By Johna Till Johnson
A sweltering Sunday evening calls for a walk in the park…
Central Park silhouette
After a brief cloudburst, the sun emerges from the clouds, lighting up the flowers…
Flower
And setting the raindrops on the leaves to sparkling…
Raindrops and flowers
The skies darken..
Twilight
The lights come on, reminding me of an iconic children’s story…
Narnia in summertime…
… And the last of the light catches the retreating thunderheads.
Clouds
Posted in Life, Nature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Central Park, Clouds, Flower, New York City
By Vladimir Brezina
We are about to be hit by one of the Forces of Nature…
(In the Florida Everglades—story and more photos are here.)
A second contribution to this week’s Photo Challenge, Forces of Nature. The first contribution was here.
Posted in Kayaking, Nature, Photography
Tagged Clouds, Everglades Challenge, Florida Kayaking, Forces of Nature, Kayaking, Photography, postaday, postaweek2015, Storm, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
The towers of Manhattan are insignificant under the looming storm clouds…
(more photos are here and here)
A contribution to this week’s Photo Challenge, Forces of Nature. A second contribution is here.
Posted in Nature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Clouds, Forces of Nature, Manhattan, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2015, Storm, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Sky, and the Weekly Photo Challenge is Let There Be Light! Putting the two together—
Crepuscular rays, also called “Backstays of the Sun” and even “Fingers of God”. Let There Be Light, indeed!
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Clouds, Crepuscular Rays, Let There Be Light!, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Sky, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
Ailsa’s travel-themed photo challenge this week is Up.
Looking up, trees and, above them, clouds…
A second “Up” post is here.
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Clouds, Photography, postaweek, postaweek2013, Travel, Trees, Up, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
On A Word In Your Ear , Skinnywench’s photo challenge this week is Cloud.
As I said in my first response to the challenge, I particularly remember two recent days on which a dramatic, constantly changing cloudscape absolutely dominated the scene. The first response showed the first day. Here is the second.
On Day 5 of our Long Island kayak circumnavigation last summer, we were approaching the eastern tip of Long Island when the clouds began to get interesting. The spectacular thunderstorm hit just as were rounding Montauk Point, the easternmost, most exposed point of our journey—
The full story of that day is here.
By Vladimir Brezina
On A Word In Your Ear , Skinnywench’s photo challenge this week is Cloud. Since I have so many photos of clouds—it’s hard to avoid clouds, just as it is hard to avoid water, in kayaking photos—I thought I would join in.
But, although I have many photos of clouds, the clouds of two special days stand out particularly in my memory. On those days, a dramatic, constantly changing cloudscape dominated the scene. We stared upward, mesmerized.
Here’s the first of those days.
The story of the day is here, more photos are here, and larger versions of some of the photos are here. And the second of the two spectacularly Cloudy days is here.
By Vladimir Brezina
We’ve had Sunset, and so it’s time for Sunrise. This one was in Key Biscayne, Florida, this past Sunday.
And a bonus…
More photos are here.
Tagged Clouds, Dawn, Florida, Key Biscayne, Photography, Sunrise
By Johna Till Johnson
Photos by Vladimir Brezina
It’s late morning on a cool, rainy early June day.
Vlad and I have taken half a day off midweek for a training paddle—we need to get our mileage up for the Long Island circumnavigation we’ve got planned in a few weeks.
The currents aren’t right for too much, so we’ve decided to head down to Coney Island, land if possible for a late lunch, and return. (Boat landings are prohibited on the swimming beaches at Coney Island during the summer season, so we are not sure how the landing will work out…)
The day is oddly peaceful for midweek: Despite the usual ferry and commercial traffic, everything feels peaceful and subdued—muffled, perhaps, by the grey clouds that lower overhead and cling like cotton wadding to the buildings and bridges.
Cool, cloudy, muffled: Not what you’d normally think of as a wonderful day. Much less a heavenly one. But just south of Governor’s Island I overhear this exchange on the radio:
Captain 1: “How’s it going? We really need to get together sometime.”
Captain 2: (unintelligible crackle).
Captain 1: “Yeah, I hear ya! (chuckle). Just another day in paradise…”
Vlad and I laugh at that, and wonder. Maybe the two are planning to get together in Bermuda, or the Bahamas? Surely New York Harbor on a cool, rainy day doesn’t qualify as “paradise”.
Guess what? By the end of our trip, I’m not so sure. Yes, we get shooed off the beach at Coney Island by the lifeguards. But we paddle across schools of dancing fish, peruse the Yellow Submarine…. and are greeted upon our return just at sunset by one of the most dramatic, spectacularly colorful rain showers either of us have ever seen.
Just another day in paradise? Look at the pictures, and you decide!
The best of these photos are enlarged on a full-width photo page. Take a look –>
All photos from the paddle are here. And for the Yellow Submarine of Brooklyn, see here.
Posted in Kayaking, Nature, New York City
Tagged Clouds, Coney Island, Kayaking, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, Rain, Sunset, Yellow Submarine
By Vladimir Brezina
As kayakers, we are intimately familiar with waves on the surface of the water. But waves produced by the same basic physical mechanism—gravity waves—can form anywhere where a perturbation sets off oscillations in a density-stratified fluid. The surface of the water—an interface between two fluids of different densities, water and air—is just the most familiar location. But essentially similar waves, albeit now internal rather than surface waves, can form deep below in the water, and high above in the air.
Posted in Nature, Science and Technology
Tagged Clouds, Dead-Water Effect, Gravity Wave, Internal Wave, Meteorology, Ocean Wave, Oceanography, Wave, Wave Cloud
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.
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Wind Against Current 