HDR Photography
The bus is inherently uncomfortable: the seats are too hard, the surfaces feel like too many other people have touched them, and the other passengers come with a side of freaky west coast aggression. All of that misery is forgotten late at night; an empty bus ferrying me home is such a calm respite from the sodium-lamp misery of the outside world.
This week, a massive snow and ice storm smashed the Northeast. As night fell, so did the snow. Across the street, with the wind blasting the fresh snow into weird drifts, this home looked particularly inviting.
Christmas time is here again, and Decaseconds is over a year old now. Looking back on the Christmas tree from a year ago, this year’s is off to a good start. The Charlie Brown Christmas Special Soundtrack was playing, the lights were turned down low, and we had just gotten the first strings of lights on the tree when I snapped this shot.
UC Berkeley’s Doe Library is impressive enough during the day, but when it’s lit up at night (from inside and outside), it’s truly imposing. On this particular evening, the ruby hue of its exterior really caught my eye.
San Francisco features this incredibly rapid transition from enormous, modernist towers to older, mostly wooden structures. This transition seems to be located, at least partially, along the divides between the flat portions of the city and the truly, insanely steep bits. Today’s photograph shows the full gradient between the two zones. I particularly like the two tiny figures, sitting on the steps, in the bottom right corner of the image. This tiny detail provides a little bit of a human element to an otherwise dehumanizing scale. They seem to be silent observers, casually taking in the flow of traffic as the sun’s last photons scatter through the atmosphere.
UBC’s Green College (shown here from another angle) is almost 100 years old, but when you’re inside it, the passage of time seems to stop. The heavy, wooden columns and beams seem to have been there forever. The trees are enormous, and enigmatic towers and cottages dot the interior, like the buildings of some alternate-reality castle.
On a recent outing to San Francisco I captured this shot of the these trees in the financial district. The red color and the way the lights were strung around the trees in a swirling pattern lead to a sense of motion, as if the trees have been set on fire. Its a very interesting effect which contrasted with the cooler colors of a nearby set of trees similarly illuminated but bathed in blue, not red.
The beach at Costão do Santinho is as bright as day, 24/7. In the winter, it was eerily empty (save for a few roaming packs of wild dogs, later on…) I’d like to imagine that the warmer weather brings all-night volleyball tournaments.
Either way, the mist-capped waves, black rocks, and bright bits of algae make the lonely beach even more alien.
Costao do Satinho fills almost an entire end of Florianopolis’s island, and the hotel pictured here represents just a small bit of it. There are villas and beaches sprawling out over acres. Still, this part (at night) was one of my favorites, with its 1960’s style and very jet-set-minded architecture. This is a place that caters to a group from the past.
Today’s photograph comes from the lobby of the newly opened Energy Biosciences Building, where I was lucky enough to get a late-night tour. Here, scientists and students focus on the problem of developing next-generation energy solutions, including biofuels and solar power. Though it will soon be bustling with life, the building is presently occupied by empty offices and cubicle skeletons. The modern surfaces, all wood and glass and brushed steel and matte concrete, really convey the mission.
This photograph comes from within the walls of Green College at the University of British Columbia. I really recommend clicking through to read all about its somewhat bizarre history. The dormitory is a place where academics of all ages come together to exchange ideas and cook extremely garlicky food. The combination of alpine architecture and enormous trees makes it feel like a cross between Hogwarts and Rivendell. I was feeling these mystical vibes in the middle of the night, as the Moon peaked through the trees and I took this picture.
I’ve shown before how beautiful the Fourth of July can be in the Bay Area; the overlapping sensory inputs of multiple fireworks shows is stunning. This year, the Berkeley Marina’s display was particularly lovely.
I spent several nights this week at Oregon’s Timberline Lodge, located very literally at the timber line of Mt. Hood. Just outside the room is nearly year-round skiing on the Palmer glacier (and the exterior used in The Shining), but the interior is constructed of enormous wood beams, nearly 100 years old (the lodge was built in 1936). The center of the hotel is this multi-story common room, featuring multiple levels of tiny reading areas, enormous fire places, and friendly bars.
During my time as a student at Berkeley, I’ve had a chance to watch Blum hall begin as a foundation and grow to this glowing glass-and-wood holocron you see here. It’s a beautiful building, and its modern architecture fits surprisingly well with the older buildings around it. Still, I have to wonder: given how small its footprint is, I have to wonder what the cost-per-square-foot of the space inside was?
Enormous. But oh-so worth it for the slightly sinister luminescence on winter nights. (I particularly like the manner in which the street lamps ring the building like matadors trying to keep its stampeding bulk contained.)
San Diego’s Civic Center, as I’ve shown previously, is a pretty surreal place. There’s certainly a feeling that you’re supposed to be in the nexus of the city’s of law and justice, but literally just around the corner, the buildings are plastered with signs for race tracks and the curbs and lined with homeless folks. I liked the way this image showed the broad sidewalks mostly abandoned, with only traces of waking life here and there.
Decaseconds 