Tag: light

Storm clouds, surf and light in Imperial Beach!

The views this morning from the Imperial Beach Pier were dramatic!

Stormy weather brought a procession of very dark clouds, through which bright sunshine penetrated. The waves were pretty big, too, as you can see from these photographs!

Yes, some surfers were out. I saw a KEEP OUT OF WATER sign posted on the beach by the County of San Diego. For their sake, I hope those surfers don’t become sick from the rain’s runoff and all that raw sewage coming from the Tijuana River.

Anyway, the storm clouds, light and breaking surf resulted in great photos!

When I arrived on the Imperial Beach Pier, I saw a rainbow!

A few minutes after I left the pier, a big cell arrived and there was a long-lasting downpour. My final photo was taken from the shelter of a bus stop on Seacoast Drive.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Star of India at sunset from Waterfront Park.

Enjoy a few photographs. They were taken today in San Diego a few minutes after sunset.

The western sky was fiery orange and red, making an incredible backdrop for Star of India, docked at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. The world-famous tall ship was strung with magical lights.

The sunset’s colors reflected brilliantly from the park’s watery fountain and a slice of San Diego Bay in the distance.

Truly awesome!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

A butterfly in the Garden of Transformation!

Liberty Station in Point Loma boasts many great works of public art. The Garden of Transformation, with its colorful, luminous butterfly, is one of my favorites! You can find it in the North Promenade near the Stone Brewing patio.

Sunlight shines through the monarch butterfly’s translucent wings producing a rainbow-like effect. It’s magical.

Garden of Transformation was dedicated almost exactly a year ago, in October 2024. The steel and dichroic laminated acrylic sculpture was created by San Diego artist Kaori Fukuyama. (Perhaps you’ve seen her Wave of Change on the front of the Target store in North Park.)

The small garden where this stunning butterfly lives is an official Monarch Waystation. The space contains milkweeds and other nectar plants. According to a sign near the art, between early spring and fall you might observe adult butterflies, young caterpillars, chrysalis, and other pollinators here.

A native seed library stands nearby.

The artist, in her statement, envisions “this installation as a welcoming space where people from diverse backgrounds can come together to observe monarch butterflies and learn about the conservation of this important species…”

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Cut glass, new light, and the La Jolla coast.

Should you visit the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla, make sure to step into the Krichman Family Gallery. That’s where you can experience eye-opening effects of light, caused by apertures cut in glass windows overlooking the coast.

This site-conditional installation is the work of Robert Irwin, who passed away in 2023. According to a nearby sign, his art is foundational to a certain West Coast minimalism, referred to as Light and Space. He was a longtime resident of San Diego.

Window areas with no glass bring new light into the viewer’s eyes. Standing in the gallery makes one wonder: to what extent do we fully experience reality and its acute beauty? Is there “glass” in our eyes that can be cut away?

Those open spaces in the windows also allow our senses to feel and smell the fresh ocean breeze. Now, if only human hands could reach out and feel the ocean’s vastness.

Robert Irwin is also responsible for the Edwards Sculpture Garden’s radiant Spanish Fan, which you can see in the lower left of the above photograph.

Inside the museum’s adjacent galleries are more of Irwin’s beautiful works. Perhaps I’ll cover those at some future time.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Magical light and form inside the Axline Court.

How does one describe the Axline Court inside the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego?

Magical, perhaps?

Should you ever visit the museum in La Jolla, step into this space and look up. Move about as your eyes are lifted. See how the light and form changes as if by magic. (Come to think of it, doesn’t the entire world operate this way?)

The Axline Court was designed by famed postmodern architect Robert Venturi. It was part of a 1996 expansion of the historic building, which originally was home to newspaper journalist and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps.

The star-shaped Axline Court, a spacious atrium with simple white columns, bright high angled windows, and curvaceous neon fringed fins descending from the ceiling, was retained in the building’s latest redesign and expansion. Today it can be used as a gallery, or for weddings or special events.

I wandered about the space and took these photos. You have to experience the magical effect yourself. I personally wonder how, with the neon, it appears at night.

(My next blog post will concern an exhibition of art by Hoover High School students along one wall. You can glimpse a bit of it on a table in the next photo.)

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Identify these 10 shadows in Balboa Park!

Ready for a visual puzzle?

I walked all around Balboa Park today and noticed all sorts of mysterious shadows. I took photographs, then decided to make a game of it! I like having fun! How about you?

Can you identify the actions or things that produce these interesting shadows? Here’s a hint: the people are regular street performers you’ll see almost every weekend along El Prado. What are they doing?

There’s no prize to win here–sorry.

Just fun!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

First sunrise of Spring in Balboa Park’s rose garden.

It’s the first morning of Spring. As the sun rose over the mountains east of San Diego, the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden in Balboa Park awakened.

The few rose blooms that have already opened caught the early light and became even more beautiful.

I was there to take capture a bit of the transformation.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!

Fantastic creation appears in San Diego artist’s window!

What is it?

A weird glowing jellyfish–perhaps giving birth? A wildly creative lamp? Some alien creature from the planet Pandora? A dream-thing resplendent with arcane symbols?

As I walked in darkness this morning through downtown San Diego, a very strange, seemingly living thing caught my eye. It was shining in the studio window of artist James Watts!

How would you describe it?

Check out James Watts’ Instagram page here!

PLAY IT AND LEAVE IT

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share this!

More colorful and tasty holiday sights downtown!

Two walks through downtown San Diego. Yesterday, and early this morning before sunrise.

Another helping of colorful and tasty holiday photographs!

San Diego’s famous U.S. Grant Hotel is brightly lit Christmas green and red for the 2024 holiday season.

Advertisement on a downtown San Diego bus stop shelter promotes the Holiday Bowl, which is coming up on Friday, December 27.

The plaza in front of 550 West C Street has become a magical holiday wonderland.

A beautifully lit wreath in the same plaza.

Last year’s illuminated “Christmas crane” is back in the sky above downtown San Diego!

Santa has landed at a building under construction!

Someone from Italy also took photos of this Christmas spectacle while standing on the sidewalk beside me. She commented this is a sight you’d only see in America. I’ll take that as a good thing!

If you want to feel good, drop into the Donut Bar and say Hi to my friends.

Hungry for a super scrumptious chocolate yule log? Call the Donut Bar and they’ll make one for you!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Thank you for sharing!

Voronoi tessellation in San Diego at night!

I took these photographs this morning while it was still dark. They show new public artwork in downtown San Diego. My camera was placed up against the construction fence surrounding the not-yet-opened Progress Park (at the corner of Broadway and Harbor Drive) at the new RaDD complex.

This very cool sculpture, which is illuminated in the night, is titled Shhh Pavilion: The Hopekeeper.

Yes, that’s an interesting name! Even more interesting is the fact that the sculpture’s geometric structure utilizes Voronoi tessellation.

Huh? What?

Learn more about this sculpture, Voronoi tessellation and this new public park coming to San Diego’s waterfront by visiting a past blog post by clicking here!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Thank you for sharing!