Living in the North Country means a very northern feature to the seasons: wild swings in the amount of daylight. Even a month before the solstice, the sun has nearly vanished by 4:00 PM.
Tag: photography
“Monument” for V. Tatlin
Part of a series of works by Dan Flavin, featured in the National Gallery Salm Palace in Prague.
Ganglion
Passing this tree on the way home from work each evening, I can’t help but be reminded of the intersections among nerve cells called ganglia.
Photographing Prague Castle
It turned out that, after a week of bland gray skies, I wasn’t the only person attracted to Prague Castle on a beautiful afternoon.
A Cold, Clear Night in Canton
This post represents a big moment for me: the first image from my new Sony α7R IV. This is only the third serious digital camera; my first was a Nikon D3100, and I’ve been shooting primarily with a D7000 for the past eight years. The capabilities from a decade of technological advancement and the engineering switch to a mirrorless design have pretty-well blown my mind. I really recommend clicking through to Flicker to look at this image at full scale—the tiny pinpricks of each star, the details in the windows of every building. The 61-MP capabilities of the α7R IV maybe be considered overkill by some, but I’m finding it to be the perfect tool for the kinds of “zoom in forever”-detailed photographs that I love to produce.
Alchemist’s Quarters
Okay, so it’s not a real alchemist’s quarters. Nonetheless, I was chuffed to find antique chemical apparatus when visiting the medieval quarters of Prague Castle.
Castle Yard and Modern Prague
I’ve long looked to capture gradients from nature to civilization in my images, but I think this one captures a gradient, instead, through time. The foreground, among the Royal Gardens of Prague Castle, seems so ancient in contrast with Old Town in the middle-distance and the twentieth-century additions to the city on the horizon.
Lake Michigan Coast
Where Illinois meets Lake Michigan, a sunny winter afternoon makes a natural instance of the “classic” orange and teal look.
Greenhouse
This greenhouse was adjacent to the Royal Gardens in Prague Castle. Though I assume that its mission is to nurture and prepare specimens to join the garden, the exotic incongruity of a geodesic cylinder amid centuries-old castle grounds makes it a far more exciting find than I expected.
Lightness of Being Above Prague
Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place in these environs of Prague, and something of the dramatic clouds and deep black of this image reminded me of that novel.
Rainy Day at Multnomah Falls
Evoking superhuman scale in photographs really requires a human scale bar, and the tiny people on the bridge were obliging enough to wear rain jackets in red, yellow, and turquoise that stand out from the natural hues.
Napa Stone
In the weirder hills of the Bay Area, back yard detritus falls alongside stones pulled into position by ancient glaciers.
Charles Bridge
Prague’s Charles Bridge is centuries-old, covered in statues, and seemly perpetually mobbed. We visited during the off-season (November) and never saw the bridge without plenty of company. Perhaps the best part of the visit, though, was staying adjacent to the bridge in the Smetana Hotel, looking out over the Vltava (and crossing the bridge on many of our adventures around the city.)
From up close, the hotel is easier to find, but small triangle park across the street from the hotel is still not visible from this angle, making the the geometry of the ground floor and the street outside escheresque.
Sodium Emission vs. Rayleigh Scattering
We’re not far from the ninth anniversary of the founding of Decaseconds, and I came upon this arresting image of Berkeley Marina, the Marin Headlands, and the Golden Gate Bridge (never before published here) while searching for just the right anniversary shot. I’m fascinated by the way the orange emission of sodium vapor lamps lighting Berkeley (I’m sure now all swapped for white LEDs) matches the Rayleigh-scattered oranges of the winter sunset. The same wavelengths of light, coming from completely different mechanisms.
Finally Daylight in Prague
After a week of overcast November days, the emergence of Rayleigh-scattered blue in the skies above Prague meant I hurried to the top of St. Vitus Cathedral to get the pictures of Old Town of which I’d been dreaming.
Decaseconds 