sky waves -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Whoopie -- it's  Sky Watch Friday !

I thought these waves in the sky (photo above) were pretty neat...
Some times it's difficult to tell where the sea leaves off and the sky begins...

Here's one more...


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photo by Donald Kinney


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Sunrise, San Pablo Bay-- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Whoopie -- it's  Sky Watch Friday !

Well you already know that the sun rises in the East, so forgive me for mentioning this photo was taken to the East, over San Pablo Bay -- the "upper thumb" of San Francisco Bay.

Here's two more -- this time I won't even mention they were taken to the East...


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photo by Donald Kinney


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photo by Donald Kinney


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Bay Bridge + sun -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Whoopie -- it's  Sky Watch Friday !

This is the "Bay Bridge", San Francisco's "other" bridge, and built at about the same time -- 1936.   It's eight miles of traffic-from-hell if you have to join the commute...

Currently the cantilever sections on the Oakland side are being replaced with a massively expensive modern bridge.   In our last big shaker (the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989) a section of the eastern upper deck of the cantilever span pulled out of place and smashed to the roadway below, killing one man and injuring others.   Many more died from being pan-caked and trapped within the Cypress Structure, a double-decker connecting highway to the Bay Bridge.

Be careful out there on the roads today, folks...   It's raining cats-and-dogs here in California this morning -- fortunately I don't have to get out in it.   Kitty just went out and got all wet taking a poop.   Life goes on in California...


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wavy sunset -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Whoopie -- it's  Sky Watch Friday !

O.k., this "wavy sunset" may be stretching the rules about what is and what is not a sky photo, but our sky has been so plain recently that I thought I had to throw in a bit of excietment with a splash...


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sailing-ship sky -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Whoopie !!!   it's Sky Watch Friday again !!!

I know I might be stretching the rules a bit today --
...is this a photo of the sky, or is this more a photo of ropes ?

I found this wealth of ropes and rigging aboard the Balcutha, an iron hulled shipping vessel docked at Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco.


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at sunrise -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is having a great Sky Watch Friday !

It's about a quarter-to-five out here on the west coast -- the sun won't be up for a while...   Perfect time to check a few blogs...

I shot this particularly red sunrise a week or two ago on the western shores of San Pablo Bay, just north of San Francisco.


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sunrise -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is enjoying a great Sky Watch Friday !

Here's our sun from about a week ago -- yesterday's and today's sun has been obscured by low clouds, but there's always tomorrow...


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blurred clouds -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Whoopie !   -   it's Sky Watch Friday !

It seems we haven't had a cloud in the sky for weeks around here, and I didn't know if I would have anything for today or not...   These drifted over yesterday...

For a bit more interest I gave these clouds the Smart-Blur treatment in Photoshop.


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red sunrise

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photo by Donald Kinney

I hope everybody is enjoying a fine Sky Watch Friday !

I shot this several weeks ago when we still had a lot of smoke in the air from the multitude of forest fires that were burning in California -- hence the redness of the shot...


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etheric sky -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is enjoying a great  Sky Watch Friday !

Now, I certainly am no expert on the precise definition of the word "etheric", but I found this most beautiful painting in the Catholic church in Tomales, California.


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saturated sun -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is having a great  Sky Watch Friday !

Take your pick -- the larger header shot, or this color-saturated smaller shot.


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"G"olden "G"ate Bridge -- it's ABC Wednesday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is having a great "G"-day...   It's ABC Wednesday !

This is a foggy "posterized" Golden Gate Bridge...
I like to use this technique for turning an otherwise "ho-hum" photo into something a bit more spectacular.

There's two different ways of making these --
1)   By saving the JPEG as a GIF and selecting the number of colors.
2)   Using the Posterize feature in PhotoshopCS3 so the image can be saved as a JPEG.


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obscured sun - it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is having a great Sky Watch Friday !

I had to go back two or three weeks to find a sky shot that I hadn't already used, so I hope this shot fits the bill...   I'm not quite satisfied with the shot, so I guess I need to get back out there and do a re-shoot...

I'm off on a short holiday today so it may take me a day or two to visit everybody's blogs...


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red sunset -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is having a great Sky Watch Friday !

I don't think this sunset could have looked any redder, but that's pretty much what it looked like...   --Up on Mount Tamalpais looking towards Bolinas.

But as pretty as this photo is, I think I prefer sunrises over sunsets.   With a sunrise the day is just beginning, and with a sunset it is fairly obvious when the show is over.


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Raccoon Straights -- It's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Happy Sky Watch Friday, everybody!

This is Raccoon Straights...   To the right is Angel Island, and to the left is Belvedere and Tiburon.     This shot was taken from between Fort Baker and Sausalito -- just before sunrise...   That cloud put on quite a show...   I think I've seen more spectacular sunrises, but I think this one is equally as pleasing.


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photo by Donald Kinney

The photo above is San Pablo Bay, the upper-thumb of San Francisco Bay, taken from Ring Mountain between Corte Madera and Tiburon.   That's the west end of the San Rafael to Richmond Bridge, and the ferry boat is one of a fleet operated by the Golden Gate Transit District.   Richmond would be on the other side of the bridge on the right.   Those two little islands are the Brothers, East and West.   San Quentin State Prison is is located not far from the left edge of this photo.   See you there...

By the way, for my upcoming 61st. birthday I bought myself a (roundtrip) ticket to Alcatraz, so on the 29th I'll be taking a boat over to "The Rock".   See you there...


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sunrise -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is enjoying a great  Sky Watch Friday.

Well, it's been a while since I've seen a really spectacular sunrise out at China Camp, but I finally was able to oooh and aaah on Wednesday...

We had some clouds roll through the Bay Area Monday night, and San Francisco even got a brief shower.   Yes, we need rain out here in the west -- it's been dry as a bone.   But what we don't need right now is lightning-strikes -- the threat of wild-fires is extremely high.

Read more about the wild-fires in the west at Wikipedia, but here is a brief summary:

[[[ quote ]]]
The fires broke out after three years of below-normal rainfall dehydrated much of California's forests and woodlands, making them prone to wildfires.   Spring 2008 for California was the driest on record for many locations;  for example, San Francisco registered only 0.007 inches (0 cm) of rain out of a normal of 6.18 inches (16 cm) from March to May.   As vegetation turned into bone-dry tinder in early June, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought for the first time in over a century.   Dry thunderstorms and lightning, rarely seen on the California coastline in June, rolled onshore on the weekend of June 20 - June 21.   The storm unleashed 5,000 to 6,000 dry lightning strikes across Northern and Central California, igniting more than 800 fires.   The same thunderstorms also caused fires in Oregon.   High daytime temperatures facilitated the spread of the fires and the number of wildfires skyrocketed in the days after the thunderstorm.
[[[ end quote ]]]


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incoming fog -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everybody is having a great Sky Watch Friday!

Yes folks, this is our fog -- our natural air-conditioning -- marching in towards the Golden Gate.   The photos you see here were taken from Ridgecrest Boulevard, the northern flank of our beloved centerpiece of Marin County, Mount Tamalpais.

I stopped by Wikipedia to get the official "low-down" on fog -- and thre it was, a picture of San Francisco, pretty much cloaked in the wonderfully cool stuff:

photo lifted (without direct permission) from Wikipedia.org

[[[ quote ]]]
Fog forms when the difference between temperature and dewpoint is (5 °F) 3 °C, or less.
Fog begins to form when water vapor (a colorless gas) condenses into tiny liquid water droplets in the air.   Conversely, water vapor is formed by the evaporation of liquid water or by the sublimation of ice.   Since water vapor is colorless, it is actually the small liquid water droplets that are condensed from it that make water suspended in the atmosphere visible in the form of fog or any other type of cloud.

Fog normally occurs at a relative humidity near 100%.   This can be achieved by either adding moisture to the air or dropping the ambient air temperature.   Fog can form at lower humidities, and fog can sometimes not form with relative humidity at 100%.   A reading of 100% relative humidity means that the air can hold no additional moisture and the air will then become supersaturated if additional moisture is added.

Fog formation does require all of the elements that normal cloud formation requires with the most important being condensation nuclei.   When the air is saturated, additional moisture tends to condense rather than staying in the air as vapor.   Condensation nuclei must be present in the form of dust, aeresols, pollutants, etc. for the water to condense upon.   When there are exceptional amounts of condensation nuclei present, especially hydroscopic (water seeking such as salt, see below) then the water vapor may condense below 100% relative humidity.
[[[ end quote ]]]


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fog spilling in -- It's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Happy Sky Watch Friday everybody !

In the San Francisco Bay Area we get more than our share of fog, but usually nobody complains -- it serves as our natural conditioning during the hot summer months...   It can be quite beautiful too...   The fog you see here was spilling over a shoulder of our beloved Mt. Tamalpais last Tuesday.   As you can see, it was quite an impressive sight...


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sunset, Mt. Tam -- it's Sky Watch Friday

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everyone is off to a great Sky Watch Friday !

Last Sunday I thought -- "what the heck, I wonder what the sunset might look like like up on Mt. Tamalpais this afternoon", so I thought the best thing to do was to find out.   I knew there would be a fog bank -- it had been drifting in and out of the Golden Gate all week, but the only question was -- would it be high fog, or would it be low fog.   Fortunately it turned out to be low fog...


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sunrise, China Camp -- it's Sky Watch Friday !

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photo by Donald Kinney

Hope everyone is enjoying a pleasant Sky Watch Friday...

I am usually an early riser, and one of my favorite things to do is to go out to China Çamp on San Pablo Bay (the upper thumb of San Francisco bay) and watch the sun come up.   Besides the actual sunrise, the best part of the experience is that no sane person gets up that early -- so I usually have China Camp all to myself.   The population of China Camp is 1 (one), a Mr. Frank Quan, and if I pass close by his rustic cabin I often can hear him sawing-logs (snoring).   At a more reasonable hour Mr. Quan will surface, and if he feels like it he will take his boat out a ways, set his nets, and see how many pounds of bay shrimp he is able to catch.   Later in the day you might see him repairing his equipment or jaw-boning with visitors.   Yep, that's life on San Pablo Bay.   See you there...


-------------------------------------------------

Now folks, fasten your seat belts -- here's more Chihuly glass:



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photo by Donald Kinney



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney




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