Landscape – Page 42 – Decaseconds

Ingrained

2012-Mar-31 adohertyhLeave a comment

This little stream was running by the trail not far from where Brendan took yesterday’s photo. At first, I felt distressed to see that tires had been dumped into the stream, but further inspection made it obvious that they’d been washed there in heavy rain years ago. There was a certain relief in seeing them encrusted in moss and being (at least partially) reclaimed.

The contrast between the blacks/greys of the tires/rocks and the array of greens in the moss, ferns, and trees worked out really nicely for highlighting the contrast between the “static” parts of the image and the encroaching life.

Control Towers

2012-Mar-17 adohertyhLeave a comment

Back in January, when I was visiting San Diego, CA, I had a chance to drive to the top of Mt. Soledad (near La Jolla) to see the sunset. Ultimately, the day was too hazy to get really good sunset pictures, but I was able to shoot these surreal radio towers at the top of the mountain. I really like the way they stand in contrast to the bushy trees around them. Having played a lot of the fantastic Mass Effect 3 lately, seeing this photo put me in mind of some sort of sinister signal broadcast center.

Scrub Brush Trailers

2012-Mar-15 adohertyhLeave a comment

A few days ago, I posted a photograph of an enigmatic pillar in the desert; perhaps today’s image can provide a bit more context to it. Off in the distance, you can see dozens of horse trailers associated with the HITS Thermal show, but other than that the environment is completely desolate. Out in the blistering sun, it was pretty intimidating.

San Fortress

2012-Mar-13 adohertyhLeave a comment

When the weather turns cold and blustery and rainy, a warm place (e.g. library, cafe, bed) feels like a fortress. On this particular day in the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, it was definitely cold, blustery, and rainy, but without a warm place to retreat to while shooting, I made do with a literal fortress, instead.

Back to the Hills

2012-Mar-06 adohertyhLeave a comment

This is one of the earliest HDR images I ever took, and though I was still getting a few of the details worked out, I really loved the way that the reflection of the sun from the building’s windows was captured at sunset. The clouds and the soft forms of the hills make a nice contrast with the buildings of UC Berkeley.

Leaning Trees

2012-Feb-282014-May-12 adohertyhLeave a comment

Today’s photograph comes from the same forrest preserve where I photographed the creek and frozen pond. The setting sun was eclipsed by the trees to my back such that only the branches far away from me picked up that lovely, golden hue. I really liked the way that contrasted with the dull trees and textured grass closer to me.

Miniature Marin

2012-Feb-18 adohertyhLeave a comment

Continuing the Marin Headlands bombardment, today’s photograph shows the northern approach to the Golden Gate Bridge with Angel Island in the background. This was also my first attempt at post-processing to simulate the use of a tilt-shift lens, which produces the illusion of a miniature reality. I think it works quite nicely here to give the bridge a feeling of being part of a model railroad set.

Transpacific

2012-Feb-162012-Feb-16 adohertyhLeave a comment

On Monday, Brendan showed you his view of the Golden Gate Bridge; today, it’s my turn. I was lucky enough to capture the moment an enormous container ship passed under the bridge on its way into the Pacific Ocean. The scale of both the bridge, and these behemoths of the ocean, shocked me when I first thought of it. I had been watching this ship for almost an hour as it maneuvered its way through the bay from the Port of Oakland, and as it passed Alcatraz, I realized that the island and the ship were nearly the same length! To then see the ship pass trivially under the Golden Gate was astonishing.

By this point in the evening it had started to rain, and keeping the lens clear was becoming increasingly difficult. I didn’t dare risk missing the moment the ship passed under the bridge, so I dried the lens, put the cover on, and waited patiently for just the right moment.

The Span

2012-Feb-022012-Feb-02 adohertyh3 Comments

The Bay Bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco is actually a pair of bridges, resting for a moment on the island of Yerba Buena. Attached to Yerba Buena is the ironically-named Treasure Island, a man-made island composed entirely of fill. From there, photographing either the East Bay or San Francisco itself works out quite nicely. Today’s shot of the western span of the bridge has a bit of the unlit Yerba Buena outcropping on the left and the hyperintense lights of AT&T Park (home of the SF Giants) under the bridge. On this particularly clear night, I was thrilled to be able to capture it all without a thick slathering of fog.

Hey, Surfer Girl!

2012-Jan-24 adohertyh1 Comment

This shot of a surfer in La Jolla, CA is another from near the Scripps pier that I featured previously here. The contrast between the reflection on the sand and the rough, concrete pier turned out pretty well, by my favorite part is also the one over which I had the least control: the surfer (and her brightly-colored board) just happened to be walking by. The whole scene just felt so classically “Californian.”

Curving Sky Matches Earth

2012-Jan-212016-Jul-15 adohertyhLeave a comment

The clouds finally cooperated while I was driving past a beach outside San Diego. I was chuffed at the degree to which the clouds matched the curvature of the hillside. The blue sky also makes a pretty stark contrast with the dull browns of winter-time southern California.

Crusty Ice

2012-Jan-192016-Jul-15 adohertyh1 Comment

On the same day that I took this photograph, I found this awesome, half-frozen pond in the back of the forrest preserve. Though the sun was setting and the clouds were already picking up an orange-pink color, from this angle only the bluest parts of the sky were reflected. It had been above freezing for a couple of days, and the ice had melted to the point that it comprised two or three different textures. The brightness of those colors and the variations in the pond’s surface made for a nice contrast with the dormant and dead plants surrounding it.

Scripps Sky

2012-Jan-162012-Jan-16 adohertyhLeave a comment

A recent trip to San Diego gave me a chance to wander around the gorgeous La Jolla Shores neighborhood, home of UC San Diego and the Scripps institute. The salty air on the beach really speeds the degradation of structures; when you take that in combination with the minimalist concrete structures favored by UCSD, you can get some really dystopian looks. When you combine this with the traditionally “idyllic” beach, it makes for a disturbing contrast.

Waves and Rocks Dwarf Man

2012-Jan-122016-Jul-15 adohertyh1 Comment

The coast near Pacifica, California has some gorgeous, craggily coastline. All kinds of people were out walking their dogs; if I were a little braver, I would have gone over to shoot portraits of them, as well. Still, composing everyone together into a landscape produced a pretty satisfying result. The old man on the log looks more idyllic than I could have hoped.

I was initially disappointed that it was such a misty evening, but the upside was that the contrast was lowered to the point where I could produce HDR images from a single RAW photo.

Christmas Purple

2011-Dec-312014-May-12 adohertyh1 Comment

Though the suburbs can be an ugly place, at times, there’s no time when they become more attractive than the Holiday season. I was particularly fascinated by the way the individual red, blue, green, and yellow lights in the front porch of this house blended together to dye the whole scene violet. It speaks to the spectroscopic subtleties of Christmas lights that a similar display in the adjacent house produces very different results.