There were lots of clouds in the sky all day today, which is pretty unusual for Southern California, and I just knew a great sunset was going to come out of it. So I went down to the beach by my house and waited. And I noticed this girl doing the same thing. Contemplative, serene, peaceful.
Category: High Dynamic Range
The Road Kings
[dc]W[/dc]ith clear blue skies and perfect temperatures we lit out of Los Angeles like a couple of rogues after a bender which left a heap of twisted metal and broken hearts in our wake. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite so dramatic, but every once in awhile it’s really nice to just get out of LA in a testosterone fueled way, you know–rattle the bones and shake the cobwebs off, and this weekend my brutha from anutha country, Jakob, was in town from Copenhagen and we got on a couple of Road Kings and headed north on the coast highway, breathing in the salt air, wind on our faces, feeling every bit the Kings of the Road. Continue reading “The Road Kings”
DSLR.Bot and Venice HDR Images
[dc]I[/dc]n the on-going battle between Nikon and Canon owners as to which camera is better, one feature that I, a devoted Canon owner, have lamented is Nikon’s ability to bracket to 5 images as opposed to Canon’s 3, which becomes a real drawback when making High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. But now there is a new iPhone/iPad app that allows me to extend the number of images captured for HDR to as many as 20, and I have only begun to experiment with it. Continue reading “DSLR.Bot and Venice HDR Images”
Hong Kong apartment building
Welcoming in a New Year
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
from In Memorium
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
It seems to be becoming a ritual for me to go out just before the New Year and make a few images and this year, just like last, I found myself in Chicago doing just that.
What I was trying to capture with this image was the sense of duality on Wacker Drive. Lower Wacker Drive has always fascinated me and has shown up in several of my other images in various forms, but as I was crossing this bridge I noticed the opening that allowed me to see both lower and upper Wacker Drive, so I composed this image which shows a night scene above ground with colorful incandescent lighting and the city lights reflecting off the fast moving clouds above, and the even warmer sodium vapor light spilling out the opening below.
There is an obvious juxtaposition at that opening also, where the trees and grass are fenced off from the concrete cavern.
From Wacker Drive I drove up north to have drinks and toast the new year with some friends, and on my way home I decided to make my first image of 2011 at the Water Tower on Michigan Ave. for no other reason than I thought it somehow a fitting beginning to a year that holds a lot of hope for so many.