The last few nights in the bay area have been remarkably clear. On Saturday we were up at Twin Peaks but I did not have my camera with me. Tonight I did have the camera so I went up after work (it was just after 7pm when I arrived at the top) and I spent about an hour up there shooting a collection of photos of the city at night.
You can see more of them in my Flickr stream at the moment.
The water in the small inlet that provides the townhouses behind my apartment complex with their private docks was very still and I noticed that both the masts from the yachts and also the townhouses themselves were reflected almost perfectly in it.
Just outside my apartment complex here in Alameda, alongside Ballena Boulevard, are several trees covered with blossom all of a sudden.
Sunset over San Francisco, taken from along the Alameda shoreline at Ballena Bay tonight.
Outside the main gates to Buckingham Palace is the Queen Victoria memorial. Essentially it is the centrepiece of a roundabout, and at its centre is a column on top of which stands a golden version of Victory, arms outstretched to the skies.
One of the very important, and well cared for ravens at the Tower of London. An ancient legend states that as long as the ravens remain at the tower, Britain is safe from invasion. The ravens at the tower today are fed and have their flight feathers trimmed (ensuring they remain at the tower). At the time this photo was taken the birds, which are naturally territorial, had been fighting and were being separated by the Yeomen Warders who look after them. You can see more photos of the ravens here and here.
One of the few photos I took on my recent (short) business trip to South Korea. These were served one night as part of our dinner. At the time I assumed they had to be some type of green bean, but thanks to Peter Garnhum‘s comment on this photo in my Flickr pool I now know that they are in fact garlic scapes. Stir fried and served in a slightly spicy sauce, they were very tasty indeed.
One of several stone spiral staircases in the White Tower at theTower of London. The railings and the wooden step covers are a more modern addition to a building that is over 900 years old. Guess they knew how to build things to last back then.
I wonder how many people have walked these stairs? How many battles were fought on them? How much bloodshed have they seen? They are, after all, in one of the most notorious places in British history; a place with a long history of torture and death.
Just outside the Tower of London, were these two RNLI launches. On an otherwise grey day, the bright orange boats provided a splash of colour on the river.
Apologies to the Linux users out there (like myself) who have to put up with an error message when loading that Tower of London page – just click OK and the page loads OK. I have reported the error to the site’s webmaster and PR person, but I doubt anything will happen to fix it.
A little further west along the coastline is the city of Brighton. Here is a shot of the west pier, which finally collapsed into the English Channel at the end of December 2002. Here is all that remains of a once majestic pier. Now it looks kind of ghostly, especially in this shot where the boundary between sky and sea has blurred.