I took this picture on the way home tonight of the sun setting over the fog-covered Santa Cruz mountains, beyond the Crystal Springs Reservoir. The haze and the unearthly red tinge are the result of smoke from the wildfires that seem to be burning up approximately half of California. Click for a bigger version.
Finally posted a bunch of pictures of Alcatraz (so far, still not a Global Peace Center) from a few weeks ago when Frequent Commenter Rebecca was in town. It was my third visit, so I was free to ignore the audio tour and wander around trying to be Artistic.
Here’s another newly posted pic that isn’t from Alcatraz, but I like it.
Anyone who’s ever flown into SFO has seen the gigantic hillside sign proclaiming South San Francisco “THE INDUSTRIAL CITY.” (Less imposing signs elsewhere declare it to be “the Birthplace of Biotechnology,” but I think they should have to pick one.) I’ve been curious about this hill for a long time, and finding myself in SSF over the weekend with some time to kill, I found the Sign Hill Park entrance and went on an impromptu mini-hike. Pictures here, including hideous views of new residential developments oozing their way up the southern slopes of San Bruno Mountain.
I’ve just posted a batch of 37 new aerial photos from my Thanksgiving trip to Los Angeles, culled from well over a hundred candidate shots. Think that sounds like a lot? I’ve got 70 more waiting for me from the return flight that have made the first cut, plus a backlog of God knows how many from previous trips. I don’t travel by plane anymore without my camera pretty much glued to the window, if the sun’s up and the weather’s clear. (Let’s hear it for digital cameras and cheap storage!) Unfortunately, pictures from the window of a big jet plane need a lot of postprocessing to look decent (let’s hear it for open-source graphics software!), and even though I’m getting better at it it’s still outrageously time-consuming.
Granted, it would be a lot less time-consuming if I didn’t also have a compulsive need to figure out the exact location of each picture, but this is my obsession and I’m going to do it the way I want to, thank you very much.
Anyway, I’m pleased with this bunch. I’m generally aiming a little higher in terms of making good pictures nowadays than I used to, paying more attention to composition and color and so on instead of just going for the gee-whiz factor, which frankly has worn off a little after four-plus years of doing this, not to mention after covering the L.A. route two or three times already.
Let me know what you think. (Yeah, I know, the site doesn’t work exactly right on all browsers. Someday I would like to fix that.)
Near my apartment the other day:
Maaaaaan.
As a kind of a chaser, here are links to two not-exactly-lost pet notices—sort of cheerier variations on a theme.
(courtesy of BoingBoing)
(courtesy of Rachel)
Experiments taken last evening from the roof, where I’m not really supposed to go.
