Traveling Back in Time

Last Saturday, I wandered the halls of the LA County Museum of Natural History in search of dinosaurs.  At the La Brea Tar Pits, there were numerous signs adamantly stating that the exhibits there were in the ~20,000 thousand years ago and that there were no dinosaurs there.  I really wonder how many times people needed to ask that they felt the need to bold and underscore it on multiple signs in multiple places. 

In any case, the Museum of Natural History is apparently the largest of its kind in the western part of the United States and houses nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts that cover ~4.5 billion years of history.  Even with almost 3 hours, I made it only through probably a third of their exhibits and will definitely have to head back to look at the other exhibits and the architecture of the building itself.  The only disappointing thing is that I find photographing museum exhibits indoors to be somewhat discouraging, since the glass frequently causes a reflection and ruins the best of photos.  The best pictures I get are generally things that are just in the open air and under natural light.

Now that I've gotten the first 100 hours under my belt, I think I'm going to stop focusing so much on subject based photography and start working on technique with specific areas like composition, lighting, color, etc.  And a series taken with just a regular point and shoot to force me to practice some of these elements.  Taking it up to the next level!!

A battle of Jurassic proportions

Immense and bizarre indeed!

From under the rotunda

Active Shooting Hours: 2
Review Hours: 1
Hours to Date: 105

100 Hours

Reaching a milestone is a funny thing.  Leading up to it, there's nothing but breathless exhilaration and excitement.  This past weekend, having finally gotten to the 100th hour and clicked it away, the moment was just like every other hour - looking at the world with a keen eye for an interesting subject.

I meant to focus the majority of my time and this series on the La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum, but many of the exhibits are behind glass or are lit in a way (harshly, unevenly, etc.) that couldn't be corrected for by moving my position.  Luckily, the boyfriend and I were both feeling spontaneous and wanted to get the most out of our trip, especially after navigating through LA traffic.  Given that fact, we ended up wandering around LACMA and ended our night with seeing Frozen at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.

Dire Wolf Skulls at the Page Museum in Los Angeles

Methane bubbling up through tar at the La Brea Tar Pits

The crescent moon over the Urban Light installation at LACMA, which is right next to the La Brea Tar Pits.  

202 restored lamps in total and many used to light up streets in Southern California.

The bright marquee of the El Capitan Theatre.

More LA

Active Shooting Hours: 2
Review Hours: 1
Hours to Date: 102

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