LA Noir

Cops in shorts

More questions than answers

After a couple of weeks of technicolor skylines from the City of Angels comes a grittier look at street level. How better to portray the human condition in the urban environment than in glowering black and white?  The monochrome strips away the gloss and renders the scenes darker and more soulful it seems to me.

Call Moon and Yang.

Looming Large

September 2017

Last month in Los Angeles I discovered that a high rise in progress is occupying the very parking lot from which I made the photograph just below. Just twenty-one months earlier a reflective puddle was the sole resident of the broken asphalt. 

January 2016

January 2016

This is exemplifies the onslaught of new construction that's transforming LA's downtown into a desirable place to work, live and play. At every turn cranes scrape the sky and scaffolding grips the sides of office buildings as they morph into upscale lofts.

A Face In The Crowd

Outsize portraits adorn buildings all over booming downtown Los Angeles. The murals are funny and creepy at the same time. Is it a big brother thing or somebody's warped sense of humor?

My take on LA's gritty city center has been that it isn't a real downtown and that the City of Angels can't join the pantheon of great cities until it has one. My premise is that to be a "real" downtown people have to live there and it has to be abuzz with action day and night. Manhattan? You bet. Chicago? Damn straight. San Francisco? I left my heart there when I was six. Boston? They don't call it "The Hub" for nothing.

Downtown LA has been a dud until recently but is exploding with new construction. Yet it struggles with livability in my view. All growth can't be vertical. More green space would seem essential especially in Southern California where folks live outdoors. Lofts alone aren't going to cut it. City fathers and profiteers alike should get a clue.

Rhythm and Flow

We got to Point Reyes Light fifteen minutes too late to walk the 308 steps down to lighthouse itself. The gate is locked at 4:30pm. Undaunted, we scoured the area for suitable subjects and these receding pickets captured my eye. The shallow depth of field fore and aft was just the ticket.

Treasures within Treasures

When visiting our magnificent national parks it’s hard not to settle for traditional landscape photographs of the epic kind. Certainly, Grand Canyon National Park north or south compels us to capture its vast beauty. Not frequently enough I will take the time, look more closely and discover a more intimate jewel like the Cliff Rose (or so I believe) depicted here. And, after all, I am a card carrying gnarly tree fan. That the Cliff Rose may be a shrub doesn't diminish the point being made. To wit, dig a little deeper. There's good stuff lurking beneath the obvious.

I've rendered this image high key to focus attention on the intricate subject. I've blown out the background so that nothing competes with the twisted Cowderia Mexicana. In the original capture the mesas beyond are visible.

Below is the image from which this came.

Nice comparison, what?