my presentations. This solar facility outside Denver, CO, was far larger than an initial glance at the image might imply. The tiny yellow dots at the base of the cylinders in the center of the image are enormous pieces of earthmoving equipment.
I’ll be teaching my first class of the Fall 2022 semester tomorrow morning, so today seemed like the perfect day to reflect on the campus to which I’m returning. The structures amidst the trees sure look good from 100 meters up.
This image also brings up an interesting note on aspect ratios: Since the start of Decaseconds, I’ve largely been formatting my very favorite images in a 1.6:1 (i.e., 16:10) aspect ratio, such that they’d function well as desktops for my various MacBook Pro laptops. The advent of the “notch” and associated added screen real estate means that new MBPs have a 1.547:1 ratio—and thus my favorite images (like this one) are arriving with a new aspect ratio.
My favorite feature to capture in landscape images is a gradient from sparsely populated areas to dense, urban ones. A connecting flight through Denver gave me the opportunity to add a mile-high gradient to my collection.
This picture was processed using the Super Resolution algorithm, so it’s definitely worth clicking through to view the high-resolution version on flickr.
The opposite side of Equus Run (in both space and time) from Friday’s post finds a concert letting out and light trails along the normally empty Moores Mill Road.
Sunrise over northern Kentucky, when captured from a drone, seems to present layers on layers (creek/patio/driveways/vines/forest/interstate/forest/sky) that look like an ukiyo-e print.
Runways on runways on runways, with the Rayleigh-scattering-induced silhouette of the Chicago skyline in the distance, on this summer morning over O’Hare International Airport.
For once, the arbitrary contortions of a subdivision’s streets seem to have some purpose: fitting within the shoreline of this lake outside Denver, Colorado.
Good news, everyone! A new, much-lighter, yet equally capable drone (the DJI Mini 3 Pro) means aerial photography while traveling in a way that was never possible with my chunky Phantom 3.
In today’s image, northern Kentucky presents a classic American combination: old barns and farms, crossed by the monolithic expanse of the Interstate system.
Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, I likewise suspect that any sufficiently populated crossroads is indistinguishable from a town.
Sections of Chicago’s hinterlands that were once stockyards and meatpacking facilities have long since been converted to serve as industrial parks, but the sense of an endless grid remains.
Neal Stephenson’s “burbclaves” in Snow Crash are subdivisions-as-mini-nation-states—an intentionally silly idea in the satirical context of the novel’s libertarian dystopia. These Denver suburbs are now my internal vision of how such a burbclave would look.
Waaay off in the distance, beyond the un-grid of this subdivision, is downtown Denver. Beyond that are the Rocky Mountains. That sense of being sort-of-near spectacular sights while still being trapped within cul-de-sacs is one that I expect is pretty common to people who spent some amount of their childhood living within such developments.
Dune’s naturally occurring “Shield Wall” always seemed a bit fictional to me—until I saw Denver’s metropolitan area from above. Look at that sharp divide between mountains and the valley floor!
I’ve shown you a far different view of the wind farms at the northern end of Coachella Valley, but an aerial view at dawn provides better documentation of the project’s true scale, and its place in the fascinating geological setting of the valley.
Bright Saturday morning sunshine warms Salisbury, Connecticut and make the town ski jump flash in the distance at the left of the image.
Decaseconds 