Contemplating Art

From one obelisk city to another, a brief visit to the nation's capitol.

Dog Jours in Paris

Dogs today. Despite the cold everyone was out walking their pooches. The Frenchman is well known at the Rue Cler market. He shouts to passersby from his produce stand. He has la gueule bien Francaise!

Froid!

Today was filled with close-ups, not sure how or why that happened. It started with the headline that screamed our sentiments. Il fait frigging froid ici! And it’s not just because I’m a southern Californian all the restaurant owners have been apologetic about the weather saying even the Parisians aren’t used to this kind of cold.

I was worried about including so many shots of alcoholic beverages but….hey it is what’s happening. I might add here that my favorite beverage after a California cab is a Ricard.

You’ll have to decipher the rest of the photos on your own.

Plus de Paris

Cafés, le metro, la seine les affiches, les musees, c’est ansi qu’on passe le temps a Paris….et aussi un cognac a l’apres-midi.

La Tour Eiffel

In Paris for a few days with a good friend, John Mabanglo. We've known each other for years and had always wanted to visit the city of light together. He's a photographer for the European Press Photo agency and travels the world shooting assignments. Our plan is to eat plenty of good meals washed down with some good red wine then roll ourselves back on the plane. Oh and maybe take a snap or two. We’re staying near La Tour Eiffel so here’s a couple views.

Atwater Village

The LA River illustrates the struggle of Man vs Nature...but in such a way that it almost seems a joke. Here we have a river by it's nature and it's history has defined and really created Los Angeles, a city that is also created by man. A fence that seems to be built to keep plants away from the water source, a tree that beckons to the birds that prefer the order of power lines, plants that somehow force their way through the concrete channels of the river, the river that attempts to cleanse itself of the tons of garbage that is dumped into it by man...

Venice Beach

There are people who live in the middle of the country that make it to the beach more often than I do. Every now and then I battle the 10 and make my way from Pasadena to the Pacific Ocean. Here's a couple recent snaps of Venice Beach. Oh, the Pacific's behind that concrete wall.

Highland Park

These are a couple of my first images of Highland Park. I often take the Gold line from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles and this part of town has always caught my eye. It has a long history of art and architecture and is one of the oldest settled parts of Los Angeles. In the 1990s flocks of gang members would often gather along Figueroa street establishing their pecking order.


And now bargain hunters are looking for historic craftsman homes to renovate before the area turns into Silver Lake or Los Feliz.

Creepy

Here’s one for All-hallow-even. I like spiders. I like the good work they do. I like that they’re so industrious. I like that they spin their beautiful webs and wait for the pay-off, also known as working smarter, not harder. But truth be told they do creep me out. On occasion in the late evening or night I’ve been out walking and had that unique feeling that sticking your head into a web brings and I’m sure there’s few funnier sights than seeing a grown man, flailing with camera in hand at…what appears to be nothing. Obviously it’s not the web that freaks me out it’s the thought that Mr/Ms. Industrious was somewhere in the middle of that web. Of course, I’m sure they’re not too happy to see me eye-to-eye either.
You can find hundreds of these fuzzy industrious arachnids under the bridges throughout the Glendale Narrows. They are an inch to two inches in length and the color of the water that runs through the river.

Paper

Photographers are obsessed with paper…okay this photographer is obsessed with paper. Yes, the paper that photographs are printed on. In the days of the wet darkroom there were choices but not really that many. Today, in the digital age, the choices, like everything digital, are numerous, too numerous. I study the surface of the paper, the texture of the paper, the weight of the paper, how the light reflects off the paper, as if somehow the paper is really going to change that crappy picture into a lasting piece of art. Oh and now I’m sniffing paper. No, I don’t know, really I don’t know.

South Atwater Village

If you've spent any time at all near the LA River, even driving along side of it on the I-5 then you've probably seen some of the work of artist Leo Limon. Limon is the artist known for turning storm drain outlets into cats.



Patience is not one of the characteristics that pop into mind when I describe myself but I have been known to wait for an element to come into a composition that will make a picture unique. I saw these pigeons sitting on these concrete piers at the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge and I knew that eventually they would take-off. After I made this picture I recomposed and the waiting continued….I lost the second time and gave up on what in my mind would have been a better picture….another reason to hate pigeons.

Glendale Narrows

Two good things happen when it rains. Either the next day is incredibly clear and makes for some unusual photos of LA, as it's rarely incredibly clear, or the day will be overcast which is what I prefer, preferable compared to the usual hazy/smoggy sunshine. But then some might argue that that wouldn't be LA.
These images of the Los Angeles River were made at the top of Glendale Narrows.

On a Clear Day

When I was young and growing up in northern California there was a joke that went like this: On a clear day what do you see in southern California? UCLA. Apparently I thought it was so hilarious that I remembered it after all these years.