I recently listened to Alain de Botton's
The Art of Travel. He held my attention for most of it, but he really grabbed me when he described the view from a plane window, (I've always loved photos taken from plane windows).
And to think that all along, hidden from our sight, our lives were this small: the world we live in but almost never see; the way we must appear to the hawk and to the gods.
If the hawk, or the gods, were traveling with me recently from Houston to LAX they would have glimpsed this too....
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| Smoke, not smog leaving Houston |
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| Much of Texas was on fire |
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| You can almost see the curvature of the Earth! |
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| What appeared to be a large quarry in the middle of suburban LA |
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| Smog not smoke over LA |
Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from at home with books
No, don't think thats a quarry, those are slopes wiht the drainage culverts....Might be a landfill.
ReplyDeleteOdd as it sounds, our LA area haze and smog is comforting to me, when I come back from a well cleared area like San Francisco
Ah, that makes so much more sense! The landfill bit- not the smog so much.... I couldn't work out why it was an inverse sort of quarry! D'Oh.
ReplyDeleteYes, that quote! So true. I always pick a window seat when I'm in an airplane - the views alone are just so amazing.
ReplyDeleteWhat great captures. I always cringe and feel so badly when I hear about all the fires (a lot in CA too. The thought is very scary.
ReplyDeleteFantastic photos - how did you get such good ones from the aeroplane's window - very clever!
ReplyDeleteI agree that the photos from the plane turned out really well. Mine never do. The pictures remind me that our huge civiliazations are just so many ant hills to any one peering down from above. Here's My Saturday Snapshot
ReplyDeleteLooking down at the earth below is the only thing that distracts me on a flight (and keeps me from imagining our plane crashing!). Lovely shots!
ReplyDeleteHere's MY SATURDAY SNAPSHOT and
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Great photo's. Nature amazes me, fire, tornado's etc... might be a way for the earth to offset overgrowth etc... maybe?
ReplyDeleteSmog... remind me why I chose to live 20 miles outside NYC?!
Have a great weekend.
These aerial photos are pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteI remember a trip to Colorado and looking out over the patchwork of green from the plane. Now I try to get a window seat at least once on a trip to look over the landscape before going higher.
I've never tried to take a photo from a plane, they turned out really nice though!
ReplyDeleteWe had to fly over California fires a couple of years ago...obviously we had to fly around them. The pilot even made an announcement that if we smelled smoke, he just wanted us to know that it wasn't us. (Don't you love comedian pilots??) We could see, not only the smoke but the red orange flames...it was very sad. I love the window seat as well :)
ReplyDeleteThose are nice, clear photos. I always seem to sit by the scratched up airplane window.
ReplyDeletePhotos from the sky makes me realize how tiny we humans really are.
There is something really cool about the view from an airplane window, isn't there? Those are great photos!
ReplyDeleteMy Snapshot is here.
I don't travel much anymore, but what a fabulous selection of photos you've shared with us.
ReplyDeleteI do like de Botton! His "Consolations of Philosophy" is a favorite. I like that in the Art of Travel, he advocated sketching locations with a pencil in order to get us to really focus on them.
ReplyDeleteIt really does put things in perspective. I like the one with the streets that look like art - like the Nazca Lines or something. :)
ReplyDeleteI always like looking down from airplanes and try to get a window seat when I can.
ReplyDeleteToo bad about the drought in Texas, I hope you get some rain soon.
I've been flying in to LA every few years from 1983, and even though LA still has some smog it's a big difference from that dirty yellow pea soup I remember. I first came over as an exchange student in 1983 and lived in the San Fernando Valley for several months before realizing that there were some fairly high mountains around. Then, one day, we had a lot of rain and when it cleared you could see the mountains. I was stunned and shocked. Now, when I visit my bonus family, we see a lot more of those mountains :-)
Wonderful aerial photos! I haven't been in the air much, but I loved the view from up there.
ReplyDeleteHere's my Snapshot: http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2011/11/saturday-snapshot-november-5.html
Great photos! I don't fly that much so these are really neat to see.
ReplyDeleteExcellent pics from the airplane. The details is so interesting!
ReplyDelete:)
How far do you live from the are of the fire?
ReplyDeleteIt's very sad to see forest fire and destruction.
Love aerial shots too, Louise. That one around the middle, it could almost be Indigenous Australian art. Love it.
ReplyDeleteLove #7 especially and I love sitting by the window as well (now have to compete with the kids for it!!). I am thinking of how much wonderful the photos would have been without the smog (the smoke from the fire - that is just sad but the smog, we can try to reduce)
ReplyDeleteThe fires in Texas were during my visit there in August/September. I hope that they've finished now with the cooler weather. I was lucky and had a not too scratched window, and just used my trusty point and shoot, which has a reasonable zoom. The only trick I know to photos through windows is to tilt the lens so that it's at an angle to the glass so you don't get reflections.
ReplyDeleteSadly I've become old enough to generally want an aisle seat on long haul flights. And lets face it most flights out of Australia are long haul. A window seat on a nice short 3 hour flight is great though.
Smellin coffee- I was rather astonished at his suggestion that we draw sketches. I am completely hopeless at drawing, and it wouldn't help my remembrances at all, or focus my interest. I think taking photos for me, and for my blog, or memes such as this one, really helps though. So I choose to use my camera instead of a pencil.
ReplyDeleteSue that was my feeling with that picture too, and why I think I like it. It was obvious at the time, and I took the picture with Aboriginal art in mind.