Hole in the Clouds


Meta

Apr 26, 2018

Nothing, it seems, gets past our readers.

That April 19 post featuring a boat hemmed in by high-rise apartment towers in Hong Kong? Not even a real boat, per reader Marion Puglisi, who pursued the truth of the matter with her source (her brother) in Hong Kong. It seems that the area was once the harbor front, and the real estate company that built the apartment buildings also built "what looks like a boat" on the property, "as a nod to that past."

And the April 7 post of artwork showing a city peeled back to reveal the nearly blank slate of what might once have been? That was a cropped version of a 2011 print advertising campaign by telecom corporation Batelco in Bahrain. The idea was that Batelco could help you peel away all the urban clutter to highlight just the bit you were interested in; different versions of the ad isolated a hospital, a hotel, and a Chinese restaurant. We have Pat Nelson to thank for peeling away the internet clutter via what she admits was "dogged image searching" to uncover the story behind the story.

And the name of this website, Hole in the Clouds? For what it's worth, today's photo does in fact show a real hole in real clouds. An airplane taking off from Sea-Tac airport last December punched this hole on a day when the air surrounding a mid-level cloud deck was so quiet and still that water vapor lacked the oomph to change from liquid to frozen form, despite superchilled temperatures up there that were way below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The airplane stirred things up, flash-freezing the cloud in its vicinity, and the ice dropped away, leaving us a big gaping hole for the camera.

(h/t: Marion Puglisi   Pat Nelson)