HDR Photography
One of Trinity College’s oldest buildings (Clement Hall, home to the Chemistry Department where I got my bachelor’s) is across from one of its newest (Raether Library and IT Center). From inside the modern surfaces and behind the modern windows, Clement looks even more Hogwartsian than it does typically.
This auditorium in Berkeley Lab’s Building 66 was the site of weekly seminars, naturally, but it’s that balcony behind the podium that often interested me the most about the room. From there, I captured some of my favorite views of Berkeley, Emeryville, and San Francisco. It was just down the hall from my office and nearly always accessible. I won’t say I took the space for granted, but I will say I enjoyed the ease of popping down the hallway for a stunning vista.
Haying a field in midsummer leaves behind an image with a certain impressionist style, reminiscent of Monet’s haystacks.
I’ve shown many parts of Berkeley’s Normandy Village, but perhaps not these square homes (that look like cubes with roofs jauntily capping them).
To produce this 24-hour auto-changing desktop, I took pictures on our Lexington, Kentucky cottage’s front porch over the course of a day. Though some changes, like the clouds and sky, I expected, I was more surprised to see the variation in light reflected from the white roof of the porch over the course of the day.
Dawn
Morning
Midday
Afternoon
Dusk
Blue Hour
Night
Standing in front of an F-14 Tomcat “in the titanium” at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky was a pretty metal experience. I couldn’t resist humming “Danger Zone”.
When I’m out in nature with my camera, I’m reminded of a quotation from Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s “Wind, Sand and Stars”, regarding his time as a pilot:
“Precisely because it is perfect the machine dissembles its own existence instead of forcing itself upon our notice.
And thus, also, the realities of nature resume their pride of place. It is not with metal that the pilot is in contact. Contrary to the vulgar illusion, it is thanks to the metal, and by virtue of it, that the pilot rediscovers nature. As I have already said, the machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.“
In the Normandy Village, even the back door to the fire escape and laundry room is weird and wonderfully overdesigned.
Brittany Village is, perhaps unsurprisingly, just around the corner from Berkeley’s Normandy Village where I last lived in California. It has plenty of quaint eurocharm, but I think the “original” copy of a European village in Berkeley remains the best.
Each Sunday morning during my 2017 sabbatical, I would start a load of wash in the apartment building’s single shared washing machine and head to Philz Coffee on Shattuck (don’t look for it—it’s not there anymore). I’d stand on this sunny corner in the perfect weather with an enormous coffee and watch the world for a minute… Before heading back to change over the laundry.
Houses stacked onto the hillsides of Berkeley, California have a weird tiered geometry and features like picture windows at the corners of rooms. Living there long enough, they become everyday and ordinary… But they’re a bit surprising when first encountered.
The archway in the center of Trinity College’s Northam Hall is a welcoming place with the warm glow of dusk passing through.
Of all the building colors in California, there’s a special shade of pastel green that zooms straight out of the middle of the twentieth century and into every Tarantino film.
Even on a marine-layer-y morning that green stands out.
“Dawn of a new scientific era” might have been as appropriate a title.
I wasn’t surprised to find a plethora of churches in Paris, but I was surprised by their array of designs. This first example neatly abuts the sidewalk, filling its lot.
By comparison, this next example is set back from the street and exhibits a vertical reflection plane.
This last case has a wholly different geometry and stonework hue. Am I even sure this is a church? Christian imagery appears on so many buildings.
Decaseconds 