HDR Photography
The year 2020 is here! “Cautious optimism” remains my default lens for the future, but a look back over the photography of the past decade (like this shot from the Molecular Foundry overlooking San Francisco during my sabbatical), I’m feeling a bit excited. The first major upgrade in my shooting platform is planned for 2020 (the Nikon D7000 is getting a well-deserved retirement) and I can’t imagine the improvement I’ll see when I jump an entire decade forwards in camera technology.
As frozen rain bounces off the roadways of northern New York, I’m reminded that our town works truly do battle with the elements each winter. Floating high over their facilities when spring finally arrives, I feel like I’m looking over the encampment of a victorious army.
My favorite view of the Bay Area (and the view that first let me define the idea of the civilization gradient as an element of my photography) is layered up with loads of detail. Down in Berkeley Lab is the building where I worked on sabbatical, and across the Bay Bridge is the completed Salesforce Tower hiding in the marine layer. The differences, particularly from the last time I showed a very similar shot from the spring, are in nature: the high-altitude clouds have been replaced with empty skies and that rolling marine layer, while the green hills have shifted to a dry, highly flammable tan.
I sometimes reprocess older pictures when I find some new approach or something special in an image that wasn’t there before. This picture is a bit different—though I captured it at this time seven years ago, I found that I felt no urge to reprocess any part of it. I was happy with it then—though apparently not enough to post it until now—and I’m impressed with it today.
Days are shortening and skies are hardening and winter is coming.
Nights may have turned cold and the first leaves have lost chlorophyll to turn gold, but fields are still filled with crops today—the Autumnal Equinox.
As busy as the cities of the Bay Area become, there are the spaces in the fire trails (like the one in the foreground) to get some quiet and distance. There’s an odd orthogonality of the senses in being able to see all of the commotion below with none of the accompanying sound.
Returning to Trinity College’s campus for reunion this summer, I felt a little like I was sneaking around in a place I didn’t quite belong. The moon, hiding just behind the chapel’s steeple, seemed to share my bashfulness.
St. Lawrence University’s campus has an “everything the sun touches is your kingdom” vibe—the school extends over almost an entire quadrant of town. Just under the setting sun is the most-frequented version of campus, but it continues to extend over the woods to this oxbow.
Two of my past St. Lawrence University students are working on their Ph.D.s at Berkeley and I discovered yesterday that one was giving her Graduate Research Conference (Berkeley’s version of a thesis defense, but earlier) while the other was in the audience. I’m very proud of both of them.
Understandably, this had me thinking about my experiences at Berkeley. In this picture from Grizzly Peak, the perspective folds together Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley. In the foreground, look at those gnarled trees—they’re weird but they’ve grown tall. I’ll take that visual metaphor for the grad school experience. I took this picture on Christmas Day in 2016, so I guess that makes these Christmas trees, too.
Haying a field in midsummer leaves behind an image with a certain impressionist style, reminiscent of Monet’s haystacks.
November afternoons end quickly—close to the winter solstice, the sun disappears while the day is still “young”. Notre Dame’s pre-fire spire looks so calm next to the pastel clouds.
The collegiate gothic architecture of Trinity College developed over decades, but the crenellations atop the Chapel and Downes Hall tie the structures together.
The expanses of wood in the modern architecture of Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Building contrasts with the timber-framed buildings of old Berkeley across the street. As campus expands and the needs of modern Berkeley grow, I expect most of those older buildings in the space between Shattuck and Oxford will eventually vanish.
Though UC Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Building still stands, this particular view of the sunset lighting its wooden overhang is no longer available; the construction of Berkeley Way West in what was once the building’s parking lot has closed off that section of sky.
Decaseconds 