Thursday, April 28, 2011

Empty 2-top

Empty 2-top

At the Top of the Mark. A single beam of evening sun hits the chairs, like a spotlight, drawn to the abandoned seats.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Melancholy

Melancholy

is a halfpacked home, still needing condensation into mobile units, perfect for losing both your most beloved and your most hated possessions.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Friday, April 15, 2011

Jump!

Taiko-dojo SF JUMP!

Taiko-dojo SF plays their composition “Tsunami 2” at the Cherry Blossom festival.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Taiko

Taiko-dojo SF

Taiko-dojo SF plays their composition “Tsunami 2”.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Noisebridge mannequin

Noisebridge redhead

As we approach Noisebridge, we are greeted by a vision in red.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Dungeon of Learning

Library dungeon

In the Stanford University Green library, you venture into the magazines yourself to retrieve the literature needed: sometimes this takes you into deep and mysterious dungeons.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Mushroom on the chessboard

Mushroom on the chessboard

Not quite the same kind of move as the Squid on the Chessboard, but still one not entirely expected.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

[CA Roadtrip] Shooting ball

Hearst Castle billiards table

Oberwolfach has a Carom table, with the legend connecting it to mathematicians being interested in ergodic theory.

Hearst Castle doesn't care about the mathematics, and thus has both a Carom table and a Billiards table.

Monday, April 4, 2011

[CA Roadtrip] Enough with Big Sur already!

Golden Gate at sunset

Instead, have the gorgeous sunset light we caught the Golden Gate Bridge in!

Friday, April 1, 2011

[CA Roadtrip] The problem with HDR…

…is sometimes I just can get it to look just right. Here's what'd be a gorgeous use case for the technique: a sunset. Shot into the sun that just barely hides behind a cloud. In front of us, red plants on the ground. A -2.0/0.0/+2.0 exposure bracket certainly gets us everything we need in terms of pixels.

But a straight up and down HDR can't quite distinguish between the darkness of the plants, and the darkness of the darker bits of sky, so we can't quite get the balance right. Gradiented filters just look awkward. So it is in with the mask we go!

A first attempt, I mask with exposure modification while still in Photoshop with 32 bit, before I even flatten the image down from the full on HDR master:
Sunset over Big Sur HDR
but it doesn't really look good. Possibly because of me being still too clumsy with the masking brush, possibly some other reason, but it doesn't come out quite the way I had hoped.

Second attempt, just layer the +2 and the -2 exposures, and mask in the flowers from the lighter onto the sky and ocean of the darker one.
Sunset over Big Sur
If anything, I'd feel this looks worse. But then, I'm not sure. Maybe this could've been saved with better brushing in Photoshop. Maybe you all really like this and I'm just being my usual obnoxiously perfectionist self.

I honestly don't know.