Halls of Science

72 Nobel prizes, 15 Turing Awards, discovery of 16 elements on the periodic table (more than any other university in the world... Go Bears!), University of California, Berkeley and Berkeley Labs are collectively a heavy hitter when it comes to scientific discovery, research, and contribution. And then, of course, there's the California Academy of Science... natural history museum by day, club and bar for the scientifically-minded on Thursday nights with its Nightlife events. Aside from the nostalgia of revisiting old stomping grounds, I wanted to to capture the exploratory, innovative, and erudite spirit of these places in an image.

This was a tough endeavor since the lighting in both places were harsh. At Berkeley, it was early afternoon with the sun bearing down and buildings created shadow, which resulted in unwanted shadows. At the Academy of Science, there was harsh overhead lighting in the rainforest exhibit and no flash photography allowed anywhere. Not to mention people everywhere in both places... and not helpful crowds blending in the background to add to the scene, but random individuals wearing obnoxiously bright and distracting floral patterns that distracted the eye.

Not as successful as I would have liked, but I still managed to have a great time... of course, the drinks at Nightlife helped with that!!

Looking from North side back towards the Campinile... otherwise known as how engineers see campus.

The lighting of this photo is all off since the background is in bright sunlight and the foreground has the bear statues in the shadow of the building to the right. Opening the aperture or slowing shutter speed resulted in blown out sky and bears that were in shadow. I'm not sure this could have been corrected with just the camera given the natural light and short of waiting for the sun to be in the right spot at the right time. Even with a neutral density filter that would tint the sky and not the ground, the vertical lamppost and the Campanile itself would be exposed incorrectly since they both would cross the neutral density filter line. Tricky.