Category: Photos

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I literally found out yesterday about today’s partial solar eclipse. Unlike the last one visible from Southern California in 2012, which was conveniently on a weekend, this ended up being right in the middle of the work day. Add in a lot of other stuff going on, and I didn’t have time to do anything like go out to a prime viewing spot or make a giant pinhole camera.

My original plan was to take a late lunch, see what I could see, then try to head back outside at the point of greatest eclipse. I sat on a bench in the courtyard, surrounded by trees, checking a tiny pinhole camera I’d made from a tea box at the last minute and also looking for a good spot with images projected through the tree leaves.

After about half an hour I started to wonder why I wasn’t seeing any signs of eclipse, and looked up the times again. Apparently the calculator I used didn’t account for daylight saving time. The good thing about that: I was early, not late. The bad thing: Greatest eclipse was actually going to be during/shortly after a production switchover at work that I needed to be on hand for.

So I headed back outside around 2:50 to look at the clusters of eclipsed suns projected by the leaves in the shady courtyard.

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It was a late-summer heat wave, and while the picnic itself was spread out in the shade beneath some trees, it was over 100 degrees. Still, a preschooler can’t be terribly interested in his parents’ old school friends catching up, and my son kept trying to wander off to play in the hot, hot sun.

Finally, after lunch, I decided instead of bringing him back I’d go with him. On the other side of the hill we found a small concrete-lined channel, amazingly with water in it, then followed it upstream to where it opened up into a stream running through the grass.

Exploring the Creek: Running through the grass.

Further up we found a wooden foot bridge, and then trees closed in around it. The shade was very welcome!

Exploring the Creek: In the Shade.

This second photo is looking back downstream toward the open area. Just behind me there’s a chain link fence that marks the edge of the park, and a hill leading up to the road. The stream is fed from a drainage pipe, and judging from the erosion patterns, it picks up a lot of runoff during the rainy season.

I took both shots with my phone in HDR mode to get both the light and shade areas clear. Unfortunately on the second shot it ended up blurring the leaves, since they moved just enough in the breeze between bracketed shots. It looks great on a small screen, though!

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Last Tuesday I stayed late at the office. As I was leaving the parking structure, I looked to the left for oncoming cars and saw this. I was stunned. Instead of getting on the road immediately, I parked on the side of the street to look and take a couple of photos.

It didn’t look exactly like this, of course. The photo came out too yellow, so I tried adjusting it to bring out the orange tones, until finally I just started trying all of Snapseed’s filters until I hit on this one. I was surprised by the level of detail it brought out in the upper cloud layer, and how far the crepuscular rays actually extended.

I also took a photo with my camera, which was adjusted for sunset tones. It came out a lot darker than the actual scene, but the color balance is closer. Continue reading →

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Since I work near the Century/Aviation intersection where Metro is planning to build a light rail station, I’ve been watching the demolition of the old bridge with some interest. The northern rise is pretty much obliterated now. The southern section is down to a single wall.

bridgewall

Here’s what it looked like three weeks ago, for comparison.

bridge-tunnel

Let’s take another look at that graffiti at the top of the wall:

bridge-graffitti

Not only do we have “Endor,” and “Death” (spelled funny) in a lettering style reminiscent of the Indiana Jones logo…I swear someone wrote “Ewok” off to the right. Or at least “EW[head]K,” which amounts to the same thing.

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I was looking forward to checking out the aftermath of last weekend’s “Century Crunch” bridge demolition (see the before photo), but for various reasons I didn’t get a chance to really look at it until Thursday, when I finally felt up to walking down to the corner at lunch.

The most interesting part is the rise to the south of Century Blvd, where the remnants of the bridge come up to about 15 feet from the street. It’s fenced off, but of course when you’re walking by, the thin canvas they use doesn’t completely block your view. I was able to get my camera lens between two pieces of canvas to get the image here. It’s interesting that the ramp is hollow. I’m not sure what the normal design is, but I’d always thought that ramps like this were filled in with dirt, and that’s the impression I’d gotten from various projects I’ve seen in progress. Perhaps railroad bridges are different than freeway bridges? Or perhaps they emptied it out when they tore out the span?

It makes it look like the entrance to a tunnel, sloping down into the earth.
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Century/Aviation Railroad Bridge

Next weekend, construction crews will tear out this old railroad bridge across Century Blvd near LAX to make way for a Metro station on the future Crenshaw Line. They’ve dubbed the road closure the Century Crunch. As of Thursday, they were already breaking down the parts of the bridge that don’t cross the street.

I actually drive under this bridge every day on my way to work — that’ll be a change. It’ll be interesting to watch progress on the Metro station as well. It’s been a while, but when I first started at this job, I had a much longer commute, and I would drive part way to the end of the Green Line and take the train to the nearest stop, Aviation Station, which will become the transfer point between the Green and Crenshaw Lines.

A two-story building with tiles and several vertical screens with square-and-diagonal patterns and an awning.

Another soon-to-be-demolished structure. This old medical building in Torrance has a lot more character than the bridge, but it’s being replaced by something less exciting, IMO: parking for the currently-expanding Del Amo Fashion Center. As if the mall isn’t big enough already. Sure, parts of it needed renovation, but the parts that needed it the most haven’t been touched by the current project.