Pelican above the bluffs

Walked down to the pier on a gloomy day while my car was in the shop. People were pretty good at spreading out and wearing masks (prob. because the city started fining people back in summer).

Among other shorebirds, I saw a group of a half dozen pelicans whirling around and diving for fish.

#birds #sky #pelican #photo #gloomy

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A bright sundog next to a glass-sided building

A bright #sundog next to a glass-sided building. The sun is off to the left out of frame. The sundog had a bit more color and more of the spectrum in it as seen through my polarized sunglasses, so I kind of wish I'd taken a shot through one of the lenses, but at least you can see how bright it was. I haven't adjusted the color on this image at all - except for cropping, it's straight out of my phone. #sky #halo

A bright #sundog next to a glass-sided building. The sun is off to the left out of frame. The sundog had a bit more color and more of the spectrum in it as seen through my polarized sunglasses, so I kind of wish I'd taken a shot through one of the lenses, but at least you can see how bright it was.

I haven't adjusted the color on this image at all – except for cropping, it's straight out of my phone.

#sky #halo

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Fragments of a circumhorizon arc

Cirrus clouds/contrails above a spiky plant, with a rainbow-colored section of cloud.

Cirrus clouds/contrails above palm trees, with two sections of cloud in rainbow-like colors.

Fragments of a #CircumhorizonArc seen on my way back from lunch today. I took some shots with my phone, because that's what I had, then remembered that I had the good camera with me and grabbed it from the office. The clouds had shifted, but not far enough to destroy the effect completely.

#halos #rainbow #clouds #sky

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Oh, and saturation has been enhanced on both photos to bring out the colors.

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Just realized: autocorrect turned “cirrus clouds” into “citrus clouds” in the image descriptions. Yes, both of them.

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Expanded on K2R
On Flickr: single
On Flickr: double

Some recent sun halo displays I’ve seen in the last 2 weeks

Some recent sun #halo displays I’ve seen in the last 2 weeks: An upper tangent arc (my first!), the top edges of a circumscribed and 22° circular halo, and most of a 22° circular halo (with bonus contrail shadow on the cloud layer!)

All shot on my Pixel 2 with levels adjusted.

These are all formed by reflection and refraction of light in ice crystals. (A great reference: https://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/common.htm )

Also, all seen from Los Angeles, which isn’t freezing…at ground level.

#Photography #sky

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See-through skyscraper?

See-through skyscraper?

See-through skyscraper?

#building #reflection #sky

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Comments on Facebook:

Don Anthony
Is that close to LAX? It’s the best place for invisible buildings.

Kelson Vibber
Yeah, right on Century. Tall buildings on one side of the street, short on the other.

Sun Halos: Always Look Up

palm-tree-halo

Have you ever seen a ring around the sun? Or a pair of bright spots flanking it? Or a rainbow-colored cloud? Just as sunlight reflecting and refracting inside raindrops can create a rainbow, sunlight reflecting off of ice crystals can form fascinating and beautiful halos. It doesn’t even have to be cold at ground level: if the ice crystals are high up in the atmosphere, spread in a thin layer of cirrus cloud, you can still see them… even in places known for warm weather like Los Angeles. I have a whole gallery of halo photos I’ve taken in southern California. You’ll see them more often than you expect. You just have to look up.

Orange: Sky, Flames, Balloon…

The first thing I noticed when going through my photos for the orange challenge is that I take a lot of sunset pictures! I made a point to mix it up and narrowed it down to twelve shots, then checked out how they looked together and settled on six. Then I realized I’d forgotten to upload one, and couldn’t bear to leave it out, bringing the gallery up to seven.

Ragged clouds in a blue sky, lit up yellow-orange just like a Maxfield Parrish painting…a bird of paradise flower…a cosplayer at Comic-Con dressed in a jumpsuit, wielding a Portal gun…ocean waves reflecting another sunset, made even deeper orange than usual by smoke from a wildfire….visiting the big orange balloon at Orange County’s Great Park…torches lighting the gateway to Adventureland at night…and finally a sunset shot, silhouetting the Manhattan Beach Pier…

Shortly before sunset, Katie noticed a really yellow quality to the light outside the window, …

Shortly before sunset, Katie noticed a really yellow quality to the light outside the window, like an eclipse (we’re *way* outside its path) or inside the smoke plume from a large fire. I went out to see. As near as I can tell, it was the reddish/golden hour light from the sun reflecting off of the cloud layer above us that was making everything look yellow. J came out too, and while he wasn’t terribly interested in the clouds or sunset, he had fun watching cars and people and looking at stuff down here on the ground.

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