matt's pictures

a bunch of (pretty) trees

Also pictures of some things that aren’t trees. This was last fall, right after my birthday, when my folks came to town. For some reason, I never blogged these photos. We drove out to Sequoia National Park one of the days, and got to see the biggest (by volume and weight) tree in the world.

This catches me up for today, and I don’t have anything deep to say.

Posted on 2018-04-26T06:38:33Z GMT

expose for the highlights

The adage for shooting slide film was always “expose for the highlights, develop for the shadows,” because slides had the same problem digital sensors had, even with many stops less dynamic range. The highlights, once gone, are super gone. Gone forever. The shadows, you could burn in while printing and get extra out of them.

I did that here in the first photo (although my edges aren’t perfect, this is a blog post not the MOMA). I exposed probably a stop and a half under what the meter was reading, and got the detail in the clouds. The rest, for the most part, was gotten in post, two separtate masks to get the trees and river right. The trees that stick into the sky are the hardest to get right, and even though I’ve tried, they’re still not quite there. There’s probably some photoshop trickery to make it work that I don’t care enough about to learn.

Sophie, sans makeup, being very tolerant of my bullshit.

Posted on 2018-04-25T21:42:06Z GMT

kawan's birthday 2018

End of February. Winter doldrums were getting kicked out for some spring energy. I ate before I went, something I don’t even remember, and then there was a lot of food and booze when I got there, always a good sign. It was a most excellent party, with dancing and champagne and every single person there was really rad. Which makes sense, since Kawan is one of the raddest dudes I know.

Lighting conditions were mixed, again, but most of these were salvageable. The middle black and white I could have balanced but I liked it better black and white. The last one there was no way I was getting that right.

I fell in love with the little hallway. Kawan’s apartment/studio is one of those Escher spaces, that don’t make sense unless you draw a floor plan out. We have a lot of those here in SF. But the hallway, with the mirror, was like a perfect photo warp zone. I could shoot there all day Practically did, the party went on for quite a while.

Posted on 2018-04-24T08:11:42Z GMT

dinner club at allies (with special guest mabel)

I think this was february? (checks date in photo metadata, without which I would only know it was “sometime in the past”) yep for sure february. the 19th. There was lasagna and a dog and stories. I may be being slightly silly.

These are black and white because they don’t work in color. mixed LED and CFL bulbs is my suspicion. I don’t go in for the whole color masking acts of god thing that some people do. As the saying goes, Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Posted on 2018-04-23T01:34:00Z GMT

to the top of mt diablo

phone blogging, sorry if these are a little weird. we woke up hungover this morning, but sophie went out for coffee and said ‘we should go for a drive.’ i instantly texted back ‘mt. diablo’. it’s been on my todo list since roughly 2015 (whenever Charlie mentioned it in his newsletter back when there were like three people doing tinyletter).

so we had some at-home breakfast burritos, watched the rest of the movie we paused, and then headed out. it’s about an hour drive, lots of twisties, lots of bikes on the road to the summit. i’m tempted to bike it myself. only a 10% grade ;)

so here’s today.

Mt Diablo