While at the beach on Coronado Island, I looked up from my novel and I caught a glimpse of a sun dog. A sun dog is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun.

The photo was taken with my mobile phone and doesn’t do the scene justice.  The sun dog on the left was more prominent than its counter-puppy on the right.  The distinctive halo is not easily seen in the photo, unfortunately. The pink “petals” and the two horizontal rays coming out of the sun are refractions in the lens, but the bright spots at the ends were truly there in the sky.

Here are a couple of other photos I snapped.

A lone sun dog hovers over the Coronado islands on the horizon.

Looking south toward the world-famous Hotel Del Coronado, with Mexico in the distance. It was an awesome day at the beach — 79° in mid-December. Ah, paradise in my backyard.

To find out how sun dogs are formed, accompanied by even better photos, see this Sun Dog article.

What can we learn about (in)effective creative design from a rock video and a movie?  Are you big enough to handle the truth?