My evening walks around downtown Los Angeles are often a mini-photo walk. Tonight Robert Lachman, of photographyandthemac.com and I headed over to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Of course, to be be different, I had to try Topaz Simplify on a couple of pics. Lachman, in bottom photo, loves to shoot with his blackberry cell phone camera.

Tonight's walk was over to South Olive Street and this photo of the Jubilate residential building with late afternoon light. The 16-story building was completed in 1980.

Last week was the 40th anniversary for Apollo 11. Link to Los Angeles Times photo gallery. Link to Apollo program photos in California. Link to another gallery on Rocketdyne.

Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Olympics. Link to Los Angeles Times Olympic gallery. Its also the 25th anniversary of a fun vacation.

As I had no media access to the Olympics, I took two weeks off and went to Seattle Washington, stopping every mile or so to take photos - or so it seemed. The closest competition I covered was the slug races in a small community in Washington. So here are some photos I shot during the 1984 summer Olympics, but not of the Olympics.


1984 photo of Lacey Lady, a B-17G, on display at gas station in Milwaukie, Oregon.


Water fountain in Portland, Oregon.


Seattle skyline at dusk in 1984.


Spectator holding slug after races in Washington.

p.s. If you hadn't guessed yet. I did much of the work on the Los Angeles Times photo galleries linked above.

Here's a pic from last night of Los Angeles City Hall and a second pic from last week of neon lights. Have a fun weekend.

Part of the fun from last Saturday's photo walk was people's reactions to my bright red Oktomat camera. When using the camera, I don't compose the camera very often - I just hold the camera at arm's length and shoot away. During the two second sequence, I may move the camera slightly to change the image from frame to frame. Here are four good examples. Of course a cheap $40 camera with eight plastic lenses will give uneven exposures and color shifts, but hey, that's part of the fun!

Saturday was the 2nd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk organized by Scott Kelby and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I joined about 35 photographers at 8 am in Santa Monica, one of some 900 Photo Walks. Santa Monica City College instructor Craig Mohr organized the walk and did a great job. His blog. I also met Ed Mangus, another Santa Monica City College instructor, who turns out, went to college with a couple Los Angeles Times staffers and knew many others. Mangus has worked at the Los Angeles Daily News back in the early 1980s.

My theme for the day was color. But I also brought along my friends, Jack the Antenna Ball and red Oktomat camera. Instead of doing a flash gallery, I am uploading images to a my photo walk flickr set. I am not finished going over the images, plus my Oktomat film is still being processed. So more images to come.

NAPP Worldwide Photo Walk website.


Santa Monica Photo Walk leader Craig Mohr gives a few safety tips before Saturday's event. The biggest tip - don't back up in front of a Santa Monica bus - they don't stop for nothing.

Jack went along on the Photo Walk and also had a great time.

Today is the 40th anniversary of launch of Apollo 11 atop a Saturn V rocket. Another version of the Saturn V was actually launched in April of this year. As shown on this YouTube video, a 1/10th scale model Saturn V was launched to a height of about 3500 feet. Even at one-tenth scale, the model rocket was over 36 feet tall and 40 inches in diameter. And no this is not an April fools joke. This rocket is the largest hobby rocket ever launched.

No its not a new football team - its real goats doing weed abatement on the 30 degree slope overlooking Hill Street at 4th in downtown Los Angeles - right next to the closed Angels Flight railroad. The goats have been there the last couple of days. So I spent my dinner break last night shooting sort-of wildlife in LA.

Relive the Apollo 11 mission from launch. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum with AOL has created an interactive web site We Choose The Moon in celebration of the 40th anniversary. The site will allow users to get minute by minute updates on the status of the flight. Of course we know the ending. But in 1969 the public had only radio, TV and publications to get updates. Now we can get updates through this site, or twitter, or facebook. Sign up for the fun!

JFK Library press release.

YouTube video of Japan's Kaguya spacecraft planned crashed into the Moon on June 10, 2009.

Americans don't know it, but there is a new race to the moon, but unlike the 1960s, its more of a friendly competition. Besides the United States; there are active lunar space programs in China, Japan, India and Europe.

On June 10th, 2009, Japan's Kaguya (SELENE) lunar orbiter was crashed into the moon after a successful mission.

Chinese lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, was intentionally de-orbited and crashed into the Moon March 1, 2009.

India's Chandrayaan-1is currently circling the moon.

Europe's SMART-1 was crashed into the moon on September 3, 2006.

Of the current space programs, China is the most likely country to try and send men to the moon in the next ten years or so. So we better keep to our 2020 target date.

According to the wikipedia list of artificial objects on the moon, there are 170,000 kg of human stuff on the Moon, with only 382 kg of the Moon rocks transported back to earth.

170,00 kgs equals about 374,00 pounds or 137 tons of stuff we have already littered on the moon.

The most famous trash has tot be Alan Shepard's golf balls he hit during Apollo 14's 1971 mission. Enjoy the video.

My big summer was in 1969. Forty years ago. I graduated from high school, made trips to Colorado and Boston, and watched the Apollo 11 landing on a TV outdoors with about 30 friends.

Also, I had my first in photography job. I was aerospace engineering student avoiding the draft. Several of my friends were working at a NASA contractor in Whittier. They were assembling sets of 35mm color slides of Apollo space missions for retail and aerospace companies.

So I dropped in unannounced at Finley Holiday films to fill out an application. I got an interview and bam, I was sent forth to sell the Finley Holiday slides and films to camera stores and aerospace companies all over Southern California.



I had gone into Finley looking for an assembly line job and came out a traveling salesman - something to do with my knowledge of Southern California aerospace companies.

So I visited every major camera store, every aerospace company and did repeated inventory checks at Los Angeles International Airport gift shops.

LAX was a great place in 1969. No security checks, secret tunnels between terminals, and me running around in a suit with a clip board. By my third trip through the airport, I was giving directions to visitors, helping gift shop customers and just making myself at home.

My biggest sale that summer was to TRW employee store. They purchased thousand of sets of Apollo 11 slides and movies. And I got a nice bonus.

In January, 1970, I purchased a Canon FT-QL and the rest is a 40 year blur. But Finley Holiday Films is still in Whittier. Here is their web site. I follow them on Facebook and Twitter.



Google Street View image of the current Finley Holiday Films in Whittier, California. The building on the right was Finley Holiday location in 1969. Back then on the corner was a taco stand - were everyone ate. The family owned company started in 1946.

On Saturday I had to work, so I missed all the fireworks shows. But Agoura Hills had a July 5th celebration, so I grabbed my tripod and shot a few frames. Using a zoom lens, I racked up and back during a time exposure to get corkscrew fireworks, above. Before the fireworks, I shot the solitary oak tree, below. At the bottom is the effect I got when I removed the camera from lens during a time exposure of the oak tree. Just too much playing around.

Thursday, NASA released the first new moon images from the recently launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Here is a good story at the Christian Science Monitor . The camera was turned on for testing, and wow, the photos were much better than expected.


Caption: Full resolution detail from one of the first LROC NAC images. At this scale and lighting, impact craters dominate the landscape. Two general types of impact craters are readily identifiable. Solitary craters which most likely represent a single impact event, and clusters or chains of small, fresh craters produced by the impact of lunar material excavated by a larger impact. Image width is 1400 meters, north is down [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera web site.

In 1982, this was the biggest flag in Thousand Oaks. I sat on the field with a 20mm lens and let the students carry the flag over me.


Giant U.S. Flag carried by California Lutheran students during a 1982 football game at the Thousand Oaks college campus.

Last night's walk led to 6th and Broadway and the Los Angeles Theater.