Some of you may enjoy these fairly high-resolution historic photos of Dallas. These photos document the various freeway projects in Big D, mostly from the 60's onward. A few of my favorites:

• 1953-present: US 75 North, Central Expressway
• 1969: Interstate 635, Stack Construction at IH-30 (above photo) and US-80 (formerly I-20)
• 1963: Interstate 30 (formerly Interstate 20), just East of Downtown Dallas

These photos are key to understanding the city in its temporal context; thank goodness somebody thought to archive them. The construction of these highways allowed for all the outward growth that Dallas experienced since the 1960's, and has changed the face and character of the city in countless ways.

Filed under architecture · culture · dallas · photography · texas

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, the lady and I made the long, three-block trek to Aathi's place to learn how to make South Indian food... there were about six of us, and we each made a little something, everything from scratch:

• Potato podimaas (spicy potatoes with curry leaves, mustard seeds and fried daal)
• Palak paneer with homemade paneer made just the previous night
• Rajma masala (kidney beans with onions, tomatoes and lots of spices
• Yellow pepper, plantain, eggplant and potato bajji (spicy fritters)
• Chappathi (puffed wheat breads)
• Vermicelli payasam (spiced vermicelli pudding for dessert)

Delicious! Who knew cooking Indian food could be so much fun?

Click here to see the photos!

UPDATE: Aathi sends a poem from the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. We were discussing politics, and decided this poem was especially profound given the state of things abroad and at home:

My Country Awake

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

—Rabindranath Tagore

Filed under berkeley · california · culture · food · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two weekends ago, we went for a quick hike in Tilden after a Sunday barbecue. Tilden Regional Park is all of 2.5 miles from our house (1.8 miles from campus). One of our "standard hikes" starts near Inspiration Point; it's less than a mile long, and brings you to several great views.

Check out my photos of the hike — first we look west towards Golden Gate Bridge and SF, and then face northwest to watch the sun set over the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais. The white horizontal line behind Golden Gate Bridge is the fog rolling in from the Pacific.

One of the nicest things about Berkeley is its proximity to these beautiful natural areas. We don't take advantage of it often enough...

Filed under berkeley · california · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Sunday, the lady and I decided not to be stuck inside on such a beautiful day. So we went to Popeye's and got some good ol' fried chicken and some butterflied shrimp and took ourselves out to the Berkeley Marina. There's this great set of hills in Cesar Chavez park in the Marina (which are the highest point for miles) where people often go to fly kites, so we brought a blanket up the hill and had a nice little fried chicken and shrimp picnic.

I took some photos of the crazy kites. You may see them by clicking here. The octopus kites really freaked me out when we first arrived. At first, the signal in my head was "IMMINENT DANGER; RETURN HOME," but upon further inspection, they were quite friendly and even somewhat happy.

In several of the photos, you can see the Great City of San Francisco in the distance past the bay. In one, you can also enjoy our view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands. I turned around and took a shot of the city of Berkeley (facing back into the hills); the University's campanile appears somewhere in the bottom right of that photo. It's the vertical white thing, and both labs I work in are quite near to it. Hope you enjoy!

Filed under berkeley · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 7:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning, I went to help my undergrad, M.S., grow up some cells in lab. He's growing yeast core histone proteins in E. coli. It was still foggy, so I took a few photos with the trusty cell phone during my walk from home to lab. I apologize for the quality, but some of them turned out fairly decent.

Here they are, in all their glory. Enjoy. Any given morning, other than the distinct lack of people walking around. Thanks, Saturday.

Filed under berkeley · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Via the HB-3 blog:

With all the hullabaloo about the American consumer’s penchant for overeating, indulgence and general predilection toward obesity, it strikes us that we’ve encountered scant few artists who ever address these issues head on, especially with regard to consumer goods.

That’s why we were all the more excited to encounter a series of provocative images from artist Daniela Edburg’s current show Drop Dead Gorgeous at the Kunsthaus in Miami. Daniela explores the ramifications of food binging and indulgence, albeit with a (markedly) dark sensibility.

Check it out. Be sure to click through the entire sequence... So creepy.

Filed under art · culture · food · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally uploaded some photos from our Winter Break last month. We went to Los Angeles and did some high-density sightseeing... while we were there, we also saw Santino from Project Runway at the MOCA.

Check out some of our LA photos if you have a chance. Thanks to Nick for suggesting the image viewer...

Filed under california · los angeles · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's been, like, a while since I read the hb-3 blog, but boy am I glad I checked it out. When they're not writing about langostino lobster, these folks really have it together. Go read these recent posts right now!

• The devolution of grocery retailing
• The 9-11 photograph you didn't see
• McDonald's Appears Afraid of the Sandbox

It's refreshing to see these points of view from a company-funded blog.

Filed under culture · food · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just came across local photographer Valerie Cochran's photoblog called yourwaitress.com. Check it out; the photos are mostly of Berkeley, S.F., and the Bay Area.

Absolutely gorgeous B&W photographs.

Filed under berkeley · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why have I not heard about this before now?

Photoshop CS2 apparently has a new feature, called "Merge to HDR." A brief summary is provided here. Excerpt:

Producing an HDR image requires taking enough separate exposures so that you place all of the brightness levels that you want in your final image into a range that your camera's sensor can record properly. Ideally this means putting the darkest values no lower than somewhere in the mid-range of the sensor's sensitivity range. [...]

According to Adobe's instructions you want to take enough exposures to cover the complete dynamic range – not less than three, and as many as five to seven, or even more.

These shots should be taken at between one and two stops apart. They should also be done by varying the exposure time, not the aperture, because changing aperture also changes depth of field.

The results are absolutely breathtaking in their contrast and texures. I recommend checking out these examples on Flickr, right now.

There are a few photos there where the photographer varied the f/stop instead of the exposure time; when you see them, the disorienting feeling is almost sickening (or at least it is to me!). This was a whole new "thing" in photography that was only recently brought to my attention.

If anybody ever plays around with this in their spare time, I'd love to see the results — send 'em this way!

[via latemodel]

Filed under photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Found negatives. Many of these photos were exposed in the 1930's and developed only recently:

"The pages below show prints I made from processing film I found in old cameras. In many cases the exposed films were over fifty years old. You are seeing them for the first time as they were lost by the photographers that took these images."

These photographs are like the proverbial time capsule, but without all the pretense of packaged nostalgia.

Filed under culture · photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 11:57 PM | Permalink

Colo(u)r photos. Despite (or maybe because of) all my recent posts about photography, I decided today to show one last glimpse of the sort of detail the medium format lenses offer.

By clicking here, you will see the very first color photograph I printed (it's my baby). I like it. It was made looking out into our back "yard" when a small shower just started. Our landlord is in the construction biznatch, so I smuggled a bright orange cone onto the patio to really bust up the monotonous ruddy colors.

Anyhow, the point I'm trying to make is that the film is INCREDIBLY detailed. The scan that you're seeing does no justice to the 8x8 print that I'm looking at now. Despite that, if you look at this detail, you will still see every tiny reflective dot (as well as every drop of water) on the cone.

Yowza!

Filed under photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 7:51 PM | Permalink

Fig 2. New Camera. After the monthlong introduction to medium format via the Holga, I broke down and bought a proper medium format camera. Since the modern MF cameras are decidedly out of my range (cf. Fuji GX680 III at $2500+), I opted to take the path of least financial resistance: eBay!

I found online a Mamiya C330F for a not-too-unreasonable sum, and have since shot two rolls of 2-1/4" film with it. I must say, the results are stunning. I am now able to choose any f-stop I desire (lighting conditions permitting), plus I have control over shutter speeds. This twin-lens reflex camera shares with modern SLRs the option to change the lens mid-roll. In my possession now is the standard 80mm lens, as well as the wide-angle 55mm lens (equivalent respectively to 53mm and 36mm lenses for 35mm film).

Have I mentioned that you can get crisp focus when you use a lens that's not made of plastic?

After spending some time with this camera (and with our old equipment in lab), I've found that I am experiencing a most profound post-war nostalgia. Everything back then was solid state; mechanical. It was all indestructible. Manual focus, manual film-advance-mechanically-coupled-to-shutter-cocking, manual depth-of-field calculations. Every bit of it required thinking, and because it's done by me rather than an etched silicon chip, it's under my control.

This means it's my fault if things don't go right, not the camera's. Need I contrast that with today's cameras?

Filed under photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 12:35 AM | Permalink

More Holgafotos. Last night I developed more photos from the Holga. I'm starting to get a handle on how this thing works, but it's still really spotty.

This little plastic bundle of joy produces decidedly uneven negatives, and you really have to jack up the contrast when you scan or print them just to see the results. Which is another reason the photos always seem so punchy.

Enough blathering. See for yourself!

• Negatives - 1 and 2
• My favorite from this bunch: I call it "the meter"

Filed under photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 3:24 PM | Permalink

First Holga Photos. Last night I developed black & white photos for the first time. These were taken on the Holga camera. The Holga is a plastic, medium format camera; its 120mm negatives are roughly four times the size of the familiar 35mm film. As you'll see, the medium format film imparts a very dramatic depth to the photos.

I developed both of these negatives last night in my darkroom photography class. Most of these images are from the U.C. Berkeley campus. I've inverted the negatives and adjusted contrast for the sake of clarity.

The lens on this camera is plastic (hey, the camera is $15!), so the edges of your subject always turn out fuzzy. This results in photos that have a ghastly, dreamlike quality. These cameras have no shutter speed adjustment, and there are only two f-stops: f/8 and f/11. Needless to say, the results are extremely unpredictable! Oh, and they leak light and have horrible lens flare too, so they're not what you'd call "professional quality" cameras.

There are two choices for negative sizes, 6 cm x 4.5 cm, and 6 cm x 6 cm. These were all shot on the first setting. Next time, I'll shoot in the square format. Let me know what you think (but only if you like them)!

Filed under photography

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 1:56 PM | Permalink