January 8, 2009

• PhotoPost: The Year In Pictures 2008 Part 1

  

  It's time again to wrap up "The Year In Pictures." After blogging for many months about getting a decent digital camera, I finally won one in a Christmas Party raffle in Dec. 2007, and all of 2008's PhotoPosts included photos which began as 7.2 Megapixel files uploaded to Xanga. Although most of my "photo expeditions" were pretty close to home, I took enough photos that this year end assessment will take up two blog entries. The photos here in Part 1 take us up to July. Click on any image to get a larger version in another window as usual. All the images I will show in this post have not been shown on the blog before but are included in the much larger Webshots Gallery files.

  

  I began the year with cloudscapes. The Xanga Photopost from Feb. 20 can be found HERE. These shots, which eventually found themselves as well in my MikeVideo Internet Movie called "Cloudscaping", were taken January 21st around the Palos Verdes Peninsula in between rainstorms.

  

  Here in SoCal, it seems no matter how brutal the storm, the succeeding days, while maybe cold or brisk, are full of bright blue skies and a low hanging sun, so my cloudscapes taken in the early evening after work are full of magnificent color. I also shot a rare double rainbow during this outing.

  

  I had a beautiful new camera, and then gasoline prices started climbing up to over $3.50 a gallon. I spent Sunday, March 16th driving up into the San Gabriel Mountains, again right after a rainstorm. I stopped at the Downey McDonalds, which is one of the original restaurants, and has a museum.

  

  Here my convertible is parked on a turnout while I snap some of the clouds bearing down on the area. It rained while I was driving down into Glendora, and I had to stop and put the top up.

  

  At about 3500 feet, I had to turn around and go back down, because the roads were closed. But here I did get to visit a stream running alongside the road.

   

  On April 19th and again on the 26th, I ventured into the small suburb of Silver Lake, to shoot the "Silver Lake Steps" project. It's amazing to think that I've now been walking around on crutches for the past few months, because my orthopedist is afraid my broken hip replacement might cause my leg to become dislocated. Back in April, when I only knew my leg was in pain, but not broken, I not only took photos of these staircases dotted among the Hollywood hills, but I hiked up and down them, and the results can be found in Mike's Video Blog #8: "The Silver Lake Steps".

  

  I stopped hiking up and down the staircases long enough to snap this photo of the L.A. skyline between the branches of a tree way up on Micheltorena Street in the hills. The street is about at a 45 degree angle at this point and I was standing on somebody's lawn to take the photo.

  

  It almost hurts me to look at these photos right now. Good news. I have received my referral for my total hip replacement operation, but I had to postpone it because of my housing situation. I don't even know where I'm going to be living next month, so don't want to schedule major surgery just right now. I'm pretty confidant I'm going to be living in my own mobile home possibly in March, or even February, but until I'm situated, I'm not going to schedule the surgery.

  

  Although the PhotoPost wasn't posted till June 14th, on May 10th I photographed the Culver City Car Show, and also took video which resulted in  Culver City Kustoms. The sky was a bit overcast, and the sun didn't even come out until after noon, by which time I'd already shot over 400 photos, but as you can see with this photo of a late 40s Chevrolet "low rider", the paint jobs were so shiny, that there are some nice reflections.

  

  Here's a really strange looking custom car at the George Barris Culver City Car show. I didn't get too many photographs of the Munster Coach or any of the Barris "kustoms" but they do show up in the video.

  

  Although I didn't know it when I got in the car to drive up to Pasadena for my fifth major Photo Expedition of the year 2008 on May 18th, that day was the hottest day of the year up to that point, and the temperature was over 100 degrees in some parts of the city. My fifth Expedition was a repeat of my 2005 Jacaranda photoposts, but with a better camera, and in a different city. Here is a view of some jacarandas framed by a bouganvillea on Del Mar Street at about 7 in the morning.

  

  The jacaranda trees only bloom for a couple of weeks in May, before the leaves even sprout on the trees. Here some blooms have fallen around a fire hydrant. The result can get quite messy for people who own homes under the trees. More photos can be found on my PhotoPost from May.

  

  Also on May 18th, after photographing Jacarandas in Pasadena in the morning, I drove to the Renaissance Faire to shoot some photos and take some video. The resulting video, Renaissance Day 2008, contained performance video of three performing groups at the Faire. However, the heat got to 104 degrees in the almost desert area where the Faire is located, so I didn't shoot too many photos, and went home pretty early. Here is a display from one of the booths selling Renaissance themed clothing.

  

  May was a good month for photography. I turned 55 on May 1st, finally becoming a "senior". Perhaps thinking that I might not have much time left. (My roommate Joel was getting real sick at this point) I really spent a lot of time with my camera. On May 26th, I took some quick cloudscapes outside my house after an unexpected and sudden May rainstorm.

  

  I have a real popular Webshots Gallery folder of Hollywood Blvd. photos I took back in 2004 with my old camera. My plan as summer 2008 dawned was to shoot a complete Hollywood themed Expedtion over a couple of months, concluding with Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset Blvd. Expeditions. The first of the expeditions was on July 13th, to take photos of the Hollywood sign. On the way, I stopped outside the old  Manor Hotel to snap a few photos of the old 20s style building, which is now a Scientology center. It is interesting to note that a security guard stopped me and took a look at the photos in my camera. I think he was afraid I was a papparazzo. Later in the year, a sword wielding wacko was shot to death outside this center by a security guard!

  

  My last photo for Part One of my Year in Pictures was taken on a bridge over the Hollywood Freeway through the chain link fence on July 13th. It was while I was out taking these photos, which also resulted in another hike in the Hollywood Hills (before I knew my hip replacement was broken) that Joel was taken by his brother into the hospital for what would be his last stay. He died two days later. Since I had to concentrate on living arrangements, I stopped the Hollywood Expeditions, but plan on getting up there again this year sometime (following my possible move next month and the upcoming surgery and rehabilitation, which I hope will be done before this coming summer!)  My next post will probably be this weekend, and will contain photos from the next few Photo Expeditions, including more Hollywood, Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, San Pedro, still more cloudscapes, and some shots of the "Betty Boop Museum" taken with my even newer 8 megapixel Olympus camera I won this Christmas at the party raffle! Anyone wishing to recap my expeditions from this or any other year can visit my Webshots Gallery (which now containt 6,694 photos in 71 separate folders) or click the PHOTOPOST tag in this blog for the highlights.

  EDIT: 7:30 am. Tony Clarke, a former workmate, and the only person with whom I have worked  in 20 years (except for my ex girlfriend Pat) who had visited me at home as a friend, passed away last night from complications derived from pneumonia. He was 48 years old. Rest in Peace, my friend. MFN/ppf

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