March 24, 2005

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  THURSDAY PHOTOPOST: Another rainstorm, another beautiful day filled with puffy cumulus clouds and deep blue skies. I took the camera into work, and snapped the following shots on the way home. They are not presented in the order in which they were shot, however. 

  

  First is a highly modified photo taken driving across the Vincent Thomas bridge, passing under the first suspension tower and looking toward the second, travelling in a westerly direction. This photo has been straightened, cropped, the sun glare "enhanced" with a digital lens flare, and the blue of the sky has been "colorized" and some of the shadows have been darkened. This was shot while I was driving, and I didn't even look at the video screen when I took the photo. One should always be a passenger in a car when attempting to take photographs, never the driver.

  

  The sun was glaring so brightly that I didnt' know if I would get the desired effect in this shot (I did) looking West on Ocean Blvd. toward downtown Long Beach. I am standing outside a chapel, and the stature of the Virgin is up against the wall of a fountain, so getting her and the street in the scene without acutally seeing what I was doing was a bit of a challenge. There were five shots taken, and the Virgin only appears in this one. 

  

  This is looking southeast from the corner of Ocean and Shoreline Drive back toward the Ocean Towers building, one of Long Beach's landmarks buildings.

  

  Here is another view of the Ocean Towers building. A lot of the early Long Beach skyline was destroyed in the 1933 earthquake. Now Ocean Blvd is filled with high rise apartment and condominium buildings. The Ocean Towers was an early oceanside apartment complex.

  

  This is a view of some of the many container cranes in San Pedro with a few puffy rainclouds showing in the sky.

  

  Looking South on Ocean Blvd. It is about 4:15 to 4:30 when I took these shots, and is is "drive time" in L.A. from about 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. I am in between traffic lights and I'm standing in the middle of the street to get this shot. In about a minute, the red light down the block turns green and this section gets filled with autos filled with people on their way home and still doing downtown business.

  

  Here is a circular apartment complex on Ocean Blvd. Although a wide angle shot, I edited out the curvature of the lens in "post production".

  

  I couldn't leave a photo set taken during full moon without at least leaving a moon shot. I set up the tripod and experimented with one of my binocular lenses on some moon shots last night (not this one) and someday soon I hope to be able to afford a telephoto. This is zoomed somewhat, and the moon was going in and out from behind a cloud. The sky is still light (contrast has been darkened to get the moonscape as usual) and this shot was taken at about 5:30 p.m. right before the sun started to set.

  Long Beach has some really nice photo opportunities and yesterday was a nice day for photography, but I was limited by time, and only got a few photos when I could pull my car over and get out to get the shots. The photo of the cranes above was taken on the shoulder of the 110 Freeway.

  At one point I pulled into a Shell Refinery parking lot to get a shot of some cloud cover without getting power lines in my way, and one of the guards at the refinery yelled "What are you doing" and I had to show him I was taking photos of the clouds, and wasn't a sports car driving terrorist taking photos of his installation. "This is private property" the guy bellowed at me. I'm glad he didn't confiscate my $1200.00 camera. I showed them the index sheet. "See, here's some photos of my cats....." Taking photos indiscriminately in this country could be hazardous at times.  

  (FYI: All photos in this post, when clicked, will bring up the full size photo in another browser window. The moon photo especially, looks better full size.)

  • 7:11 am
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