I have heard about the Cotton Bowl a lot over the years. There are so many Bowl games these days that I kind of forgot that some of them are actually the names of stadiums. I didn’t even know where it was. Turns out it is Dallas and it is right by the approach to Love Field. I happened to have the camera in hand as we came down final approach and got a few shots of the stadium and the surrounding facilities. It looked a bit quieter on this day than is sometimes the case.
Here is one for those of you that know your vintage cars. How much is a Gull Wing Mercedes worth? This one is kept in the Lyon Air Museum in California. It seems to be in great condition and I assume it is worth quite a bit but I have no idea how much. It was tucked in amongst lots of valuable aircraft so is not the most expensive thing on display. Since the planes are generally airworthy, I would guess this is a runner too.
A quick trip to Dallas for work was necessary and I took the little camera along for the trip. As we came in towards Love Field, we flew over ares that are in the process of being built up or have recently been so. Seeing plots of land with the street layout showing but the plots not yet built up showed what had been there before in the areas that were now populated. A closer look showed that the houses did have a variety of styles but, from above, the roofs all seemed to be very similar and they were close together. It was almost like someone had grabbed a bunch of houses from a Monopoly set and lined them up next to each other. On the ground it probably looks nice but from above it was very uniform.
My trip to Rainbow Canyon gave me plenty of time to enjoy the scenery as the jets only showed up infrequently. It was a cool and clear day on the whole but there were some times when clouds moved in. This caused me some concern since I didn’t want to wait for a long time and then have jets show up when the valley was socked in!
Fortunately, the clouds did not get in the way of the main focus of the trip. We did get some clouds drifting over the valley far below us. We also got little puffs of cloud working their way up the canyon. One bank of cloud rose out of the canyon and across the ridge on the opposite side from me. I watched it drift across the surface gradually obscuring areas that had been clear a moment before.
Another small cloud formation drifted up the canyon towards me. It was an isolated little cloud and it drifted in my direction and floated up over the edge of the ridge and to one side of where I was standing before it dissipated. Then it was all clear again and I could go back to waiting for the jets.
My departure from New York was out of Newark Airport. The day was coming to a close as we taxied out for departure and the turn after take off gave me a view back across towards Manhattan. The sun was getting low in the sky so, while the sky behind the city wasn’t glowing, the light on the city was really nice. Not a bad view as you start the long trip home. Fortunately the winds were favorable and the trip back took an hour less than expected!
When I worked in Oakland, I got some images of the building on Broadway and Telegraph that slots into the narrow wedge shaped plot of land. In my post on that building which you can read here, I talked about the Flatiron Building in New York. Finally, on a work visit, I got to see the original (assuming it was built first). It happened to be right next to the place I was meeting a colleague for dinner. Couldn’t resist taking the camera along for that.
A work trip required a quick dash across the country to New York. I got into the city at the end of the day and checked in to my hotel for the evening. It turned out that my room was at the top of the hotel and had a view straight across at the Empire State Building. The weather wasn’t great but what are you going to do when you have an iconic building across the way? Of course I took some pictures. I even did a panorama.
When I got back from dinner, the building was lit up nicely. The clouds had not dissipated but, at night, you don’t notice them unless they envelope the whole thing so I tested the low light capabilities of the camera. It did just fine. I headed out of town the following day. It snowed in the morning but was bright and sunny by the time I was at the airport. Too late to get a better shot sadly.
Cannon Beach was quite a way north of where we were staying in Oregon. However, it was on our route home so we stopped off to wander along the sands for a bit prior to hunting down some lunch. We were not the only ones enjoying a sunny day on the beach but, given the expanse of sand available, there was plenty of space for everyone to spread out so it wasn’t crowded.
The huge flat sands were most impressive and the rocks that sit out in the water look very cool. It is hard to gauge their scale when they are out like that as they are so separated from the people that you don’t have enough of a reference to work with. It is safe to say that they are pretty big though. There was a bit of sea spray in the air which made everything take on a slightly more misty look when you were looking south towards the sun. Looking north this was a lot less apparent. I could see why a landscape photographer would come here to spend some time in the early and late hours.
The moisture in the air along the Oregon coast can catch you out at times. On one drive south out of Yachats we rounded a bend in the road where we looked down from quite a height along the beaches stretched beneath us. It looked most impressive, but we were then on the way down a twisty road and had missed the pull off. I made a note to come back another time. This I did but the conditions had changed a lot. There was now a lot more mist in the air and the beaches were disappearing into the glare from the sun. Even so, it was still a very pretty location.
We did a bit of a road trip while in Oregon. I was interested in seeing Bandon Beach again – we went there about ten years before but I didn’t remember much about it – and it was a couple of hours down the coast but we had a day when the weather was forecast to start out average and get better. Therefore, a road trip seemed like a good idea. It was quite fun seeing the different scenery as we headed down the coast but, after a while, the highway moved inland and we were getting a different type of view (or none at all for some parts of it).
We got to Bandon and checked out the view from different parts of the coastline. However, while the light was pretty good, I had not anticipated just how windy it was going to be. As I stood on the overlook checking out the beach, I was getting absolutely pummeled by the wind. It was hard to stand upright let alone hold the camera steady. Of course, if the picture ends up being sharp, there is nothing in it that would indicate how the conditions were.
Bandon is like a lot of the Oregon coastline in that it has large rock stacks sitting on or just off the beach. These make the area rather popular with landscape photographers. An early morning start and the use of tripods and strong neutral density filters is going to be pretty common here I would imagine. That was not what I was here for. I didn’t even venture down to the beach. Given how hard the wind was blowing, it didn’t seem like it would be the relaxing beach stroll that I would have liked so I was content to enjoy the view from up on the bluffs. Besides, we had the drive back to consider as well.