April 26, 2006

• Potpourii Photo Post

  

   The month of May is special to me for three reasons. I was born on May 1, 1953, and on May 1, 1999, when I turned 46, I put my first webpage online for my personal website AllThingsMike, so it will be seven years old next Monday. On Memorial Day (May 30) in 2004 I created this Xanga blog to replace four blogs I was writing on the Blogger service, since they didn't have comments at the time, and I like the idea of interaction. On May 30, WhenWordsCollide (this blog) will be two years old. I've heard this called a "Xangaversary" on other blogs. In the posts leading up to my birthday, I will be presenting more of my "birthday poems", including "Bornagain" which comprised the very first webpage I ever put online. (That's the link, if you want to see it "early".) I will be updating the main page of the AllThingsMike website, and I will be presenting another of my series of Videoblogs: the new one will be a "travelblog" of Albequerque, New Mexico, comprised of footage shot when I visited Regina, one of my lovesearch girlfriends, in March of 2000. I did some work on the video last night, but the program is very unstable, and I lost a lot of editing when the program crashed. I hope to have most of this redone by tonight and present the video before the weekend. Today for my PhotoPost, I'm presenting a "potpourii" PhotoPost, featuring some of the very first photos I uploaded to this blog in May of 2004, and some other various images.

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  This is a shot of the sun in the early morning outside the building where I work in Long Beach, from April of 2004, right after I bought my latest digital camera. As usual, the full 800x600 pixel images can be seen by clicking on the images.

  

   Here is the Queen Anne Cottage on the grounds of the L.A. County Arboretum in Spring of 2004, "dressed" for it's "role" as Dustin Hoffman's and Barbra Streisand's home in the film "Meet the Fockers".

  

   A shot of the "Friendship Bell" atop a hill in Torrance overlooking the ocean. A lone seagull is strolling along the path. This photo is special in that it is one that Liz remembered from my blog when she first visited me, and when we got together for the second time in March of last year, we "met" at the bell before our second "date".

  

  I really like this photo. While taking pictures around Torrance Beach in Spring of '04, I noticed the back part of an old hotel was overgrown with vines. They not only covered the building, which was vacant, but the ground in front of it as well.  

   

   

   My car parked in front of Point Fermin in San Pedro, right by the ocean. I've framed it through the branches of one of the windswept trees in the park along the beach. This was one of the first photos I put on this blog in 2004.

  

   This is a photo I have never shown on the blog, although it is in the 2nd Catalina folder in my  Webshots Gallery. The buidling is the famous "Avalon Casino" which served as a ballroom during the thirties and through the World War II years. I shot this from the back of the Casino and it isn't a view people usually see on postcards.  

   

   I like to photograph my car from low angles when I visit places. Here it is on a hillside drive in Elysian Park in mid 2005. The photo above, this one, and the following shots have never been shown on the blog before.

  

  A shot of the midway at the Los Angeles County Fair in September 2005, taken when Liz and I visited the Fair. This image shows the Merry Go Round and the largest mobile ferris wheel in America. I'm standing pretty far away from the wheel in order to get it's full height. You ride in enclosed car, of which there are about 40. At the top of the wheel, it seems as if you are looking out a plane window or from the top of a skyscraper. 

   

   Here's one of the shots from my Slumming on the Subway series, when I toured downtown L.A. from mass transit instead of driving a car. (Something I might be doing more often now that gasoline is $3.25 a gallon for regular at my local station) We're looking at the U.S. Bank tower at the rear, from the park at Pershing Square, right after disembarking from the subway station. This was taken last summer.

  

   Astute viewers might notice this little guy from my "PhotoPost Banner". He is a horse drawn milk wagon from the Traveltown museum at Griffith Park.

   

  Lastly, here is a shot of the main street going through the small town of Monrovia, at the foot of  the San Gabriel Mountains, on a hot summer day in 2004. The theater is a multiplex, but the designers attempted, with great success, to make the facade resemble the older single screen theater which used to be on the lot. Hope you've enjoyed this "potpourii" photopost.

  

   

  • 9:44 am
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