HDR Photography
Seen here from the One World Observatory on a sunny Sunday morning, Governors Island has been mostly transformed to park space. On the right side of the island, you can see the Longines Global Champions Tour grounds are still in place from the day before.
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 castle is the other way! Of course, this sightseer is aiming in just the right direction to see the Dancing House upriver.
My hope for the New Year is more opportunities to travel to places like Prague and capture views like these.
Along Prague’s Vltava River, this pattern of one-bird-per-piling appears to be very strict throughout the day. At sunset, however, the pattern reaches its most dramatic. I guess everyone wants a view.
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.
We’re not far from the ninth anniversary of the founding of Decaseconds, and I came upon this arresting image of Berkeley Marina, the Marin Headlands, and the Golden Gate Bridge (never before published here) while searching for just the right anniversary shot. I’m fascinated by the way the orange emission of sodium vapor lamps lighting Berkeley (I’m sure now all swapped for white LEDs) matches the Rayleigh-scattered oranges of the winter sunset. The same wavelengths of light, coming from completely different mechanisms.
After a week of overcast November days, the emergence of Rayleigh-scattered blue in the skies above Prague meant I hurried to the top of St. Vitus Cathedral to get the pictures of Old Town of which I’d been dreaming.
Can you guess which of the buildings in this shot is referred to (mostly accurately) as “the only new building in Old Town”?
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.)
