Dusk in Santa Monica

 

This photograph was taken from Santa Monica Promenade and captures dusk looking across Santa Monica Bay towards Malibu in the distance. The road in the foreground is Highway 1 which runs all the way up the coast of California from Capistrano Beach,south of Los Angeles to San Francisco. If you every have a chance to drive Highway 1 you should just once for the experience, it's one of the most spectacular drives you will take. The houses by the road in this photograph are right on the beach, the owners just walk out the gate at the rear of their garden straight onto the sandy beach. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Hold Up at The Grand Canyon

I had always wanted to take a ride on the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams to Grand Canyon Village on the south rim. Finally 10 years after hearing of the railway we decided to take the trip with my mum, dad and aunt while they were here visiting. The train leaves Williams Depot every morning with a couple of exceptions for holidays. It's about a 2 1/2 hour ride to the south rim and along the way there is plenty of entertainment on the train. The steward in charge of your car is a natural comedian, a singer that wonders through and sings some songs and numerous other entertainers. Of course every one of them wants their share of all the tourist dollars on the train, which I and I am sure many others found very annoying. Once at the Grand Canyon station you have a choice find something to do on your own or take an organized bus tour, we opted for the later. Our tour bus driver was great, she reminded me of an old boss of mine but she knew her stuff and went out of her way to make the tour enjoyable and informative. Of course it probably helped that there were only eight of us on her bus, but hey it was fun. Then after the tour with a stop for lunch at the Grand Canyon Hotel (which was included on the tour) we were back on the train and heading back to Williams. Just to remove the last of the dollars from our pockets we even had a Sheriff on board. It turns out that his job was to foil 3 riders on horse back who hold up the train at gun point and then board it just before Williams. If it wasn't for the fact they also wanted more money from you I'm sure it would have been a lot more fun. The scenery you see from the trin is pretty spectacular. It's hard to believe that this railway was built in 1901 and then closed for 15 years in 1974, but I am so happy that someone decided to reopen it in 1989 and that I got to ride it.

London Bridge

Last year my mum, dad and aunt came to visit us, so we thought a road trip was in order. We headed down east on Interstate 10 into Arizona and up to Lake Havasu on our way to the Grand Canyon. One of the attractions of Lake Havasu and to be honest there really isn't many in my opinion, is London Bridge. Well really it's a London Bridge facade made up of a concrete frame and stone blocks on the outside from the London Bridge that was replaced in 1968. The bridge was sold to Robert P.McCulloch, an American entrepreneur for just under $2.4 million, then every stone was numbered, dismantled and shipped to Arizona. Contrary to popular believe McCulloch was not sold London Bridge thinking he was getting Tower Bridge (the more famous of London's bridges). It was interesting to hear from my dad that he used to driver buses over this bridge before it was dismantled and moved.

A Peaceful Place

This is a photograph of a Karesansui which is Japanese for dry landscape garden. It was taken at Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. When I walked through the entrance to it I was the only person there and it instantly felt calming and peaceful. These dry landscape gardens have been found at Zen Buddhist temples since the 14th century and are often called Zen gardens. The gravel is raked to depict waves in an open body of water and the rocks are placed to represent a body of land or mountains. The benches at this garden are for people to sit and take in the peace and abstract beauty of this garden. As I have said before if you want a wonderful day out walking around some beautiful gardens in the middle of a city the Huntington Gardens is well worth a visit.

By the way remember that to get a larger view of any of these photographs I post just click on the photo and it will take you to a larger version.

The Flower

This photograph was taken in the desert garden at Huntington Gardens, Pasadena. I was trying out a macro lens that I had rented for the week. This was a pretty small flower that the macro lens managed to make look a lot bigger. The part the photograph that is in focus is called the "Depth of Field". By setting a large aperture, which confusingly is the smaller f-number the lens aperture can be set to (in this case f2.8) as opposed to a small aperture which is the larger f-number (this lens goes to f22), you can decide which part of the image is in focus. This technique allows for some creativity by blurring the background and the foreground to make sure that the eye is drawn to the part of the image that you want a viewer to see. If you were photographing a landscape scene the desired effect would be to have everything from front to back in focus, this would mean setting the lens to use the smaller aperture, which is the larger f-number. That all sounds very confusing and believe me I was for years, but after some practice and viewing the results it began to all click into place and change the way my photos look.

I have a different version of this photograph that I processed with a different piece of software, click here to see it.

Evolution of A Radio Site

I decided to make Tuesday's a work related day and to kick that off I would document the evolution of a raw piece of land into a radio site.As a recap I work for Riverside County on the Public Safety Enterprise Communications project or PSEC as we know it. With our contractor we will be building 60+ new radio sites throughout Riverside County for our first responders.

The piece of land photographed above is at Arlington in Riverside. The two gentlemen in the photo are doing the surveying work prior to the site construction starting. Over the coming weeks I'll show you how the site grows each week into a big grown up radio site.

Quack Quack

One really positive thing that taking up photography again has done for me is that it gets me out of the house. Janet and I would waste our weekends just doing nothing except watching tv, going to the movies or spending money on more junk we don't need around the house. Posting a good photograph everyday on here is a way bigger challenge than I thought. I go through my photos constantly trying to find good and interesting images that I can tell a story with. So we both decided that now that we have every Friday off work we would make a list of places we would like to visit and for me to photograph. So far we have a list of 16 very varied places, some local and some not but at least we have a plan for our lazy days. I look forward to every weekend now as a photo opportunity and time for us to spend together.

Last Friday we decided to go to Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasadena. One of my friends from work had taken hs wife there and recommended it so we got up and went. Henry Huntington purchased a ranch which was to become the library and gardens we know today. The gardens have a variety of different themes including The Desert, Japanese, Chinese, Australian and Lilly Ponds. This duck was photographed on one of the lilly ponds in the gardens. Over the next few weeks I will share with you some of my other photos I took there of some of the plants in the gardens.

He's A Dam Engineer

One of the many people that have been a part of my life at some point in time that I found absolutely fascinating was my ex-wife's father Myrle (or Cliff as I knew him, because I cannot pronounce Myrle). Actually, most of the women I have dated or married (now on my second marriage) have had parents that I just enjoy spending time with and a couple of them are still part of my life and my dearest friends. Anyway, Cliff was a Dam Engineer for Los Angeles Water and Power and I loved to have conversations with him about engineering stuff. Once Cliff and Sue's dad Les (Sue being my ex-girlfriend and Les being one of those dearest friends) went on a tour of Hoover Dam together. It's always more interesting going on a tour of some place with an expert, as you have your own private tour guide who may not know the history of a place but they know how it works and can explain the details to you. Unfortunately I have been told that Cliff has Alzheimer's now and doesn't always recognize or remember people. I haven't seen Cliff since Stephanie and I split up, but I still remember the things Cliff used to tell me about his work and I will always have very fond memories of those conversations. In fact one day at work I had to go up to Mount Leigh (location of the Hollywood sign) and when I looked down I saw a lake. It was Lake Hollywood which provides Los Angeles with most of it's water and is held back by Mulholland Dam and instantly it made me think of Cliff as it is an LA Water & Power dam.

As for the photograph I picked for this post it's of Big Bear Lake Dam. The history of Big Bear Lake is long and interesting and the dam is now nearly 100 years old having been built in 1912. Cliff enlightened me to the design of the dam comparing it to Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam is an Arch-Gravity dam and holds back the water of Lake Mead by it's pure weight and size. Big Bear Lake Dam on the other hand is a Multiple Arch-Gravity dam and holds back the water of the lake by the design of it's structures. The thin multiple arches allows the weight of the water to compress the dam into the ground and canyon sides making it even stronger. Big Bear's dam appears very lightweight and open (due to it's thin walls) compared with Hoover Dam and yet it was obviously built well as it survived the Big Bear earthquake (magnitude 6.4) in 1992.

My Bath Tub, I Wish

I so wanted to jump in this bath tub so bad, it looked so inviting. While touring Arsenal's Emirates Stadium we were taken into the home sides changing room. Talk about a high tech place. There was a medical room were first aid is administered and preventative care given such as a pre match massage. This bath was across the hall from the medical room and is some sort of hydrotherapy spa with all the latest technology. According to our tour guide the players just love this tub after a hard fought match. All I know is I could live with a bath tub like that, but I would not want to share it with 10 other men at the same time.

A Night with a Joshua Tree or Two

So as the story goes I am sitting at work Tuesday afternoon minding my own business and I hear a conversation going on between some coworkers about going to Joshua Tree National Park to watch the Perseid meteor shower. This meteor shower comes around every August and this year is best seen on this particular Tuesday night in an area away from city lights. So me being me I poke my nose in and get asked if I would like to go along. At first the thought of a 1 1/2 hour drive and a really late night does not really appeal to me, but then I thought "Hey, I need some photographs to post on my site, so what the hell". So after a quick dash home to change and get my camera gear we were off to Joshua Tree. The 12 of us get there at about 9:30pm and get comfy for a long night. Someone brought along her car cigarette lighter powered Margarita blender and so some alcohol flows and eases the wait. The shower was really set to kick in at about midnight, so I used the opportunity to try and figure out how to take photos of stars in complete darkness. That wasn't as easy as I first thought, not only because I could not see a thing to change the settings on my camera. The tough part was figuring out the right exposure time to get the desired effect and a whole lot of trial and error and luck. Well eventually the meteors started to appear at a fairly regular rate and we got to see some amazing streaks across the night sky until we all got tired at about 1am and headed home.

As far as I was concerned Joshua Tree was always the title to the first U2 album I really liked when I was 17 years old. I had no idea it was a national park until a few years later and now I live just over an hour away. It's not what most people would call a pretty national park like Yosemite or Yellowstone but it has an appeal to many because of it's desolation. By the way we are upgrading a radio site in Joshua Tree, so the next time I'm there I will get some daytime pictures to show you it's desolate beauty.

For those of you wondering about the two streaks across the top of the photograph, no unfortunately they were planes and not meteors.