Civilization Gradient: Denver

My favorite feature to capture in landscape images is a gradient from sparsely populated areas to dense, urban ones. A connecting flight through Denver gave me the opportunity to add a mile-high gradient to my collection.

Civilization Gradient: Denver

This picture was processed using the Super Resolution algorithm, so it’s definitely worth clicking through to view the high-resolution version on flickr.

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Golden Gate and Bay in the Rain

I sometimes sift through the RAW files I took long in the past, searching for meaning in images I captured long ago. In the case of this particular photograph, there’s more to the image than just my favorite Bay Area gradient of differing environments (e.g. Oakland and San Francisco and Alcatraz and two different enormous bridges and so on): there’s also a feeling of place and moment. The dramatic clouds and the grasses and the hint of the Golden Gate’s span are all spectacular, but the optics of a raindrop spattered across the lens add just as much to the image. You can practically smell the petrichor in the air.

Golden Gate and Bay in the Rain

The Loneliest Hydroelectric Station

Today’s post is a particularly old photograph of mine–so old, in fact, that you’ll have to pardon the fact that it was taken before I owned a DSLR. I happened upon it the other night, and it was so lovely that I just couldn’t resist processing and posting it.

Above Bridal Veil Falls, in the box canyon cliffs surrounding Telluride, CO, is this building. At first, it looks to be a lonely house, but the truth is far more fascinating: it is the second AC hydroelectric power station in the United States. The facility was restored in the 1980’s, and still provides 1/4 of the power to the little town of Telluride in the distance.

The Loneliest Hydroelectric Station

Mt. Jefferson and the Patchwork

Timberline lodge overwhelms its visitors with both its interior (as I posted last week) and its views from near the summit of Mt. Hood. Fifty miles away is Mt. Jefferson; between the two, as we see today, are acres of forest. Within these spaces are these tiny patchwork spots, cut clean from foresting. They regrow surprisingly quickly; Oregon seems to handle the whole process pretty effectively.

Today’s photography is definitely worth clicking through to the large size; the detail in the forests is hypnotic.

Mt. Jefferson and the Patchwork