HDR Photography
Visiting Ottawa often means a visit to the surreal and somewhat overwhelming Château Laurier. The outside of the hotel, I’ve noted previously, is pretty impressive; the interior doesn’t disappoint, either. For all the polished-floor touches and deep wood paneling, I find the most charming (and perhaps old-school Canadian) feature of the scene is the portrait of Winston Churchill.
When photographed with a wide-open aperture and that “bokehlicious” depth of field, amplified by the Brenzier method, a quiet corner in St. Lawrence University’s Johnson Hall of Science can be magically welcoming. That particular chair in the corner, lit from above, looks like just the place to kick back and learn some science.
I want to contrast the bright fall colors from my last post with the broad spectrum of colors that can originate from different types of light sources used by humans every day. Where better than the neutral-colored stone of the Cathedral of Learning? Magentas, greens, warm yellows: emission and reflection can both offer a rich array of photons.
A trip down to Lexington, Kentucky for Pony Finals has us staying in a converted carriage house. “Cozy” describes the place well, with its rough, wooden surfaces and mid-twentieth-century-rec-room aesthetic. The juxtaposition of the modern TV and the old roof beams is more charming than awkward.
All of the other posts this week have been about surreal half-worlds of alienation and pensive detachment. I’d like Friday to be about something warmer, cheerier, and generally less dark: the concept of home. Without resorting to too much cliché, home can be in the shape of the windows or the parallel lines of painted floor boards, but it can also be seeing the same books in the bookcase that were there when you were a child. They were there then, and they’re still there now, and even if, “You can never go home,” you can always go back to the idea and the place and the books will be there.
Sometimes, ghosting is a gross byproduct of taking HDR brackets in an imperfect world. Other times, it can be used to create a ghostly Schrödinger’s Cat elevator door, neither closed nor open, forever in flux. Different moments in time and space, overlapped, with brain-twisting results.
Running through the core of Oregon’s Timberline Lodge (last seen on Decaseconds Monday) is a chimney. The hexagonal and redwood-girthy chimney feeds multiple communal fireplaces at person-level, but up in the vaulted ceilings it takes on a wholly different Harry Potter charm. Wrought iron hardware and enormous beams bond the core to the rest of the lodge structure.
At the end of a long day on Oregon’s Mt. Hood, returning in the evening to Timberline Lodge and its gorgeous/unique internal geometry is at once (slightly) alienating and welcoming. This quiet reading corner meets all of my criteria: not far from a fireplace and with the perfect chairs for curling up with hot chocolate. The blue fabric of these chairs, and their combination of rustic wood and steel, put me in mind of the This End Up furniture of the 1980s. The childhood associations only make the place more mentally comfortable.
Spending an afternoon wandering the labyrinthine corridors of the Cathedral of Learning renders me literally impressed–feeling the weight of knowledge and Neo-Gothic architecture on my mind. The symmetry, detail, and even the height all produce an overwhelming impression. Evidently, the effect was a bit more pronounced in the case of the gentleman at lower left. Is there anything more quintessential of the current age than slouching and checking a cell phone in the presence of such beauty?
I’ve previously shown you the interior of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building from inside and out, but the most magical space is at the very top of the towering lobby. The texture and pattern of the zig-zagging bricks and painted steel have that lovely steampunk feel.
UC Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Building looks pretty awesome at sunset and has a great staircase. More of that surreal, futuristic staircase is on display in today’s photo. What I really like about this image, though, is the sense of texture that it gives. The polished, precast concrete floor, the wood ceiling, the thick glass windows, the brushed steel of the elevator: every material is used in a way that best emphasizes its physical properties. The mixture of matte and gloss, rough and smooth, makes it at once a sophisticated and welcoming space.
Decaseconds 