HDR Photography
UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry is truly massive, occupying five interlinked buildings in a massive complex (with tendrils reaching out to half a dozen other buildings.) Even the courtyard at the center of the complex actually functions as the roof for two more floors of subterranean lab and office spaces (including my own.) From an aerial photography context, I suppose you could call this my self-portrait.
My brother stands on the bridge over the creek behind our childhood home. Inside all of those prepositions is the feeling that it used to be so much larger, grander, and more exciting when we were kids. Though we used to make whole forts under the bridge, we now barely fit.
True, Eastern-Seaboard-style storms are a rarity in the Bay Area. When the weather obliges, there’s no better place to experience the full brunt of a storm than the Campanile tower. Battered by the wind and enormous raindrops, I mentally thanked engineers for the weatherproof camera body and grabbed this three-exposure HDR shot. Angry clouds dwarf the Eastern edge of Berkeley’s campus. On the left, you can see the College of Chemistry and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. In the middle, the Haas School of Business, Strawberry Canyon, and Memorial Stadium. On the right, the College of Environmental Design and the International House. The heavy rain makes every color so much darker and more intense.
From Lion’s Head in Salisbury, Connecticut, views of three states stretch out to the horizon. Rolling, pine-encrusted hills mix with lakes and farms to produce the perfect mélange of New England scenery. On the day of this particular hike (just before New Year’s), the whole world was napping in the sunlight.
This was the scene over the Berkeley hills last week, as a massive full moon rose over Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. You could practically hear scientists howling, but I suspect that was more because their experiments weren’t working than because they were werewolves.
Given all of the processing that goes into producing an HDR image, I can’t exactly say that this image “hasn’t been Photoshopped.” When you get right down to it, every single image receives some sort of post-processing, even if it’s just to bump up the contrast. What I can say, however, is that the size of the Moon has not been artificially enhanced. Our celestial cousin really was that gorgeous and enormous on this particular evening.
Today’s post comes courtesy of Colin Hill.
This is a shot of Stockbridge Bowl in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was a relatively warm day, but the lake was still frozen over. I love the details in this picture: the huge cracks forming on the lake’s surface, the snow covered houses nestled into the hillside, the hills rolling off into the distance, all watched by the two tall pines in the foreground.
This brook runs behind my childhood home; today, I present it to you as I remember it. Smooth currents of dark, freezing water (even in the summer), and the entrancing mishmash of old stones and roots encrusted with snow. No video game tops the pleasure of watching a leaf drift downstream.
The water practically glows with reflected light. The buildings tower over the scene. The long exposure captures the trails of aircraft in the night sky. San Francisco’s waterfront along the Embarcadero may not have the most enormous and prestigious structures, but nights like this make that irrelevant. The scene makes “enigmatic” and “cyberpunky” into something almost friendly. (Or at least inviting.)
High atop it all is that fascinating golden penthouse structure. The visual similarity to a treasure chest must be more than coincidence.
The quintessential New England home, decorated for the holidays and accessorized with a light dusting of snow. I can imagine Calvin and Hobbes wandering around in the backyard forest, having adventures and causing trouble before they’re called in for dinner.
Wine country in the fall is a little slice of heaven. The rain had passed, the last of the fogs and cloud were rolling past the distant hills, and the golden vines are drifting into hibernation for the colder season. Perhaps vineyards are the best combination of the sophisticated and the bucolic. If nothing else, the slightly artificial reality of Napa contrasts starkly with the slightly artificial urbanity of Berkeley.
I felt that marvelous excitement of the first walk with a brand new camera (my D7000, in this case). The sun was slipping past the ivy-encrusted trees in just the right way yesterday, and it felt so fantastic to take this shot.
In the summer, the Berkeley fire trails become dry and brown. For years, the best part of wandering along those trails is reaching this little evergreen grove on a hill above the dry grass and dirt. Mist from passing clouds leaves droplets of water throughout it, and for a moment, I imagine that I’m riding an island in that sea of grass.
Not far from the notoriously dystopian Salton Sea, the deserts of California are astonishingly alienating places. A few barren mountains etch the horizon, and other than lonely power lines and the path of a motorcycle across the dust, there are few signs of other human beings around. The intensity of the sun made me question the wisdom of being out there at all.
In between the bouts of rain, we slipped up to wine country this weekend. Autumn is in full swing, and the fields of grape vines have turned to the perfect combination of reds and golds. It’s easy to get lost in those vines, for just a moment, until I popped my head up and took this picture. Across the sea of color, you can catch the hints of other vineyards and hills dotting the countryside.
The empty, remote bits of Vermont have a strangely sinister feeling as the first rumbles of thunder pass overhead and the sky turns that almost-yellow color. The whole world is empty, with not a trace of humans but for a gravel road and the lonely power lines. In a way, it’s astonishing that power is supplied to so much of the country this way.
Decaseconds 