It rained last night.

Come on, baby, don’t make him ask you twice.

Filed under … landscape?

High Dynamic Range imaging. You know, funky clouds.

Chris Wage recently got me interested in HDR with his incredible photos of Nashville buildings backed by massive expanses of sky filled with — yes indeed, funky clouds.

In fact, by looking at his photos, one might think that Nashville was one massive landscape filled with red-and-purple tinged cumulus monstrosities. But no, it is actually a massive landscape filled with faux cowboys, shopping malls and roadside titty bars. Alas, Chris’s Nashville is nothing more than a trick by a clever photographer armed with esoteric computer software!

I decided to get in on this racket. I was just interrogating Chris on his methods when I noticed that outside of my own home there was something akin to noontime darkness. Now, we definitely don’t have clouds in Barcelona. Maybe one. I think I’ve seen it around once or twice.

So imagine my surprise to find that the sky was in fact full of sweet grayness, perfect for taking my first real HDR photos!

Now, these clouds had a gruel-like consistency which were nothing like the textured and fluffy ones Chris has enshrined. But I had faith in the cabala algorithms of the computer software to make everything funky with the push of a button or two, and I continued on with my mission.

I walked down the block to the Sagrada Familia cathedral and pushed all the blond people speaking in tongues out of the way so I could get the 3 exposure-bracketed photos necessary to make my HDR masterpiece. I set up my tripod, crouched on the ground, and soon filled up a 1GB CF card with spires and wimpy clouds.

Incidentally, there is a little known side effect to clouds in the sky, a phenomenon called “rain” which apparently can sometimes interrupt extended HDR sessions. This was the case today, and as I had neglected to bring the camera bag, I walked back to the house with the camera under my shirt.

The scene continued as follows:

“All right, Photoshop, I’ll make a sandwich while you’re fixing up all my photos real purty! What, Photoshop, what is all this blurriness around the edges? This is not HDR as I’ve seen it!”

Photoshop did not deign to reply.

I didn’t blame Photoshop for the poor results of my half-hour of work. I blamed all the people who had a part in inventing HDR. It was obviously a flawed concept from the get-go, and it’s just like those spineless lackeys to keep yessirring bad ideas just to get their names up on the big board.

Anyways, so this isn’t an HDR photo. It’s just one of the photos I chose from the umpteen gazillion that my camera took in the space of about five minutes, retouched a bit in Photoshop.

Girona in autumn, taken from atop the surrounding wall.

One of my more abstract images.

A few years back I was in the habit of taking three- or four-hour walks from my apartment in Gràcia to Vila Olímpica and then down the length of the beach well past Badalona until I almost felt too tired to walk back. A lot of times I did this at night, starting around 11 p.m. or so. I was out of work, writing a screenplay for the best detective film ever, getting up at three in the afternoon and doping myself with black tea.

This shot appears to have been taken in the early evening, somewhere between Badalona and Masnou on a strip of beach where everyone dumps their banged-up old fishing boats.