History Dismantled

OK, so this is not the world's greatest photograph, but I felt it was important to mark the passing of a landmark.  This is what remains of the famous Pan Am Worldport terminal at JFK.  This was designed as a showcase for international jet travel and is particularly famous for its 4-acre "flying saucer" roof suspended far from the outside columns of the terminal by 32 sets of steel posts and cables. The terminal was designed to allow for aircraft to be parked under the partial overhang so boarding passengers would be protected from the weather.  The terminal was built in 1960 and closed exactly 53 years later and is being torn down.  Please click on this to see more detail in the picture.

Leftovers, Again...

Oh no, now we have a lot of "leftovers" to deal with.  I am back home but I have all kinds of photographs that I took while in California.  So...  You get leftovers for at least the next week.  Hope you like them.  This is one of the plazas at the Getty center where you can buy lunch or a snack, and sit and relax in the sun.  The things that caught my eye were the delicate dark lines of the chairs, and the dark lines of the shadows.  The Getty is so amazing - there are photographs everywhere!  It is one of my favorite places to photograph.

The Wasteland

I was glued to the window after departing Los Angeles on the flight home today.  I never know what I will see out of the window, so I scan the landscape as we climb to altitude.  I found a couple of things of interest today and this may be the better one.  It is a photograph of the desert landscape northeast of Barstow, California.  You can see railroad tracks going through the bottom of the photograph. But the most interesting patterns are the flow patterns of water, now long gone, over the landscape.  They look like tentacles reaching out.  It is a desolate landscape, but incredibly beautiful in its own way.

Sunset, Venice Pier

We were headed to a restaurant on Washington Boulevard, and we parked in the beach parking lot at the Venice Pier.  The interesting thing was that this is the scene we saw when we got out of the car, but, it was darker than this, and the color was not this vivid.  So I made a number of exposures by bracing my toy camera up against a tree and the time exposures I made revealed more color and more brightness.  The one thing that the photo doesn't reveal to us is the wonderful aroma of the salt air in the onshore breeze. Oh, and the bright dot in the sky is the planet Venus.

The Amazing Getty

The Getty is an astounding museum.  Or, actually two museums - The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, and the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa. I went to the Getty Center to see a couple of photography exhibits, and discovered that two of the shows don't open until October first.  No need to worry - there are so many more things to see.  I stumbled across these marble statues of, in the back, Venus, done in 1773 and Juno, in 1776.  They are simply beautiful, and stopped me in my tracks when I wandered into this gallery.  The joy of discovery is what makes visiting museums such an enriching experience.

L. A. Style, Revisited

You saw my post called "L. A. Style" a few days ago, where I showed a woman in striped pants at the Los Angeles Airport.  Well, here is another version of L.A. Style.  Well, actually it is more correctly "San Diego Style" - this is a photograph of a couple of zebras at the San Diego Zoo.  Same stripes, same style!  We went to the zoo today, and I got a billion photographs - it is such an amazing place!

The Portrait Sitting

We went to Venice Beach yesterday just to lie in the sun for a bit, take naps, and then walk around.  I love photographing at the beach - it feels as if I could shoot a billion blog photos in a couple of hours there.  Well, maybe not a billion.  But I did find some interesting things.  The fellow on the right apparently wanted portraits of himself.  Perhaps he is an actor and needs headshots.  The first shot they did was under the Venice pier, and in the first setup the subject was backlit.  It didn't look like a great portrait setup.  Then they did this shot.  I was dying to go over and ask what they were doing, and if I could see some of the images, but I decided not to bother them.  Bur I sure am curious if any of the portraits were interesting.  I love the light on this image, and I find it fascinating how the subject and the photographer are standing.