Leica 50mm f1.4 Summilux ASPH
Star Gazing
Ain’t That Peculiar
LA’s Noir Legend Lives Again at Park Plaza Hotel
From The Park Plaza’s Wikipedia page:
Though the neighborhood has gone through a period of urban decay and now urban renewal, the building, replete with angels at every corner, has lost none of its ethereal beauty and elan, making it truly one of the classic examples of Claude Beelman’s architecture left standing in the modern world. The building is now vacant, mainly used as a rental for movie shoots and special events, however, the City of Los Angeles thought the architecture significantly important enough to warrant a City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department Historic-Cultural Monument No. 267, as far back as the early 1980s. This is significant in that many other Wilshire Boulevard area landmarks fell prey to the wrecking ball during that time period, such as the notable Brown Derby. Luckily, despite the demolition of important landmarks all around it, the grand entrance and ballroom of the Elk’s No. 99 / Park Plaza building still bears its old “jazz age” grandeur, much to the relief of Los Angeles architectural aficionados. The elaborate interior murals and decorative paintings were designed and executed by Anthony Heinsbergen and Co, noted painter of many Los Angeles cultural landmarks. The central design of the lobby ceiling is based on the Villa Madama, a Renaissance era project by Raphael and Giulio Romano.
If Death Comes I’m Ready
Lucky Dog
Travel Day
High Fidelity
A Rodeo Drive Wedding
As Seen On Oscars Weekend
Los Angeles Times
Medium Shots
Family and Other Strangers
Forever 21
Palm Fronds
Workspace
You’re All Just Pictures To Me
A Monochromatic Palate Cleanser
Is That a LEICA Garbage Can?
Hollywood Color
City People
No great shakes here. More like a feeling. All these images were taken this past Saturday and Sunday. Seems to me that LA has shed the tourists and the holiday spirit and settled into itself once again. It’s a colder place than it was a month ago. Anyway, there’s a lot of shots. I do try to give anyone who visits here their money’s worth.
I left the last image, the stunning blonde sitting at a distance in the cafe , so that the image can be clicked on and examined at a larger resolution. It’s not a great or meaningful photograph. I posted it because I find it amazing sometimes what unlikely things you can do with a Leica pressed flat against your face. Thanks for looking!
Life Imitates
Pictures of a Bus Stop
I think images should require something from the person who is looking upon them. A photograph doesn’t or shouldn’t have to be obvious in order to be something that holds some value. I think this image could be taken as an example of that. I don’t want to say much more about the picture itself. It either makes a statement to you or it doesn’t. It made a statement to me.
Now it has a sequel. The top image was shot almost a year ago and was taken with the Zeiss 50mm Sonnar 1.5. I think the color representation of that lens is evident in the image. That lens is just stellar and classic. The second image, the one at the bottom of this post, was taken with the Leica 50mm Summilux 1.4 ASPH, and I think the color signature of that lens is also amazingly evident in this shot.
I call the color I get from my 50’lux ‘comic book color’ and I mean that as a high compliment, although some people have taken issue with that characterization. I think you can see what I mean by that description, however, by looking at this image in comparison to the Zeiss image.
The 50’lux does the most stunning job of slapping an abundance of the primary colors all over the film plane. I love it. I’m addicted to it. I’ve never seen anything like it. And I couldn’t live without it at this point. 😉
Both were taken with (shhhh!) Walgreens 400 ISO film. Light was much different, though. The first image was taken in sunlight, and the second was taken after the sun was down behind the buildings. Aperture opens up and everything here in Los Angeles at that time is bathed in a fantastic blue glow, I’ve always imagined because of the close proximity of the mighty Pacific.
My plan is to shoot more images like this that are attempting to make statements (even if only to me) that express the humanity of my subjects and hint at some of the complexities of their lives and their predicaments and the costs of their struggles as shown on their faces.
There are so many cliches surrounding the largely Mexican American immigrant base in California and the United States.
I’m not expressing a political perspective with what I hope to be an ongoing photographic project. But the Hispanic population, their families, their contributions, and their various ‘roles’ in what makes up Los Angeles is so complex that the cliches and the level of understanding around the country of their presence here amounts to an affront to true cultural understanding.
Being Mexican in Los Angeles, or El Salvadorian or Guatemalan, be it as an illegal or as a someone born of legal immigrants, with rare exception, is to live a life that makes you collectively part of the cheap labor engine that enables so many of the rest of us here to live crisp clean unburdened lives. Los Angeles is a story that is built, not just historically, but every single day, upon the labor of this population base.
There is a flip side to this story, of course, which is the effect that having such a massive cheap labor population base made up of one ethnicity has on other, even American-born, ethnicities. But these pictures can only tell the story that they tell, and it is, I think, an important one to tell.
Thanks for looking, and long live FILM.
My Shadow, My Self
New Dimensions
Well, as we can all see (I hope) there’s been some changes around here.
I’d been meaning (why am I talking like a Downton Abbey character?) to experiment at some point with changing the theme but I have to say, the Chunk theme was (and maybe will still be) an amazing look from which to present my photography. I just needed something clean and elegant (at some point in my life 😉 ) and this WordPress blog and that theme gave me a great lift and I’m not sure at all that I won’t change right back to it after just a few days.
But… you know… the images were small. And in order to see the images in any proper display you had to click on them and load them individually. This new theme style ‘Suit’ shows the images at a much larger size and they’re also sharp at that resolution, something that could not be said for the way they displayed in Chunk.
There was something off in the color in the header area of Chunk that was or seemed to be impossible to fix. Whatever. I still love the elegance of that theme and it may be back before most anyone knows it was ever given a day or two off. Anyway. Let me know, if you feel like it, what any of you think of the new look around here. I actually hope to make more material changes as well as just cosmetic but that’s for another day.
As always, thank you for visiting!
Documenting Two Days Ago in LA
Men Left To Their Own Devices
I Prefer To Make My Arguments in Pictures
I’m a notoriously long-winded writer. Believe it or not, it’s true. And when I say notorious, I’m not kidding or exaggerating. I could bring 200 people who know me online here to attest that for most of the last 20 years, in our circle, I have been known as the KING of long-form internet diatribes.
I thought I’d be continuing that tradition here on my own damned blog, but curiously, that hasn’t been the case. And I have so much to say about photography. You have NO idea precisely how much I have to say about photography. But with every example I see of some other blogger pontificating about photography I’m driven deeper and deeper into a shell that, believe me, NOBODY knew I had. Except me.
I’m not minding it at all though. I’m having a ball. I feel freer than I have in many decades. I’m feeling that my street photography is in a pocket right now. I’ve never been more in control and capable of producing exactly what it is that I want to produce with my camera. Yes I want to do many other things this year with my camera and without it but right now I’m extremely content to communicate my vision through the street photography images that I’m making and showing here.
Thank you for visiting and I hope the trip here is more often than not worth your trouble.
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Dreams We Keep To Ourselves
Arlington Ave, Mid-City Los Angeles
WNBA Star, Jamba Juice Tackle Childhood Obesity
Comes the news the last few weeks that Los Angeles is probably going to lose its WNBA franchise, the mighty LA Sparks. This is an emotional time for me and a lot of people I (kind of) know. I covered the Sparks as both a photographer and as a reporter for many years. For four years (at least) the franchise gave me the privilege of being a media voter on the league’s end-of-season awards like Most Value Player, Coach of the Year, etc. I’ve followed the league from day one. Anyway. It’s a big blow. I devoted a ton of my time to WNBA basketball and the Sparks.
The WNBA is active in the community and especially focuses its efforts on the very young and impressionable. One special afternoon that took us to the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica and with no digital camera to use I had to settle for my Leica M7 and M6 TTL, with the 50mm Summilux 1.4 ASPH and the 35mm Summicron 2.0 ASPH. I used Kodak 800 speed color (obviously) film and here were my keepers.
Attended an event at the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica co-sponsered by the WNBA and Jamba Juice.
Talked to Los Angeles Sparks guard Alana Beard about what they hoped to accomplish in their combined efforts to impact the national epidemic of childhood obesity.
Grabbed a lot of shots with my Leica M7 and M6, the Leica 50mm Summilux 1.4 ASPH and incredibly useful Leica 35mm Summicron 2.0 ASPH. All shot with Kodak 800.
And the kids. I broke a record for sweating I’m sure. There was a guy following me around with a mop. Hope the pictures are okay.
Stalking Beverly Hills
Oddities
Christmas Light
Open Road
Tales From the New Year World
Apologies for the title.
But everything about this subject reminds me of a figure on the cover of one of the old school books that inhabited the attic of our house in my childhood. I loved those books. Somehow, when I was actually in school, books weren’t nearly as interesting. In fact, they weren’t interesting at all. I mean really. Not. Interesting. 😉
But this stoic woman’s posture, leaning forward, her left arm laying across her body, bracing her stance against… well… the wind from a passing Bentley maybe, her other arm securing a back pack (my imagination, it’s probably a Michael Kors handbag), her hardy countenance, etc.
Maybe it’s the time of year. Me thinking about the coming year and all the possibilities and plans I have for 2014. Making my own adventures in the new world a reality. All those things.
Anyway.
Happy New Year!
Riders in the Rain
Love Actually
Merry Christmas!
Thank you to dear friends Marjorie and Tollie for hosting a splendid Christmas Eve party and inviting us to join them. It was a pleasure to see some old friends and meet new ones while enjoying the amazing and delicious temptations and libations. What a warmth this very special evening had! Feeling very fortunate a) just to be here (in a global sense) and b) to have been there. I will certainly cherish the memory (and my new Christmasy hat and light-up shades!) and I hope these images both recall the evening for those of us who were there but also will bring some of the warmth and joy of this special get together to everyone who visits 50lux.com. Thank you for looking!
Santa Monica Claus
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pa pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pa pum pum,
Rum pa pum pum, rum pa pum pum
So to honor Him, pa rum pa pum pum
When we come
Little baby, pa rum pa pum pum
I am a poor boy too, pa rum pa pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pa pum pum
That’s fit to give our King, pa rum pa pum pum,
Rum pa pum pum, rum pa pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pa pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pa pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pa pum pum,
Rum pa pum pum, rum pa pum pum
Then He smiled at me, pa rum pa pum pum
Just More
Yard Sale
Christmas Party Numero Uno
Theater Crowd
Plan B 2.0 in Action
Plan B 2.0
I had a plan for this blog. As I accumulated blog-worthy shots I would dole them out one at a time, one a day, each with a pithy title. This wasn’t my original plan for 50lux, however. It was more like Plan B. The original plan? Well. That’s a longer story.
There’s a big problem with Plan B. It creates a slow and boring website. And it’s tedious beyond belief for me.
But the idea is that there are 365 days in the year… that requires at least 365 blog-worthy photographs every year… I’m not going to be out shooting every day or maybe even every week… so there’s always been the concern that one day I’m going to run out of pictures.
Well, as much as that’s likely to happen and it is, I’ve decided to jettison that kind of thinking and just do what the hell I want. So the new plan, Plan B 2.0 you could call it, is to post a lot more pictures. Bunches of pictures.
Not all of these pictures represent the best of my efforts and successes. They are not all great pictures. They might not all tell much of a story.
But most of them should.
Not all of the images that I post will reflect the endless tireless patience (which I don’t have) for post processing. There will be noise! 😉 And underexposures! (especially if they help to capture the mood or level of light of the actual scene.)
They certainly will not be carefully composed. I can be a pathological composer. But for the sake of capturing something as dynamic and alive as the city of Los Angeles… I’ll sacrifice some points in the street photographers’ world rankings to bring back images that do the complicated things that I want my images to do.
If the moment is about an expression that is revealing or a relationship that is interesting and the image I snap captures that moment… then I won’t hold back showing that image here on the blog simply because it is not also a perfect and carefully thought out alignment of compositional elements.
Anyway. I’ll be working my way backwards from the latest to the earliest from this year. When I run out, I’ll stall with some pithy discussion or reblog until I can go out and grab some more images.
Next year, I sincerely hope to start using the blog in some of the ways I imagined using it when I started it. But that’s a story for another day. Until then… as they used to say in the lumberjack trade (in cartoons) look out below!
One Thirty Nine
Pictures of Paintings, Artist Unknown
Waiting, Luminously
Raging Rivers of Steel
About the biggest favor a resident of Los Angeles can do for an obvious non-resident standing in the street with his entire family is toot the car horn at him and motion for them all to get back on the sidewalk.
LA is a famously fast driving city, no one walks, cars tear through every last half-foot of pavement. It’s not unpredictable. It’s actually extremely predictable. Virtually every inch of roadway in Los Angeles will at various moments of the day have automobiles thundering over it. Curbs are worn with the tell-tale signs of drivers who have slammed and scraped into them.
So let me say it here to anyone who ever comes to L.A. to visit. Wait for the walks signs. ON the sidewalk. When you get the walk sign, proceed warily. If you don’t yet have a walk sign. Wait on the sidewalk. Let me repeat that last part.
ON THE SIDEWALK.
With your precious family. All of them. The children. If you don’t, and someone has to toot the horn at you to make sure you don’t walk into their two-ton motor vehicle, just wave and step back. Maybe with some quiet reflective gratitude.
Maybe not like this this guy. Who began shouting at us in a language I’d never heard before after Mrs. 50’Lux tooted the horn at him. But the tone was unmistakable nevertheless at conveying the message that he wasn’t at all appreciative of the fact that we were sending him a gentle warning that could save his life.
50'Lux 
