Month: October 2015

rDay Two-Hundred-Four: Testing, Testing

Being one who lives a subtly charmed life, today I was unexpectedly tendered the loan of a fine Canon DSLR as my Nikon DSLR is pretty much out of service at the moment.  So I started trying to get a handle on it (Canon vs. Nikon is like having to learn the differences from scratch of the Mac OS vs. Windows) as I walked Fourth Street.  Along the way I (1) encountered a PE class of middle schoolers who demanded that I take their pictures, and (2) noted a mysterious modification to the block between the old and new Courthouses — are they planning to turn the street into a County parking lot?:

rDay Two-Hundred-Two

With the main camera out of service, today’s shopping venture gives me an opportunity for some point & shoot local windshield photography while riding shotgun on the road past Walmart.
20151013-DSCN0699-Edit-Edit
Also came across a few more seaside images — Venice, San Pedro and Point Vicente — from 1975, never before seen in positive (i.e., non-negative) form:

rDay Two-Hundred-One

20151012-DSCN0672-Edit-EditAs her final act (performance?) before departing for Seattle (via Portland for a few days and perhaps Corvallis), Ivi proposes that we engage Charlie in an early morning walk. We make a variation on the customary jaunt to Gekeler and past Birnie Park, through the Forest Service/EOU boundary fields, across to Lower Hillcrest and on to main Hillcrest, then return through the EOU campus early enough before the impact of classes and student traffic.

After eating a sumptuous breakfast upon our return, we assemble Ivi’s luggage, (including her shark ukelele) and await the arrival of biologist and former classmate John for the drive to Portland. By mid-morning they are off, and the house takes on a quietude not experienced for some time.

Photogrammar

Photogrammar is a Yale online project site for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI).  I quickly discovered about 100 photographs of Monona County, Iowa — where I spent most of my childhood — on the site, made by later-renowned photographers Russell Lee (famously documented Japanese-American internment during WWII) and John Vachon (noted for his photos of Marilyn Monroe, among others).  The Monona County photographs are dated about one year prior to my birth.  Here are a few examples.

I also came upon hundreds and hundreds of FSA photographs from eastern Oregon made by legendary photographer Dorothea Lange, like this:
dorothea_lange_8b35081v

Thanks to photographer friend, John, for alerting me to Photogrammar.

Point Vicente, 1975

Point Vicente is on some of the most rugged and interesting of Los Angeles-area beaches, between the “tourist” beach cities of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo and Los Angeles Harbor/Long Beach.  Its lighthouse stood on the tip of the Palos Verdes peninsula overlooking the seafront where these photographs were made in March of 1975.  This is a place where metal blends into rock.