HDR Photography
Views like this one, capturing the marine layer rolling across the San Francisco Bay towards the Port of Oakland, are the kind that first attracted me to photography. I took this picture nearly four years ago, during my sabbatical to the Bay Area, when I was still shooting with my Nikon D7000 (already antiquated tech in 2017); I can’t want to be able to safely revisit Berkeley’s Grizzly Peak to capture more cityscapes with my new Sony a7R IV.
The first warm days of the spring immediately put me in mind of summer nights.
Trinity College’s Long Walk was my home for four years, and I still find its warm evening glow to be comforting.
With the evening sky reflected in the water, this island in Saranac Lake appears to float like a fuzzy green saucer.
I mentioned in Monday’s post that I find structures built over water to be oddly cozy, and this dock and boathouse on a rainy late spring evening conveys the same kind of feeling.
Continuing on the juxtaposition theme from my last post, here we have the “BIGGEST MUSIC CLUB IN CENTRAL EUROPE” jammed into a tiny corner between buildings along Prague’s Vltava River.
Saranac Lake is chock full of islands—including this big one and its tiny brother to the left.
The collegiate gothic architecture of Trinity College developed over decades, but the crenellations atop the Chapel and Downes Hall tie the structures together.
I caught John Wick Chapter 3 in theaters this weekend; that movie’s take on New York City inspired me to finish processing my RAWs from my October 2018 trip to photograph its downtown skyline. Perhaps that sense of a hidden world lurking around every corner is captured in the details along the shore.
The architectural grandeur of Paris makes even utilitarian buildings, like the State Police headquarters in the distance beyond the bridge, are marvels.
On the other hand, the shadows and mysterious doors along the Seine itself look more like the setting for a Cold War spy thriller…
In comparison with the pathways between buildings in Northern New York (mostly shielded against the elements), I’m a bit disoriented by the semi-exposed stairwells and walkways of California. The mixture of features I associate with being inside (like the door with full glass window) and those I associate with being outside (like the tubular steel guard rails) makes for a juxtaposition.
Spokes of major boulevard traffic stretch out from the Tour Montparnasse, golden streaks across the city. The Eiffel Tower makes a perfect vertical accompaniment to the earthbound light channels.
From New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, the view of downtown Manhattan is unimpeded. The view extends all the way up to Midtown and landmarks like the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. With nothing but the water’s reflections between me and the skyline, there’s an odd calmness to a multimillion-person city.
From the graffitied logs of Berkeley’s Grizzly Peak, the Bay Bridge and San Francisco make for an incredible view—when they’re visible. The dramatic high clouds of winter are replaced by an all-shrouding marine layer in the summer that often turns the peak into a cloud bank. On the lucky nights when the marine layer is delayed, the bridge and city lights have a moment to shine before the blanket falls.
