HDR Photography
Toaster glow sunlight was the result of through marine-layer haze coating San Diego every evening. I couldn’t help but notice the three abnormally large ships in this image: In the distance, two Navy aircraft carriers are the essence of industrial, practical form. Moored in the foreground is a truly massive sailing yacht that is 100% style. Look at how it dwarfs even the ostentatious motorboats beside it. Quite the contrast.
Ice and snow and real winter have locked down the countryside, but I still have the photographic evidence of our ultra-mild, el-Niño-powered January.
Away from the village centers, the North Country is frozen at an odd point in development. The original farms of early settlers haven’t been completely removed, but not much development has continued past that point. Trailers were installed by the sides of hot-mix roads and everything stopped there. I’m fascinated to think what this area must have been like during the late 1940s—population returning as the nation demobilized, and those people changing things in the North Country. Things don’t seem to change as much now.
Livestock of the North Country are, well, lively, even in winter. The shaggy coat and the bright sky must help. On a night with a sunset like this one, I share the llama’s need to go out and investigate.
At the far end of Johnson Hall, a tower of windows overlook the very pleasing shape of the circle in the setting sun. Leaning back in the chair, feet up, a glass of hot chocolate in hand: what better way to watch the day end?
Kubota Garden is such a wonderful place in the summer. Wishing I were there right about now.
Let’s usher out 2015 with this image of Buckeye Lake, may it finally be full in 2016.
Continuing my exploration of the capabilities of Aurora HDR from Wednesday, I processed this image from high above central Pennsylvania after sunset using that software and the Noiseless CK package to unbelievable results—that is, I literally could not have achieved this image with an acceptable level of noise using my earlier workflow. Though it’s still not perfect, I can’t stop examining the path of that river, lit by the last few photons of the day.
The golden flares of sunset in San Francisco amp up the unreal qualities of the place. That wacky Lombard Street is only the third or fourth most interesting thing about the picture speaks to the profound weirdness. I hope the homogenizing influence of extreme wealth doesn’t change it too much.
The gradient from dense, urban (and suburban) areas to rural and natural settings is one of my favorite photographic subjects—and the subject of most of my favorite photographs. In this particular aerial shot from the in-between area over Pennsylvania, the sun has mostly set, leaving shadows and a few orange reflections in the overly ordered geometry of subdivisions. Down the winding highway, beyond the hills, in the less-dense and more agrarian land, the sun still casts a warm glow.
When the Grand Prix is over and the crowds are heading for the exits, the good horses go back to the barns to sleep.
This photograph of the newly restored steeple of St. Lawrence’s Gunnison Chapel captures the Lazarus effect of seeing it return. I swung the camera to the setting sun, and I really like the way it cast a range of hues and structures over the image.
There’s fundamental power in the laminated wood structure of this through-arch bridge (which I’ve photographed before), and I love the way it’s enhanced by the imposing pickup truck and the dramatic sky.
You may not be able to get your boat out on the lake right now, but the upside is that you have a plot with a view west over the lake that’s not all bad.
Sunset after an aggressive summer thunderstorm is a strange place of pinks and blues.
Decaseconds 