Expecting the Unexpected
As a photographer, I am often reminded to expect the unexpected. The expected can produce workaday good pictures but it is the unexpected that produces great photos. Since fortune favors…
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May 29, 2012
Advance Copy: Creating HDR Photos
Yesterday we received an advance copy of my new book Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography published by Amphoto. In keeping with family traditions, this morning I…
May 5, 2012
Clematis
Like my Star Magnolia Panorama, I shot these Clematis flowers using a lightbox as the background. The image was shot in three pieces, each piece an HDR blend of six…
April 27, 2012
San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute Staircase
Nestling among the stone behemoths that line the canyons of San Francisco's financial district is a comparatively modest neoclassical building. This is the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute, housing a library,…
April 22, 2012
Star Magnolia Panorama
To create this image of a Star Magnolia, I brought some branches into my studio and arranged them on my lightbox. I shot the images in three panels using HDR…
April 20, 2012
Denial
Against a darkling winter sky I stand adamant, seed pods crackling in the wind. Stubborn and mute with life hardly visible I know that my seeds will drop on the stony ground…
March 28, 2012
Cable Car Power
The highlight of the San Francisco Cable Car Museum is the wheels that power the cable cars. These have a somewhat Victorian steam punk look, despite the fact that they…
March 23, 2012
Cable Car Wheels
Wandering downtown San Francisco with two photographic companions we decided to visit the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This turned out to be a great location for monochromatic HDR photography.…
March 11, 2012
Workbenches
We've been making large prints with our new Epson 9900 printer. So far we are just getting to know what it can do, and are experimenting with unusual paper surfaces…
February 15, 2012
Floral Arrangements
I've had a little time lately to shoot more flowers on white. These two floral arrangements feature orchids---buying them for photography seemed a little expensive at the time, but in…
February 5, 2012
Spruce Street House
The parents of one of Katie Rose's buddies at pre-school are architects who just bought a classical Berkeley shingle house from the early 1900s. In recent years this grand house…
January 30, 2012
Floral Tapestries
To create these images, I arranged flowers on a lightbox that was proportionally much wider than it was tall. Next, I shot straight down with a macro lens, bracketing for…
January 8, 2012
Workbench
Over the winter holidays I took our boys on a "field trip" to Fort Ross State Historic Park. Fort Ross marks the furthest point south of the expansion of the…
January 6, 2012
Berkeley Pier in HDR
This is an HDR image of the Berkeley Pier, the site of the Free Walk-and-Talk with Harold Davis on Saturday, December 17 at 4:00PM. Please consider joining us. Berkeley Pier…
December 8, 2011
Wheels within Wheels
This wheel of the thresher shown in Separating the Wheat from the Chaff called out to me because of the tonal contrast between its inner workings and outer structure. I…
November 17, 2011
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
This is an image of a thresher, a machine used in farming. A threshing machine separates grains from stalks and husks, or---as the saying goes---separates the wheat from the chaff.…
November 15, 2011
Alabama Hills Sunset
This is a sequence of four capures made looking east from the Alabama Hills towards the Panamint Range and Death Valley, combined into a single HDR shot. Exposure data: 17mm,…
November 12, 2011
Rocks, Weston Beach
Looking straight down at the rock formation at Edward Weston Beach in the Point Lobos State Reserve, near Carmel, CA, I was struck how the rock formation looked like a…
October 29, 2011