When you’ve got as many pictures as I’ve taken for as many years as I’ve been taking them, that’s quite the little rabbit hole to dive down into.
Might be best to tie a rope around my waist so I can be hauled back out if I get lost.
Category Archives: Photography
Cracking Open The Sky
“Clear and a million!” So much blue, and not even the hint of a cloud anywhere. Rayleigh scattering as far as the eye can see.
Except for…
Southwest Airlines Flight #150, San Francisco to San Diego, at 39,000 feet.
Filed under Photography
Bling
One of the standard assumptions about Los Angeles (from folks who have never actually been here) is based on reality. That is, “There is NO SUCH THING as ‘too much’ garish, gaudy, or over the top stunt to attract attention. There is NO SUCH THING as ‘too much bling.”
Yes, this appears to be a Tesla Model S that’s got a wrap or paint job making it a gigantic rainbow iridescent thing, looking like some sort of wrapped birthday present for a bar mitzvah or three-year-old’s birthday party.
This thing was parked next to a major street (Topanga Boulevard) instead of up by the stores (the better to be seen by everyone!) and it’s a blurry, full digital zoom picture because it was a block away and I’m blase enough to not bother to drive up that direction just to get a better picture. I’ve been in LA a long, long time now.
Anything for attention in LA! Which turns out to be a self-fulfilling requirement, since Angelenos have seen just about everything and we’re hard to impress.
Good luck, Rainbow Dude(ette?)!
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
Looking For Inspiration
One of those days where I feel like I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet. Down. A bit depressed. Thinking I should go out and buy a pinata cause I really need to beat the shit out of something and then eat chocolate until I puke…
The “inspirational” and “motivational” corner of my office magnetic white board wasn’t quite doing it.
Thank goodness for those last two functional brain cells who forced me out into the garage to spend a couple hours starting to clean up the horrendous mess that’s still out there from the Great Pi Day Water Heater Explosion & Flood of 2025. Some tunes, some cleaning, some order out of chaos, some mindless, physical exertion, ending in at least a small spot of a clean floor and things in stacks and no longer all over the floor.
It may not have been the first row, but at least I moved up from the third row to the second for the time being.
Filed under Paul, Photography
Random Old Photos – March 20th
It’s almost that time!
Ten years ago in mid-April we were in Raleigh-Durham and discovered the true meaning of *POLLEN*!!
That yellow shit was everywhere. There were times when the wind was whipping it into drifts and I thought we would need a show shovel.
Surprisingly I don’t remember having any allergy problems despite being hip deep in tree DNA.
Filed under Photography, Travel
Sixty-Nine
On the way home from the gym & an intense training session tonight, stopping at the store accompanied by a great sunset, grinning through the pain, another year older.
It’s not pretty, but nothing’s killed me yet. Let’s hope I can still say that in another 365 days.
Happy Birthday to me!
Filed under Paul, Photography, Sunsets
Stained Glass – March 18th
Because some days you just need to look at something colorful and pretty at the end of the day so you can breathe and decompress.
Prague Cathedral.
Filed under Art, Photography
Orion With A Tripod Assist
It was clear but windy tonight, Orion and its surroundings were bright, and out in the back yard I had the tripod I have with the mount for my cell phone. Normally it’s in the front yard (for rocket launches or ISS passes) or the garage, but with the flooding and nonsense going on in the garage, it ended up in the back yard, right there for me to use.
Wide angle.
Normal.
3x zoom.
Nothing fancy, just point it in that direction (-ish) and use the three basic settings for photos on the iPhone 13.
These photos picked up a fair amount of nebulosity in the Orion Nebula (the middle “star” in the “sword”), and the wider angle shots also pick up Mars, Castor & Pollux in Gemini, and the Pleiades on the lower right.
The background sky is still way too blue, reflecing all of the lights from the city off of a touch of haze.
What I wouldn’t give for a deep, dark sky.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
Proof Of Life – March 16th
You know those memes you see on Sunday afternoon/evening pointing out that you can’t enjoy the latter half of Sunday quite as much as you should because you know that Monday is looming just over the horizon? Insert ALL of those memes *HERE*.
And have I mentiond lately how much I hate earthquake aftershocks?
Filed under Paul, Photography
Unintended Consequences
The gophers are back. (It’s not like they ever really, REALLY left!) We’ve had a “gopher guy” showing up about once a month, but it’s had little effect.
Almost every day there’s another mound of debris and a new hole.
I suspect they’re ALL interconnected. If we hooked up a smoke machine and started pumping the output down this hole, the whole yard would soon have smoke drifting up from a hundred holes, looking a lot like a battlefield from no-man’s land in WWI.
Two weeks ago they started showing up in the back yard as well, eating the roots and killing the remaining decent landscaping.
I don’t want to start dropping poison down the holes, since the hawks and owls would end up eating the tainted meat and I won’t do anything to harm my raptor friends. But I don’t know what else to do.
I did find some solar powered vibrating spikes that you can drive into the ground in or around their digging sites. They power up during the day, then spend all night tricking the gophers into thinking that something big is stomping around or digging nearby.
Cool! But what do I do when these “thumpers” start attracting sand worms? I don’t have any idea how to ride one, even if I learned it’s going to be a bitch to find a parking space for one, and I would imagine that they’ll do more damage to the lawn than the gophers.
Perhaps this plan needs more thought…
Filed under Castle Willett, Farce, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 