Went for a walk in the neighborhood. It was a grey rainy day. But there was a sea of these flowers next to the sidewalk. Do you know what these are called? Birds of Paradise!
Their official name is Strelitzia reginae and they are also known as crane flower. They are native to South Africa and derive their name from the unusual flowers, which resemble brightly colored birds in flight. In the United States, Florida and California are the main areas of cultivation, due to their warm climate. It is a common ornamental plant in Southern California, and has been chosen as the Official Flower of the City of Los Angeles.
#birdsofprey #flowers #california
This is a color photograph, with no filters, colorization, desaturation etc. This is what it looked like in the Bay Area on March 25. The heavy fog and the bright daytime sun created this very drab color palette. This is true to what it actually looked like to the naked eye.
If you look very carefully, you can also make out the very very faint outline of the Golden Gate Bridge all the way in the background. Can you see it?
#naturalgrayscale #bw #landscape #bridge #sanfrancisco
Sunset in San Francisco!
It was fog which helped filter out the sun’s brightness to enable this pic. Love how the relatively tack-sharp bird in the foreground helps contrast a bit with the haze and mist in the distance.
#sunset
Sunset from Berkeley Marina! That is the Golden Gate Bridge in the background #berkeley #marina #sunset #ggbridge
🌝 So when you lay your hands on a 600mm lens, you obviously have to take a pic of the moon. I tried but I couldn’t find Neil Armstrong’s steps in this pic 😇 But this is the closest optical photo of the moon that I have ever clicked. What do you think? #moon #fullmoon
We have been getting some decent sunsets this week in San Francisco. So that’s the jetty of the Berkeley Marina in the foreground and the Golden Gate Bridge across the Bay in the background. And right to the left of the sun is Alcatraz, the historical prison island! #sanfrancisco #sunset
We had an outstanding rainbow 🌈 in San Francisco this week! It physically terminated past the Emeryville marina at .... Treasure Island (😛)! No filters, it happened just before sunrise and mashed in perfectly with the misty, cloudy, golden glow. Oh, and do you see the faint outline of Alcatraz in the center back?
#rainbow #sanfrancisco #bayarea #emeryville #lifeisbeautiful
💥🎇 A great start to 2020! Happy New Year everyone! 🌠✨ We just saw the Northern Lights! We got lucky! Really lucky! That dreamy, moonscape terrain is the Arctic Ocean, mostly frozen. The Arctic Circle is at 66° 33'N, we are at 70°N at the moment, at the Northern most point of USA, still around a 1,000+ miles from the North Pole!
It has been 100% cloud cover and snowing and it is -15F / -26C with crazy wind chill. Three-to-five seconds is the maximum time I can un-glove my hand before I start to lose sensation. Camping out in the cold and waiting for the clouds to open up has been quite an ordeal 🥶 But it was totally worth it, patience pays 😇
#happynewyear #northernlights #alaska #winter #auroraborealis
Did I tell you I like glaciers? Because I do 😊
For this who may not know:
glaciers are basically rivers of ice and they move a lot more slowly, just a few feet a day. Over the last few decades, these glaciers have started to recede a lot. There are 616 named glaciers in Alaska.
#alaska #matanuska #glacier #winter
Until now I had always been on alpine glaciers, which are glaciers that hang off the peaks of mountains. This glacier, Matanuska, is a valley glacier as it exists on a valley. But unlike a snowfield that just sits and melts, this is indeed a glacier that moves by a foot every day as it “flows” downwards along the valley. It was fascinating to see all the different glacial features from up close. I chose this picture because it showcases the most information - we see the blue ice, the black ice (yes what looks like dark rock is actually just pure ice), the morraines, parts of crevasse, all with people to scale.
#glacier #alaska #matanuska #hike
With a depth of 1,949 feet (594 m), Crater Lake in Oregon is the deepest in the United States. It partially fills a nearly 2,148-foot (655 m)-deep caldera that was formed around 7,700 (± 150) years ago by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama. There are no rivers flowing into or out of the lake; the evaporation is compensated for by rain and snowfall at a rate such that the total amount of water is replaced every 250 years.
#craterlake #oregon #lake #crater #caldera #bw #aerial
Teriberka, in Russia, during the Polar Winter!
It was densely cloudy so the bottom yellow is the city lights being reflected back, and the top green halo? You guessed right. Yes. Aurora Borealis! Not the best view of the Northern Lights themselves but so interesting nonetheless!
#teriberka #russia #northernlights #arctic #polar
Didn’t know this secret-looking skating rink shows up here in San Francisco in the winter. Will be fun to check it out soon! And yes that’s the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge in the background!
#iceskating #winter #holiday #sanfrancisco #california
Holiday moon and dark clouds over the Tower Bridge in Sacramento, the capital of the State of California, and the traditional industrial center of the region since the Gold Rush era. The Tower Bridge is a vertical lift bridge across the Sacramento River. Do you see the cute, tiny, weathervane on top?
#sacramento #towerbridge #california
San Francisco Bay at sunset. I love the contrast between the heavily textured water and the buttery smooth cloudless sky!
#sanfrancisco #emeryville #bayarea #california #sunset #water
I had the most wonderful experience here. I left my fins and camera behind and decided to venture over the coral reef with just my snorkel mask. I was alone on the reef. First person to make it to the beach. Before sunrise.
I enjoyed watching all the colorful fish so close, observing them as they plucked on the food growing on the corals. It was interesting to see a giant food particle floating in front of me as 5 different fish across 3 different species took turns plucking at it before moving on.
About 15 mins in, I saw with the corner of my eye a fish which is quite common here. It was smallish, about 6cm long, flat, white, with zebra stripes. But it wasn’t just one. As I turned my gaze towards it, I saw more and more. There were at least a hundred. And just like a herd of zebra, the effect of so many of those fish together was quite scintillating!
It was a school of fish. All fish almost equidistant from each other, moving in unison like one being. And more interestingly, interspersed between them were about 3-4 much larger fish of different species. And they just occupied the spaces in between the smaller fishes. They also moved in unison with the school. I swam along with the school and they welcomed me and didn’t seem to mind me at all (the fish here are very used to humans). I observed as they moved from one part of the reef to the other, like a coordinated dance without any apparent leader.
Diving together to the lower rock, nibbling for a few seconds, and then diving up to the upper rock and doing the same. I tailed them for a while. And they were just a mere inches away from me at most times. I was almost surrounded by them often when they would change course and kinda just run through me.
I didn’t have my camera on me at the time - I have no photos or videos of this. Visually, with the morning sun just out and reflecting off the shiny glistening fish, it definitely was something I would have loved to capture. But it’s even more special as it’s just in my head at this point 🙂
And I’m sure this is common for folks who do this often, but this was the first time for me and it felt magical 🐟
#hawaii #hanaumabay
Sunset view of the Honolulu skyline from Tantalus Lookout - Puu Ualakaa State Park. On the top left is the iconic Diamond Head state monument. We are high enough that we can almost peer inside it’s volcanic crater. The dome shaped building in the foreground is the basketball stadium. The tall buildings on the top right edge are along the famous Waikiki beach and do you see the three sail boats out in the water?
#hawaii #honolulu #oahu #skyline #waikiki #cityscape #tantaluslookout #puuualakaa #sunset
San Francisco, with overexposed fog! Do you see the Bay Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid?
Sometimes it’s more fun to lean in to the flaws than to try and fix them 😀
#sanfrancisco #california #baybridge
A nice day for a nice day in San Francisco. That’s a tiny view of the Golden Gate Bridge (do you see it?) 🌁 framed through the metal sides of the Bay Bridge! And the tower on the hill is the famous Coit Tower. I took this picture at a high shutter speed while being driven on the Bay Bridge. What do you think?
#sanfrancisco #baybridge #goldengatebridge #sfbayarea
Recently I got a chance to photograph the ‘Russian Woodpecker’ in Chernobyl with a drone!
In 1976 the world heard for the first time the eerie woodpecker-like repetitive pulse coming from these transmitters in present day Ukraine. Conspiracy theories followed instantly, generating Western media headlines about mind and weather control. Amid growing fears of nuclear war some claimed that the low-frequency "Russian signal" could change human behavior and destroy brain cells. Such wild speculations were further fueled by the Soviet Union's denial of the very existence of the radar -- it was a children's camp after all.
The Duga radar (which translates as "The Arc") was once one of the most powerful military facilities in the Soviet Union's communist empire. It still stands a towering 150 meters (492 feet) high and stretches almost 700 meters in length. But, left to rot in the radioactive winds of Chernobyl, it's now in a sad state of industrial decay.
When it was in operation, the Duga supposedly used short radio waves capable of traveling thousands of kilometers using a technique called "over-the-horizon" radiolocation to detect the exhaust flames of launching missiles.
The random frequency hops disrupted legitimate broadcasts, amateur radio operations, oceanic commercial aviation communications, and utility transmissions, resulting in thousands of complaints by many countries worldwide. The signal became such a nuisance that some receivers such as amateur radios and televisions actually began including 'Woodpecker Blankers' in their circuit designs in an effort to filter out the interference.
#russia #ukraine #chernobyl #coldwar #duga #radar #soviet
🇺🇸 One of most underrated things to do in San Francisco is hopping on to the ferry from Embarcadero to Jack London Sq in Oakland. You can even enjoy a drink as you take in these awesome views - and yet it’s a commuter ferry so it’s affordable.
The tallest building in this skyline is the Salesforce tower that is now the tallest building on the West Coast. The pyramid shaped building right in the sun near the flag is the Transamerica Pyramid, the former tallest building in San Francisco.
#ferry #sanfrancisco #skyline #water #flag #usa #california
Sunset in Boston!
On the bottom left is the famous Fenway Park, where the Red Sox play. Operational since 1912, it is the oldest ball park in Major League Baseball (MLB) and is one of the most well known sporting venues in the world.
On the right is one of the meanders of the Charles river that divides Boston from Cambridge.
#boston #cambridge #fenwaypark #baseball #mlb #sunset
Last month I went to Chernobyl in Ukraine. I had always been very curious about it since I was a kid. This weekend I started and finished the season 1 of the HBO show by the same name. And now I am going back through my pictures and videos with new context. Yes, those are dosimeters around our necks. And we are inside a gas mask factory. It was a fascinating experience!
#chernobyl #ukraine #chernobylexclusionzone #radioactive #apocalypse
Nicolaus Copernicus was born in the city of Torun, in the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, northern Poland on February 19, 1473. His name at birth was Mikolaj Kopernik. At university he started calling himself the Latin form of his name, Nicolaus Copernicus. Behind me is a statue of him!
He was a mathematician and astronomer, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the universe. He also derived a quantity theory of money—a key concept in economics. He also formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law: "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.
#poland #history #science #economics #astronomy
This weekend we spent sleeping on a mountain in Yosemite at 11,000ft/3,350m at 28F/-2.2C. Between the moonset at 3:30am & the sunrise at 6:10am there was maybe an hour of good darkness to capture this. Was very surprised by the results - these are more stars than I have ever been able to capture in a single 5s exposure! I first thought I got even more lucky, thinking those two trails are meteors (maybe part of Perseids). But I think they are more likely to be ... airplanes! But if we want to believe they are meteors, maybe they are 😛 There’s a third one right inside the thick band of the Milky Way.
#milkyway #yosemite #yosemitenationalpark
Something phenomenal happened in San Francisco this evening! Is that the Sun or a mirage of the sunset?
#sunset #mirage #sanfrancisco #california #bayarea
Ephemerisle at dusk - a floating city built and unbuilt on water every year!
#drone #ephemerisle2019 #ephemerisle
Drone photo of Sunset over Ephemerisle with Mt Diablo!
#ephemerisle2019 #ephemerisle #drone #aerial #sunset
The Washington Monument is an obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate George Washington, the first President of the United States. It is the world's tallest obelisk standing 554 left (169m) tall!
I had to reluctantly leave as I’d have loved to stay and see the Smithsonian projecting the Apollo 11 onto it’s facade to commemorate the 50yr anniversary of the moon landing!
#washingtondc #washingtonmonument @nationalmallnps
The Vessel in NYC. Designed by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the elaborate honeycomb-like structure rises 16 stories and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings for visitors to climb. Vessel is the main feature of the 5-acre Hudson Yards Public Square. Its final cost is expected to be $200 million.
#nyc #newyork #newyorkcity #art #public