what about the plastic animals?

Puff

There's a hole in the sky.

In the headlines:  Show Pride in Your State and visit the Eiffel Tower.

Lost Our Lease

I was in the West Village yesterday afternoon when I saw this writing going on in the sky.  It was  part of a work of art called "The Sky Is The Limit/NYC" by Kim Beck.  The air was so dry and the subsidence so great that I suspect the skywriting disappeared a lot quicker than the artist wanted it to.

I took a bunch of photos so I could make an animated gif.  That image is after the jump so readers don't have a seizure here.

Cumulonimbus at Sunset

I heard thunder but this storm cell didn't quite make it to Harlem.

To end the week, Groucho Marx gets flabbergasted by Albert Hall.

Triple-Decker Lenticular Cloud

Look!  Up in the sky!  It's a lenticular cloud!  This was just a couple miles south of Ellensburg. 

Lenticular clouds typically form downwind of mountain ranges and Ellensburg is east of the Cascades.  Fear not, Flatlanders, they do occasionally form without the aid of topographic relief.  There just needs to be a standing wave.  Air flowing over a mountain range will often produce standing waves, as shown in this highly technical illustration, but the waves can also form via other means.  If you're lucky the edges of a lenticular cloud will be irridescent.  Here's lots of pretty pictures.

Double Rainbow, Seattle Style

One night in Seattle Jeff's friend Evan came up and we went out to dinner at Salty's in West Seattle.  First we went to a little park on a hill that overlooks the city.  We noticed a rain shower moving in, that's it on the left of the top photo, and Jeff predicted we would see a rainbow.

He was wrong.  We saw a double rainbow.  It was incredible.  The whole restaurant was abuzz.  People were wedging themselves in between tables next to get next to the windows and take photos.  There was even a guy taking flash photos on his SLR.  I'm sure those turned out great!  Both rainbows made a complete arc across the sky.  Unfortunately my little camera and the building architecture didn't let me get a photo of that.

Speaking of great, professor, and probably all around swell person though I don't know her, Celina Su used a few of my photos in a short oral history video of Eddie Boros, the creator of the sadly missing East Village Toy Tower.

As long as I'm promoting myself, the Wall Street Journal recently used a photo of mine in a story on the future of the Corn Exchange Bank on 125th Street.

Trees and Sky

Trees and clouds in Central Park this afternoon.

Spring Break

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It's spring outside.  Time for a break.  I'm going to abandon this little corner of the Internet for a week or so.

Blue Sky

The sky turned a lovely shade of blue this afternoon.  If you stare too long you'll see an X in the middle of the photo.  It's some sort of lens flare.

Crossing 116th Street at Broadway this evening I saw this guy.  A couple of years ago he won a prize for his glow-in-the-dark nematodes.  The weird thing is that at the same intersection several years ago I saw this lady, who won a similar prize, but for writing.

Sunrise Over JFK

View from the AirTrain this morning, which would mean I have returned from California.

It was hot and smokey in Pasadena.  Report to follow.

Right now though, I am wondering about sleep.  I did not sleep at all on the overnight flight, but I did sleep from about 8-6 today.  Maybe I'll sleep tonight, maybe I won't.

Night Sky at Zion Canyon

Upside-down Big Dipper

Orion

Since Springdale is far from most city lights and at an elevation of 3900 feet I figured I might be able to get a couple of good star pictures.  The camera was limited to thirty seconds of exposure time because I don't have a cable release so the pictures didn't come out as bright as I'd like.  Still, there's a lot more stars than I can see looking out my Manhattan window.