Living the Dream: Industrialists & Philanthropists

Having just watched Baz Luhrmann's ostentatious rendition of The Great Gatsby last weekend, I've had 1920s opulence and leisure on my mind ("A Little Party Never Hurt Nobody" - my current anthem off The Great Gatsby OST) and wanted to photograph somewhere reminiscent of that wealth. 

With that in mind, my friend Niki and I decided to head to the Getty Villa, which sits atop a hill in the Pacific Palisades overlooking the ocean.  Later in the afternoon, we also made an impromptu trip over to the Griffith Observatory just because we felt like it and we could - trademark attitude of the rich and famous?  I can only imagine what kind of lifestyle J. Paul Getty and Griffith J. Griffith rocked given the prime real estate they purchased and then donated along with funding to the city of Los Angeles to create free, public access museums with expensive exhibits.

We kicked off the day as any wealthy industrialist would: with champagne at brunch.  And the whole concept of "great pictures are taken with great technique, not fancy equipment" proved itself to me when I got this shot with my iPhone 4:

Bubbles!!! iPhone 4, with a little color punch from Instagram

And later, while "people watching" (read: waiting for people to get out of my shots) at the Griffith Observatory, I realized that most people take pictures very casually.  They literally have a "point and shoot" mentality without considering what's in their picture, light, color, or other focal points of interest.

Some of these people also seemed to fall prey to the fallacy that expensive cameras will magically make their photos better, given that lots of them were hefting around fancier and pricier DSLRs than mine, but not taking their time, adjusting anything, or moving around to take the photo from a different perspective.  For all of their dropped dollars, their pictures (at least the ones I could glimpse from their LCD screens without being an obvious and awkward creeper) were boring, blurry, and sometimes just awful.

I even experienced some of that in my attempt to capture the observatory's Tesla coil in action:

Despite capturing the awesomeness that is a Tesla coil spitting out some serious voltage, this is a sucky, sucky photo: unintentionally blurry, reflections of people with cameras and the other exhibit sign in the glass, cut off neon letters, and random people in the shot.

Most people would say that I got the Tesla coil doing its thing.  I'm sure a person could show this photo and tell the related story, but after being subjected to an entire album of poorly photographed pictures like this one, any third party observer would be looking for the nearest exit.  It was definitely an important epiphany to have - being aware is the first step in not taking crappy photos.

In any case, 4 hours and some 200+ shots later, I did manage to capture some decent images.

The Getty Villa:

Fountain statues. The eyes creeped me out too.

Niki, in the vine covered breezeway

Columns along the garden

The Griffith Observatory:

From the road, looking up towards the observatory

The Foucault pendulum in the rotunda, 18mm f/3.5 at 1/200s.  Probably my favorite shot of the day... I love the reflection of the lit panels in the metal pendulum - it's reminiscent of a solar eclipse.

Niki, with DTLA behind her.

He may be a rebel without a cause, but he's got Hollywood looking over his shoulder.

The Hollywood Sign, just before sunset.

All in all, a great day at two very iconic and beautiful places in LA.  I even learned some random facts to add to my Jeopardy! trivia knowledge along the way... like the fact that the area in Italy that the word "Etruscan" describes is actually called Etruria - I'd only ever heard of things being described as "Etruscan" without knowing the area.  And the fact that Saturn is currently 800 million miles away, but we still got to see it pretty clearly through a telescope.
 
Hours to Date: 6