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.
Tag: nik
The Rock
Alcatraz remains an icon of twentieth-century America. With a 500 mm lens and a view from Berkeley Lab, I was able to arrange the island with Golden Gate Bridge behind it (but not overlapping).
This is also part of my ongoing experiments, of late, trying postprocessing techniques that produce dramatic (if a bit less photorealistic) results.
Fishing at Picchetti Ranch
Hiking in the hills of Picchetti Ranch in Cupertino, views over Stevens Creek Reservoir and the Bay beyond present a classic Californian landscape. Like a postcard from the mid-twentieth century, the little shape of a kayaking fisherman in the foreground (or the people fishing at the shoreline in the background) shows an ideal Saturday afternoon.
American Balmoral
The American West appears in the hills beyond Malibu, California: Small communities connected by winding roads in the shadow of Castro Crest. Visiting Balmoral Farm nearby, I compared (in my mind) with Scotland’s Balmoral Castle and was struck by the degree to which America (mostly) has titanic landscapes in place of castles. What is the attraction to tall formations of stone, and does that change when they’re human-made?
(Side note: I like that this looks like a picture from the past, but I love even more than the effect is ruined by a house with solar panels on its roof. Can you find it? Click through to the Flickr page for the 57 MP original panorama.)
Industrial Harbor
The orange hue and misty hills remind me of the poster for Apocalypse Now, but this is just the northern end of San Francisco Bay. In this age of upward-climbing property values and Silicon Valley rags-to-riches stories, I’m continually amazed that there’s room for industry. If these facilities had to be started today, I can’t imagine that they’d wind up in the same position.
Squad
“Teenage” is a category that remains linked to California, and there are few places where the California/teenager overlap occurs more than in an older-model car jammed full of your best friends on a sunny Saturday afternoon in downtown Berkeley. There are plans to be made! We have to pick up that guy from the BART! What about hitting Grizzly Peak? Time to drive!
V(-W)
Volkswagen (this specific microbus, as well as the overall company) has suffered from some mismanagement. The chrome is scratched, the paint is oxidized, and there’s moss growing in the corners. I’m not sure, come to think of it, that this bus was still running. Perhaps it was another perpetual Berkeley lawn sculpture.
Datsun Face
I’m on a roll with Datsuns lately. The crash protection and the reliability of a modern car may not be there, but what a face! Particularly when sitting on wider-than-stock tires and hiding out on some side street in Berkeley, this car has the potential for fun.
Edge of Central Park Near Mt. Sinai
Central Park is a classic—a place of almost incalculable value to literally millions of people. In that sense, it’s really surreal to find that there’s ever an empty place in it. Sunset on a windy, freezing night night is evidently the time.
Ghostly Neuron Lamp
Nothing like Nik’s Analog pseudo-vintage photoprocessing to produce the maximally creepy image. This particular lamp at St. Lawrence, ensconced in the boughs of a maple tree, creates the best patters at night. The tendrils extending from a central bulb remind me of the structure of a neuron.
Nebraska Cows
Road tripping across America an experience both dramatic and (in the age of Interstate highways) mundane. When I made this trip three years ago, I documented it in a photoessay. Traveling the reverse direction, from the sprawl of the East Coast to the wide-open West, has been a more dramatic experience. The downside? Making the trip at the Winter Solstice has meant much less time each day for capturing the experience.
Girl on the Lake
Portraits in the style of intense indie rock album art have always been a favorite of mine. Evergreen branches and melting snow start the package, but it’s the tiny details in the far-off Mohonk Mountain House that really complete the mysterious setting.
Contemplating Age
Decaseconds turns five years old just about this week, and today I’m turning 30. “Now” is a good time to think about age and the passage of time, I suppose, but I’d rather focus on something else: achievement. We’ve gotten a lot done in the past years—and there’s a lot more to come. Looking back on my early photographs on places like Berkeley’s Campanile, I can see all of the steps that led me to now. On to the next year!
Saturday Afternoon on the Pier
Spending an afternoon on the pier in Pacifica, CA is as good a time as any. Crab fishing has its varied sets of tools and techniques, but the experience to me has been about more than that. Cooking on a portable hibachi and getting crusty with salt spray is the real core of the process.
Decaseconds 
