HDR Photography
Winter crisps and desaturates the landscape, and draws the eye from the Northeast to places more southern, where I wonder if, “the grass is greener on the other side.” That might sometimes be an illusion, but then there are cases like this one: the grass is literally greener on the other side.
I’ll sneak in one more unscheduled weekend post with this photograph from St. Lawrence University’s Avenue of the Elms. Some fall afternoons are so perfect that they must be shared.
The water practically glows with reflected light. The buildings tower over the scene. The long exposure captures the trails of aircraft in the night sky. San Francisco’s waterfront along the Embarcadero may not have the most enormous and prestigious structures, but nights like this make that irrelevant. The scene makes “enigmatic” and “cyberpunky” into something almost friendly. (Or at least inviting.)
High atop it all is that fascinating golden penthouse structure. The visual similarity to a treasure chest must be more than coincidence.
One of things I remember most about growing up where I did was the view of the moon’s light reflecting off of Puget Sound. On particularly calm and clear nights the moon’s reflection will be particularly clear, almost like there are two moons. It was a little cloudy on this particular night but it was still a spectacular sight; it almost looks like a painting.
I find 1:1 aspect ratio photographs to be some of the coolest, but taking them still challenges me. This particular image was taken in Palm Desert at HITS Thermal, and as you might expect, that means that this is the side of a horse trailer. The way the chrome distorts the other trailers and the bright sunlight makes curves on the ground made it worth trying 1:1 here.
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.
Decaseconds 