John & Anne Wiley

2011/01/12

Bird Bath

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 08:32

The pool atop the Canary Hotel in downtown SB was the first thing guessed by an Edhat reader in the enigmatic second collection of seven I submitted yesterday. This shot shows more context, but I’d cropped the Edhat one so it only shows the pool making it hard to tell it’s on the roof. Somehow a reader was familiar enough with it to recognize it from the air at night, even though it’s the tallest building in that area and very few people fly over the city at night with enough time to pick out landmarks. Pretty impressive!

4438 Lit Canary Pool

4438 Lit Canary Pool

Santa Barbara High School’s stadium looked really cool, with athletes and spectators seemingly unaware of the night just beyond the lights.

4368 Night Game

4368 Night Game

I like the accent of bright lights hitting the trees to give everything an ethereal frame, and took another shot from a different angle on the return flight.

4444 SBHS Revisited

4444 SBHS Revisited

2011/01/11

Night Flight

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Random,SB Region — John @ 05:28

We love to fly at night, especially over familiar Santa Barbara where so many scenes are no longer familiar. As the light fades over the harbor, a whole different look comes over everything.

4352 SB Nightfall

4352 SB Nightfall

Same with nearby Carpinteria, as unlit areas form into black shapes nestled among streets and homes.

4363 Carp Darkening

4363 Carp Darkening

Shopping center parking lots become oddly shaped pools of light surrounding the dark roofs of buildings, sprinkled among traffic and lights of all sorts.

4403 Five Point Lights

4403 Five Point Lights

The familiar downtown bus depot becomes a geometric study in light and dark.

4429 Depot & Darkness

4429 Depot & Darkness

2011/01/09

Again

Filed under: Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 01:57

Every evening the sun sets of course. Sometimes we don’t see it due to clouds, but more often it’s uneventful because there aren’t any clouds. Tonight was yet another of those less common SB sunsets with just the right mix of Goldilocks perfection blending clouds and orange-red afterglow. So we went for a short walk. First we paused to check on monkeys for a dear friend.

1248 Monkey Business

1248 Monkey Business

She’d sold her home and moved away, only to discover that these monkeys she’d left behind are wanted by her daughter. So we stopped by to ensure that they are indeed removed to a neighbor’s home to wait for transportation to their new yard.

Reassured, we headed up a small hill to survey the surrounds. I’m happy to report that all’s well, and we were rewarded with some panoramic “air-brushed” SoCal sunset skies.

1252 Soft Sunset

1252 Soft Sunset

The most gentle breeze, a mere waft really, carried the last sounds of the day as we soaked in the warm colors shifting toward indigo darkness. Luckily for this post, Anne had brought along her camera so I borrowed it to snap these pix using manual settings.

1250 Layers of Light

1250 Layers of Light

The dust blotches on Anne’s camera refreshed my temptation to look up the directions I saw online a few months ago, on how to open and clean the internal sensor. Of course, the first time she forgets to keep it out of strong wind and sticks it out of Tripp’s window to capture one of her great photos the sensor will be re-coated with blotches. There’s also some chance of messing it up during the delicate brain surgery. Is it worth the effort and risk, or should we just buy her a new and more “rugged” camera?

2011/01/08

Rainbow Banners

Filed under: by Anne,Happiness,Has Photos,Random,SB Region — Anne @ 08:07

After taking care of overdue errands like smog testing our car for its registration, and finding some fun stuff at a seldom visited local home improvement shop, today we drove down “altered” State Street.  One of the fun things on this endlessly magical street are the rotating Banners, always highlighting some new event or organization.  Often it takes awhile to find out what they are representing, and many disappear within a couple of weeks, never revealing their hidden secrets.   Today’s version is reminiscent of the Chromatic Colors sculpture across from East Beach.  We have yet to discover what these particular banners are doing on State St now, but once we do I’ll update the blog.  I like how these bright rainbow colors contrast with the dark Black:

1246 Rainbow Banners lining State St

1246 Rainbow Banners lining State St

by ~Anne

2011/01/06

Sunset Bird

Filed under: Aviation,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Random,SB Region — John @ 02:13

Strolling a nearby knoll this evening, we heard the quiet hum of a small plane (looked like a C-172 similar to Tripp) descending toward SBA in the West where we’d been watching the sunset. Looking back toward that familiar and beloved music we saw this explosion of cloud color contrasting with the gentle plane at the top-right corner.

4291 Sunset Approach

4291 Sunset Approach

It’s an enchanting time to fly, and we were transported aloft as we watched in rapt silence.

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