I captured these photographs this morning as the sun was rising. I stood in downtown San Diego, at one magical spot on Broadway.
As I walked past the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse, I had to freeze in my tracks. Because my eyes were spellbound.
The first photos below are of the San Diego Central Courthouse, whose fascinating architecture rises nearby. Light, shadow, beautiful glass windows and soaring gulls combined to cast their spell…
Then I turned my camera east to capture the magical early morning light along Broadway…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You might remember a few photographs I took of buildings reflected in puddles. I posted those last month, after downtown San Diego had experienced a night of rain.
Looking into those silver puddles was almost like peering into a strange, bright world just beyond our own. To see those photos again, you can click here.
Well, during my walk among those magic puddles a seed was planted.
That seed germinated, grew, broke through, has blossomed.
If you’d like to read my newly completed short story, which I titled The Shining World, click here.
Last night it rained. This afternoon the winter storm arrives in earnest. It will be raining on and off in San Diego for most of the week.
This morning I walked from Cortez Hill to Golden Hill and back. As I moved through downtown, I noticed interesting reflections in the sidewalk puddles.
Whenever I found a good rain puddle, I peered through the shining, magical portal and glimpsed fragments of a mysterious city…
I have lots of cool (and unusual) photos from my Golden Hill walk coming up, so stay tuned!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to fly around a city as a bird? Traveling in three dimensions, in any direction, wherever you please?
When I walk downtown, with all the seagulls, crows, sparrows, pigeons and other birds flying about, I sometimes try to imagine what they see. And what, if anything, they think of it all!
During my walk this morning I took the above photo at Civic Center Plaza. And I started to look for unique and unusual photographs.
Gravity glued me to the sidewalk, but some of these photos might provide something of a bird’s perspective.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
This morning, after walking down from the top of Cortez Hill, I headed west along Beech Street to catch the trolley at the Little Italy station.
Early sunlight was reflecting brightly from downtown’s many buildings. Surrounded by fascinating forms, shadows and reflections, I took this series of photographs…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
I took these moody photos yesterday afternoon near South Mission Beach Park and the Mission Beach Jetty. You can see the volleyball courts on the sand. You’ll also see the nearby lifeguard station.
The lowering sun had vanished behind a gray bank of fog drifting in from the Pacific Ocean. I thought I’d snap a few photos to see how they’d come out.
They seem to tell a mysterious story about life.
And about silver that lives in the gray.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
There’s a hidden garden in Balboa Park that almost nobody visits. It’s called the Administrative Courtyard.
The Administrative Courtyard is green, peaceful and very beautiful. There are fountains. There are arbors with vines and trees. To me, the most wonderful part of this courtyard garden are the gazebos at its corners. They give this special place personality. They are both cheerful and elegant, welcoming visitors with their bright tiled domes and nearby benches.
As I walked through and around the gazebos on a sunny winter’s day, I found many interesting contrasts of light and shadow for my camera.
If you’d like to find the hidden Administrative Courtyard, head to Balboa Park’s Inspiration Point, east of Park Boulevard, and walk behind the Developed Regional Parks Administration Building. That’s the handsome building that stands with its double towers atop a hill.
This corner of Balboa Park, including the Administration Building and nearby Veterans Museum (originally a military chapel), was once part of San Diego’s United States Naval Hospital, which was built in the early 1920s. When the hospital moved into Florida Canyon, Inspiration Point opened up its wonders to you and me.
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See that tiny, tiny dot in the night sky directly above the photographer’s knuckles? People are calling it the Christmas Star. Astronomers call it a great conjunction, when the two largest planets in our solar system–Jupiter and Saturn– appear very close together to eyes viewing from Earth.
Today is December 21, 2020, the Winter Solstice. I took this photograph with my little camera from the Cabrillo Bridge in Balboa Park shortly after dark. That’s downtown San Diego you see on the left.
The last time Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction this closely (and could be seen in most of the Northern Hemisphere) was the year 1226. You’ll have to wait sixty years to see it again. I suppose I won’t be around.
I’ve read and heard conjecture that the biblical Magi were guided to Bethlehem by the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the year of Christ’s birth. Some believers claim the timing would have been about right.
Can you make out that miniscule dot? Is that the same “star” the Wise Men saw?
Another good question might be: Is a light from far away what the wise see?
Jupiter and Saturn will continue their orbits around the sun, as will the Earth, long after you and I and every worldly thing we have done and hold dear has vanished, turned to dust, to be swirled by an unseen finger, transformed into something else.
Great conjunctions will continue hundreds, thousands, millions of years into the future. A billion years from this moment–give or take a century–there will be another Christmas Star.
Cool San Diego Sights! 