Mormon Rocks

Our trip up the Cajon Pass was to photograph the rock formations officially know as Rock Candy Mountains, locally they are known as Mormon Rocks. The name was given to them from the Mormon settlers who passed through Cajon Pass in 1851 to settle in Southern California. 

This photograph was taken just after the sun rose over the surrounding mountains. I also got a little bit lucky to have a train come through at that moment in time to pose for me below the rock formation.

The Curve

On Saturday morning, dark and early, a group of like minded amateur photographers met up for an early morning photo shoot. The place we picked was Mormon Rocks in Cajon Pass, (the 15 Freeway's route out of the LA Basin into the High Desert and beyond to Salt Lake City.) I have wanted to visit this place since the late 90's and although I have driven through there many times I have never stopped for a closer look. My reason for wanting to visit this area is probably a little bit morbid. Having been a train driver, I wanted to visit the scene of a train crash that happened here. At 4:10AM on February 1st 1996 the four locomotives and forty five of the forty nine cars that formed the freight train known as H-BALT1-31 left the rails on the curve photographed above; the resulting pile of twisted metal then caught fire and burned for three days. Sadly, two of the three train crew on this train died and the third, the engineer, was seriously injured.  I dedicate this photo to their memory...

Security

I thought I'd try and get a little bit creative today and take a photograph of barbed wire. This was taken at one of our existing radio sites at Paradise Peak. As always with these mountain tops the view is spectacular, but as always I was a bit late in the day getting up there so the light was pretty bad. So I figured I'd try something different from my usual photographs and see what i could do with some barbed wire and a radio tower. Then with a little bit of black & white magic I got this. I hope you like it.

The Golf Course

Some golf courses, well in fact most golf courses are some of the most beautiful places to see. Sometimes you just get to see how the designer gets to let their imagination run riot and come up with something spectacular. A lot of times though the regular courses that us every day Joe's get to play try and mimic features from the more famous courses. This photograph was taken at the Links of Summerly course when I played there last week. It's actually a course modelled after some of the more famous courses from the home of golf, Scotland.

The Taj Mahal

First off let me wish everyone "Happy New Year" and I hope you all had a great holiday period.

Now, to todays photograph! I have been asked a few times now, "What camera do you use?" Well for those of you that want to know, my main camera is a Canon 5D MkII. It's a great camera and does everything I need, it's one downfall though? It's heavy, big and bulky. Chase Jarvis, a professional photographer wrote a book called, "The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You" (and that is so true.) Some of my photographs posted on my website here were taken with a Nikon Point & Shoot camera and this shot was taken with a second generation iPhone. (It just happened to be the only camera I had with me.) Sure the quality is not great, BUT I got the photograph and with some computer work, got the photograph I wanted!

So to the tale of this photograph: Priya, one of my co-workers, was celebrating her birthday and invited a group of us to join her at an Indian restaurant for dinner. Kerri, the young lady in the photograph and another co-worker, happened to be sitting across the table from me with this bottle of Indian beer between us. And so this photograph was created. Hope you enjoy it.

The Windsock

You may remember last week I posted a photograph called Some Plastic Roses & A Teddy Bear. The place I took that photograph was the place photographed above. I actually stopped along this Forestry Road to take the photograph above of this windsock and the view of Lake Elsinore below, when I found the flowers and the teddy bear laying amongst the rocks. I'm really not sure as to why there is a windsock on the cliff edge at this location. Someone mentioned hand gliders to me, but really I have no idea. The one thing I do know thought, the windsock, the graffiti  and the view makes for an interesting photograph. Oh, by the way, Happy New Year everyone and I hope 2010 brings you everything you hope for.

The Glass House

This is another fun project that is located at Tio's Tacos here in Riverside. At first I thought it was just a building with an interesting pattern on the walls. Then I looked closer and discovered that it was a building made completely of glass bottles. All the necks of the bottles are visible on the inside. This guy really has a strange imagination to even think of doing this and obviously way too much time on his hands to get it actually built.

A Downtown View

This is a view of Downtown Riverside taken from Blue Mountain. For all you Brit's that wonder what Downtown means or is, it's the town or city center. To give you an idea of scale here, the blue glass building on the top left is the County of Riverside Administration Center and stands 13 stories tall.It also means that the freeway overpass in the bottom right is pretty damn high and gives a good view while driving across it. And in case you forget just click on the image if you want a larger view.

The Egg Man

I grew up in a small hamlet called Aingers Green. It consisted of about 150 houses and was about a mile away from the nearest village of Great Bentley. My dad was the local postman for 10 years, so he pretty much knew anybody and everybody in the village. One of those people lived just around the corner from us and we knew him as The Egg Man. He used to have his own chickens (lots of them) and we used to walk round to his property to buy our eggs. In his back yard there was this old hand water pump that just used to fascinate me. Just thinking that people used to get their water by hand pumping it out of a well was amazing to me. Anyway on Saturday we had a meeting of our newly formed (and very informal) Riverside Photography Club at a Mexican restaurant called Tio's Tacos. Out the back of the restaurant the owner has collected 20 years worth of junk and trash and turned it into some amazing sculptures and objects of interest. So while walking through all this stuff I found the water pump photographed above. As I was sitting at my desk processing this photo it too me back to my childhood and The Egg Man.

Here Comes Santa

Here comes Santa Claus, he's about to climb down your chimney. This is part of the display at the Mission Inn in Riverside. I would just like to thank you all for visiting the site and keeping me going. Merry Christmas and have a wonderful New Year.