The Wilderness of Silicon Valley: A Senior Black + White High Dynamic Range Diptych by Kai Jarmon (2016)

The two side of my diptych display two different messages about the outdoors. The image on the left describes finding adventure in nature where people do not usually go. Whereas the image on the right displays the skyline of the Bay Area showing houses contrasted by nature. I chose both images because I felt it was a unique opportunity to talk about the focus on electronics in Silicon Valley. I wanted show that even though our community is largely based on technology because of where we live, we still live in a beautiful area that should be explored. The two images speak to each other because on one side you see the perspective of a person exploring the woods in their vehicle. Whereas the other image shows Silicon Valley and the mixture of wilderness.

To create the composition I used a tripod to hold the camera still while I took multiple shots with different exposures which I combined later as an HDR photo. Once I finished shooting all the images I combined them in Adobe Photoshop. Then I added a black and white filter to the image to give stronger effect. Some issues I encountered while creating this composition were holding the tripod still and finding the perfect shots. While taking the photos, it was extremely hard to hold the tripod still which made the HDR photos hard to combine. The shot I was looking for was also very hard to find as I had a very specific idea in my head of what I wanted to shoot, however it was very hard to actually find the shot in real life. Despite these challenges I was still able to create a composition to display the message I was looking for.