John & Anne Wiley

2011/01/14

Going Up

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Nature,Random,SB Region — John @ 07:09

I’m surprised it’s taking me so long to go through the pix from yesterday’s flight. After posting the snaps of the new copper dome, we got distracted with lots of other stuff. Anyway, just now I looked through the first few and here are some favs from the flight. Just after takeoff UCSB looked especially lovely, and since it was a bit hazy I’d mounted the polarizing filter. The result is both better and worse than without, since it reduces haze but makes colors a bit strange and reduces sharpness a bit. Fun to see it differently, and at least in terms of haze more like how it looks when we’re flying.

4468 UCSB Polarized

4468 UCSB Polarized

Click to see the larger version here, or better yet visit our Photo Page (link in right column) to see an even larger and sharper version. Such a beautiful campus and setting!

We climbed over the ridge West of Painted Cave near what I think is a gun club, and this stand of trees with the island background was captivating.

4486 Huddled Trees On Top

4486 Huddled Trees On Top

I’m hoping to look at and post more pix from the flight tomorrow. Such fun to “re-fly” it via the photos.

2011/01/13

Brief Shine

Filed under: Aviation,Happiness,Has Photos,Random,SB Region — John @ 06:28

The new KSBA airport terminal building is getting a shiny copper dome, and I paused to snap it during taxi for takeoff today. I wonder how it will look once the copper gets a green patina in a year or two, and whether anyone will be allowed to go up there for the glorious view.

4464 Copper Cupola

4464 Copper Cupola

Luckily the view we get in the first second after liftoff is vastly superior. 🙂

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?

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Blog at WordPress.com.