May 23, 2010

• PhotoPost: 6th Xangaversary Celebration

  A Look Back: WhenWordsCollide PhotoPosts

  The first photo I uploaded to Xanga was at 7:49 a.m. on June 20, 2004. There are currently 149 photos and images in my Photo Manager. As part of my 6th Xangaversary Celebration, I've gone through all 149 of these photos and have created if not a "Best Of", at least a representative selection of photos from throughout my Xanga history. From the beginning of my bloghistory, PhotoPosts have been an important part of WhenWordsCollide. All the photos I take are stored in my Webshots Gallery online, and the cream of the crop, so to speak, are uploaded to the WhenWordsCollide Photoposts. Usually, they include roughly 20 images, each with a pretty comprehesive caption describing the place and time when and where the image was frozen in time while on one of my many "trips around town" on Photo Expeditions. I should be out and about soon, after not having posted a "current" PhotoPost entry with new photographs since 2009. In the meantime, enjoy some of my earlier work throughout the years. Through December 2007 I used the still camera feature in my Sony videocamera, which only shot at 1.2 megapixels. Since that time, I've used a Sony Cybershot 2.7 megapixel dedicated still camera with external wide angle lens on used on some shots.

  

  6-29-2004 Above Torrance Beach: An  abandoned ivy covered  motel.

  

  7-10-2004 Los Angeles Zoo: A rhino approachs his lunch.

  

  10-1-2004 Monrovia. A shot through the windshield of my convertible showing palm trees lining a road into the San Gabriel mountains.

  

  10-7-2004 Los Angeles County Arboretum. A couple walk along a path through a bamboo forest.

  

  11-29-2004 A moonshot in the western sky during the wee hours of the morning.

  

  12-1-2004 Lomita. Shot on the street in front of my old house during sunset.

  

  1-29-2005 Hollywood Blvd. A photocomposite showcasing some cartoon characters. The photo is mine, and the autos are photographs downloaded from the internet and masked into the image. Made for but never showcased in the composite art section of my Cartoons website.

  

  3-29-2005 Hollywood Blvd. A reflection shot with a storefront mannequin. From the first of two Hollywood Blvd. series on my Webshots Gallery.

  

  4-21-2005 Orange Empire Railway Museum. Perris. Long retired Southern California trolleys seem to appear as if they are still in service, in a photo from the Orange Empire folder.

  

  5-6-2005 Southern California Renaissance Faire. The maypole, which has a bit of significance for me, since my birthday is May 1st, or May Day.

  

  5-31-2005 Getty Art Museum. L.A. This is one of the series of 36 photos included in the 2005 photo series, Observing Art at the Getty. Since there were lots of patrons at the museum when I got there, so while I was waiting for some of them to clear the way for me to take photos of certain artworks, I photographed the enthalled observers from the back.

  

  6-26-2005 GoodYear Blimp landing field, Carson. One afternoon I stopped by the Goodyear Blimp landing field off the 405 freeway, and shot some photos. Here is my car in the parking lot, with the iconic blimp in the background.

  

  8-28-2005 Downtwon. I have taken dozens of photographs of the Los Angeles City Hall, and I've always liked this one with a beat up public phone (which I'd bet is probably no longer there) in the foreground.

  

  9-15-2005 Long Beach Aquarium. This is another of my photocomposites layering some jellyfish at the aquarium with a starscape for an artwork called "Space Jellies".

  

  10-25-2005 Movieland Wax Museum, Buena Park. On the last day of business, before the attaction was closed down forever, I packed my cameras and spent an afternoon documenting one of my favorite SoCal attraction. The folders on my Webshots Gallery are among the most visited of my photos. This is W.C. fields, from the film "Poppy".

  

  3-8-2006 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance. During a rainstorm, I shot this cloudscape through my car window. There are only a few times a year when one can photograph clouds in usually cloudless sunny SoCal, and I've taken may cloudscapes during and after rainstorms.

  

  8-8-2006 Knott's Berry Farm, Buena Park. The frontier schoolhouse was locked when I last visited, but I shot this photo through the window, for a quite distinct effect, sort of like looking through a window  into the past.

  

  5-13-2007 Los Angeles Arboretum. An azalea in blossom.

  

  5-29-2007 Huntington Library. A copy of the Mona Lisa is reflected in the mirror in one of the museum's bathrooms.

  

  7-2-2007 Griffith Park. I wanted to shoot the fire damage after many acres were destroyed in a brush fire in 2007, but the parks department closed the damaged areas to the public. I shot this coyote through a fence.

  

  7-23-2007 Downtown Long Beach. I got this gull coming in for a landing at the fountain in front of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.

  

  10-17-2007 Another moonshot, above the Norm's restaurant sign on Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita.

  

  12-2-2007 Santa Monica. Rarely do people show up in my shots, but when they do, I try to make some kind of universal statement, so the person isn't individualized, but stands in for humanity in the shot. Like this bicyclist relaxing by the beachfront near sunset. This photo epitomizes a fall afternoon in SoCal for me.

  

  2-2-2008 Malibu. Some gulls were feeding on something, and I stopped the car to get both photos and video.

  

  5-21-2008 Pasadena. Shot early in the morning on what was to become one of the hottest days of the year, this was part of my Purple Pulcrhitude folder containing nothing but shots of lavender colored jacaranda trees, which bloom every May, and coincidentally are in bloom now all over the southland.

  

  11-8-2008 Downtown. Another shot of City Hall, fronted by the fountain by the side of the Music Center.

  

  3-6-2009 Living Room, My Little House, Harbor City. I haven't taken may photo expeditions during both 2009 and 2010, but that didn't stop me from documenting my move from a 14 year stay in my rented house in Lomita to the mobile home where I now live. I call my place "The Betty Boop Museum" because of all the colletibles I have.  

  

  5-2-2009 Disneyland, Anaheim. Goofy is a small statue on a fencepost, and I have him close up, backed by Main Street at the Happiest Place on Earth.

  

  11-1-2009 San Vicente Light, Palos Verdes Peninsula. This was shot in black and white, and has not been modified in "post production" except for some contast adjustment.  That's Catalina Island in the distance. Shooting through barbed wire is one of my "trademarks" in my photography, as is shooting from as low an angle as possible in some shots.

  

  11-12-2009 Hollywood Blvd. Another reflection shot, this time from the 2009 Hollywood folder.

  

  12-13-2009 San Pedro. The Vincent Thomas bridge, shot from the parking lot underneath. This was the last time I went on a Photo Expedition. I did take some photos when I was in L.A. with my neighbor making a video on Christmas Day, but nothing this year, and it's almost half gone. Some readers have told me in comments that they miss the PhotoPosts, and as soon as I get my new glasses in about two weeks, I plan on getting out and about again. I don't just take snapshots. I frame my work in the camera's viewscreen and try to frame the picture for the most artistic effect. I rarely tweak the photos or have to crop them, and I sometimes take dozens of shots of the same subject, in order to get that one "perfect" shot for my blog.

  • 4:20 pm
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