HDR Photography
Prague’s Old Town Hall may appear ancient from its exterior, but its recently-renovated interior includes this dramatic elevator (the four lights are the bottom of the car) in its helical cage.
The view from the top (where that elevator leads) is far more traditional. My favorite detail of this big image is the contrast between the enormous, dramatic Prague Castle in the distance and the little shop door in the foreground.
Autumn may not be peak tourist season in Prague, but the remaining foliage makes for an effective supplement to the red and white that otherwise dominate the city’s color palette.
Every pale streak over the glassy long-exposure water is one of Prague’s gulls. Given the amount of dropped trdelník (with ice cream filling!) available on the ground, they’re enjoying tasty treats on par with the tourists.
The dividing of the southern end of the Hudson River into New York and New Jersey is subject to a great deal of mythology, but whatever the truth is, the practical reality today makes the difference between the two feel pretty fuzzy.
The West Side Highway has fascinated me ever since I saw it in this very illegal lap around Manhattan years ago, but the road was mostly empty on this Sunday morning for a different kind of race: a running road race.
Cityscapes were the images that first really drew me to photography—those images with seemingly infinite detail. Zooming deeper and deeper reveals trees and cars and people down at street level. Surpassing the current limits in this respect will probably mean a new camera (or a real commitment to multi-shot panoramas.)
I’m aware that this picture technically contains three bridges, but it is nonetheless an image of the Two Bridges neighborhood just after sunrise. There are so many sunset pictures of New York; I think the dearth of morning shots is correlated with the sleep schedule of the average photographer.
After a cloudy week in Prague, our final day brought an incredible sunset over the Vltava River.
From the clock tower above Old Town, Prague Castle is visible in the distance continuing its hilltop vigilance over the narrow streets.
The staircase up to Prague Castle will literally take your breath away, and not only with the view that is available if you lift your eyes from the steps to look over Lesser Town. That wall of gold in the distance is made of building facades on the Vltava River.
The absolute enormity of Manhattan’s buildings is sometimes inaccurately portrayed by their steep, vertical faces. The great wings of Westfield World Trade Center leave little doubt in the mind. Look at those two tiny people at the bottom of the image.
I’d never dare to suggest that an enormous stone staircase in a tourist-focused area of Paris would be a “secret”, but that glowing doorway below street level looks like some secretive club or spy rendez-vous.
My favorite view of the Bay Area (and the view that first let me define the idea of the civilization gradient as an element of my photography) is layered up with loads of detail. Down in Berkeley Lab is the building where I worked on sabbatical, and across the Bay Bridge is the completed Salesforce Tower hiding in the marine layer. The differences, particularly from the last time I showed a very similar shot from the spring, are in nature: the high-altitude clouds have been replaced with empty skies and that rolling marine layer, while the green hills have shifted to a dry, highly flammable tan.
Neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and the Bowery are remarkably low-rise until they suddenly run into the wall that is Midtown Manhattan. The new pencil towers under construction may look out of place, but at least they don’t block the views of nature to the north.
I sometimes reprocess older pictures when I find some new approach or something special in an image that wasn’t there before. This picture is a bit different—though I captured it at this time seven years ago, I found that I felt no urge to reprocess any part of it. I was happy with it then—though apparently not enough to post it until now—and I’m impressed with it today.
