HDR Photography
I was back in California this week—sneaking some early-morning photography before the events of the 263rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society began. The underside of the Harbor Drive Pedestrian Bridge reflected the sunrise and showed off the arc of its structure.
This view of Coit Tower and the western span of the Bay Bridge brought to you by the oddness of San Francisco zoning and real estate that prevent view-blocking high-rise construction. (Whether that’s a good thing is another question…)
When New Yorkers take their dogs for a walk, it’s down narrow, cramped, sandy, salty sidewalks in a frozen hellscape… At least, in comparison with the Californians, rendered miniature by the grandeur of the landscape.
Look at that little home, perched atop a cliff above the high-altitude desert north of Coachella Valley.
Apparently the original Lake Cahuilla was a prehistoric lake in the Coachella Valley; its modern recreation is a reservoir in the hills outside town. The relationship between humans and nature in the region is well-encapsulated by that point of comparison.
Seeking to print some images for a tall, narrow section of wall near a window in my office, I realized that I don’t shoot vertically very often. Perhaps that comes from what originally drove my interest in photography—making cooler desktop wallpapers for my computer. I traveled back to 2013 to find a vertical shot that really tickled my fancy (though luckily Adobe’s Super Resolution was up to the task of upsizing for printing.) The warm sodium-vapor-and-neon glow of San Francisco’s Embarcadero (stacked with the Transamerica Pyramid and Coit Tower) are a moment frozen in time, if not least because the switch to LED streetlights is totally changing the hue of an American city at night.
This mysterious small observatory outside Landers, California (not far from the Integratron) sticks out from the landscape—both figuratively and literally. Goings-on there strike me as excellent fodder for a science fiction novel.
Even without a full array of ancillary pillows, a spot to lounge by the pool on a cool desert evening seems like an enormous upgrade over the second half of winter in Northern New York.
Landers, California’s Integratron is said to be at the intersection of ley lines and underground reservoirs, and was originally designed to hold a device that its creator hoped would extend human lifespans. While I can’t say I’ve been able to verify any of that information, its stark white presence in the desert above the Coachella Valley is certainly striking.
While it was freezing and blustery outside, within the Integratron, the enormous parabolic dome of wood (with no metal used in its construction) was definitely warm and inviting. I’ll attribute this to thermodynamics more than supernatural forces.
An iconic image of renewable energy in California, if I do say so myself: scrub brush in the foreground, mountains in the background, and a huge wind turbine in the center of it all. I particularly like the way this particular shutter speed allowed for just a slight blur at the tips of the turbine blades.
At the northern end of Coachella Valley, civilization peters out and the wind kicks up. The seemingly endless fields of wind turbines are (unsurprisingly) well-positioned: hopping out of the car to get this shot, I was nearly knocked over by a grit-enhanced gust, the likes of which I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before.
Describing city streets as canyons is, at this point, a cliché, but that doesn’t mean that an image of San Francisco can’t be perfectly canyon-evoking.
Sunrise over Los Angeles and SoFi Stadium; time to say goodbye to 2021. See you in the new year!
Magenta-and-cyan “vaporwave” aesthetics go well with an Indio hot tub.
Decaseconds 