HDR Photography
There’s this perfect moment during a summer sunset in the Bay Area, as darkness falls and the flawless gradient fades through oranges to purples, when the lights haven’t quite come on yet. Marin is dark, Angel Island is silhouetted, and the world is seems to revert to an uninhabited state.
The Bay Area is already the setting for numerous cyberpunk adventures (like William Gibson’s classic Virtual Light—ironically set on the now-dismantled Bay Bridge in the “future” of 2006); applying a little Blade Runner grime to the present-day Port of Oakland and the towers across the Bay seems very appropriate.
From a quadcopter-eye’s view of Johnson Hall, the effects of this season’s abnormal weather are on full display. Instead of “oranges and golds,” the North Country landscape has reached an odd “green trees and bare sticks” mix. This rogue maple is fighting the good fight for fall!
Perfect water in Cupertino’s Stevens Creek Reservoir on a Saturday afternoon. As beautiful an image as this makes, I have to imagine the fishing would have been much more productive at dawn?
Beyond the bustle of the East Bay at rush hour, the preserved wooded hills of Strawberry Canyon seem so quiet.
Beautiful San Francisco and its changing, growing skyline are the site of some incredible sunsets. This image from earlier in the spring features a sunset of mostly naturally induced colors, but the fires threatening the Bay Area at the moment are producing a much more intense set of hues.
In the past, I’ve photographed several Japanese gardens, and even St. Lawrence University’s own North Country Japanese Garden, but I’ve never been able to capture it like this before. From my quadcopter’s vantage point, I captured the geometry of Sykes Hall and the North Country Japanese Garden in the grids of streets and campus paths.
California summer: Blue skies (no clouds), dry grass.
California winter: Complicated skies (crazy clouds), lush grass.
Looking across the verdant hills of Berkeley Lab to San Francisco, it’s not hard to see why I prefer the winter months in California.
Brooks Island Reserve Preserve is a thoroughly undeveloped space in the chaos of the Bay Area. It almost seems as though it was transported to the present from another time.
Scientists and engineers travel to Berkeley Lab from around the world to collaborate and research together. Though that’s a semi-permanent move for some (like me), it can also mean a hotel-length stay for others. In those cases, the lab has this charming guest house were visitors can rest between experiments.
There’s spectacular luck involved in a tornado-warning-inducing storm abates just as sunset begins, leaving a rugged magenta sky in its wake. (Plus, I can’t fly the quadcopter in the rain.)
This is the blue hour; sunset is over. That soft, rosy hue in the far-off sky? The product of 100% anthropogenic light.
Utah may be famous for its skiing (particularly in the region around Park City), but that makes for an enormous number of odd mountain features in the summer. For such unforgiving terrain, humans have made many changes to the area.
My time on sabbatical in Berkeley, California ends tomorrow. This has been an incredible experience (scientifically, photographically, and personally); looking out from Grizzly Peak’s incredible view, I feel like everything has aligned properly. Just as was the case last time I left, this grand view of the Bay Area is one I want to remember.
Until next time, California!
Crossing the American West last winter, I was struck by the profound changes to the landscape affected by large-scale infrastructure programs. Rural electrification resulted in an expectation of electrical availability, and power lines now stretch to the horizon.
In much the same way, lines of Interstate highway curve off to the distance, twinned East and West streams.
Decaseconds 