Griffith Observatory Fire Sky Countdown Timer

The sky is doing something that should require a permit. That is the thing about Los Angeles in the late afternoon. The marine layer, the smog, the desert heat and the ocean all get into an argument, and sometimes the result is this. Clouds that look like they are burning from the inside. Purple at the edges, gold in the cracks. The observatory just sits underneath, white and calm, three black domes, entirely unbothered. It has been in films for seventy years and has never once looked like it was trying. I arrived about twenty minutes too late to be anywhere good, so I shot from the road with a lot of empty asphalt across the bottom, which I would normally crop out. I kept it. It gives the building somewhere to stand. A bus pulled out and the whole white facade flickered in its exhaust haze for a second, then went back to being solid. People were drifting up the ramp in twos and threes, some carrying telescopes, and somebody was flying a drone that everyone was pretending not to notice. Ten minutes later it was all grey. This is the kind of picture you get by being in the right car park at the right time.