28 December 2011

SANTA MONICA NIGHTS

View from Hotel of Entrance to Santa Monica Pier 

Succulents along Pacific Palisades Park 

4th Street between Broadway & Santa Monica Blvd 

Benches at Pacific Palisades Park

Palms along Ocean Boulevard & Pacific Palisades Park

California Incline 

Pedestrian Bridge over California Incline

Rental Bicycles at Hotel 

Metro Bus to Downtown LA 

Parking Building for 3rd Street Promenade 

Pacific Palisades Park & Santa Monica Pier

The photographs in this mini-project of twilight/night images were taken in Santa Monica, California, in the Fall of 2011.  While it is doubtful I would have gravitated to this area for photography on my own, the fact that my wife had to be in the LA area for family matters and I suddenly found myself with time on my hands (and always a big believer that photographs can be made anywhere), I soon discovered that Santa Monica, particularly its downtown environs, was an area rich in photographic possibilities: there was the dynamic Third Street Promenade, a closed-off three-block open-air boulevard of shops and restaurants and street performers (where I was also able to make more Cell People images); the Pacific Palisades Park, a cliff-high narrow parkway of palm trees and paths and benches stretching several blocks along the city’s western edge, overlooking the Pacific Ocean; the California Incline, a dramatic highway ramp that descends from the corner of California Street and Ocean Avenue down to the Pacific Coast Highway, where it continues northward to Malibu; and the Santa Monica Pier, an old-fashioned tourist destination with an amusement park, restaurants, and more street performers (where I also made more Cell People images).
Over the years I have done several mini-projects in which I have taken photographs just after the sun has gone down or just before it comes up: black and white portraits in 1974-1976 of Southern Californians in front of shopping malls and store fronts, using a camera-mounted flash; black and white images in 1983 of urban oddities mostly in and around Vallejo, California, again using a flash but this time intentionally “dragging the shutter”; and color photographs of more generalized urban landscapes from a road trip I made in 2007 across the United States of urban landscapes in which I worked digitally for the first time (again using flash in combination with dragging the shutter).  With each of these mini-projects, as here with the Santa Monica images (again digital but not dragging the shutter), I have used flash to accent foreground and to add a sense of unreality to the already mysterious world of night light.
A few examples of my aforementioned night photography can be seen under the titles Southland and Nightlight at my website: www.rogerminick.com


                                          ©  Roger Minick  2011                                           

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