Red Wedding

This picture is a stolen moment, pure and simple. You can even see the window frame of my car on the right. I had just enough time to snap it before the traffic moved.

Not everyone knew their picture was being taken. Not everyone wanted their picture taken. Not everyone who's smiling is smiling at my camera. The guy who's frowning is frowning at me.

I wonder about photos like this. You don't know when I took it so unless you recognize the people, you don't know whose wedding it is. We were all on the public street, therefore I was within my legal rights to take the photo. Was it fair of me to do so? Is it ethical of me to post it?

Inside the Cinema

I posted about Cinema 21 April 14th. Here's an additional photo I took that day, as I tried to see into the depths of the building with my camera.

Ancient ruins transport my imagination; I fantasize about the people who built, lived and worked in them thousands of years ago. When I look at a ruin like Cinema 21, which isn't ancient but merely old and tired, my imagination works in a different way. I don't think so much of those who once went there, but of what it would be like to fix it up if I could.

More photos here.

Craft Store Cowboy

Pasadena's Old Town is busy on Sundays. Stores and restaurants are packed. Traffic is thick. It's hard to find a parking space.

To me, this looks more like the Old West of yesteryear than the Old Town of today. The man in the wheelchair naps in the sun on Raymond Avenue outside of Stats, a crafts and floral supply store the size of a football field. I'll tell you more about Stats some other time. It's a marvelous store that deserves its own post. Right now, I'd rather wonder about the man.

Pretty Parasite

This orange, stringy stuff shows up all over Pasadena's wild places this time of year. It's a plant with a stretchy, rubbery texture. If you enlarge this photo you can see what it's doing: strangling its host plant.

The orange parasite is called Cuscuta, or "Dodder." My friend, the landscaper Leo Snider (who's very knowledgeable about southern California native plants), says Orange Dodder's favorite host is sumach. Sumac recovers from the parasite over the winter, according to Leo, and from what I can tell so do the other plants it invades. "One nice thing," says Leo, "is that Dodder usually localizes. That is to say, it hasn't taken over the world."

Just a few defenseless locals.

Sfumato

From dictionary.com:
"sfu·ma·to: the subtle and minute gradation of tone and color used to blur or veil the contours of a form in painting." The word originates from the Italian, sfumare, "to gradate tone or color," which itself originates from fumare, "to smoke."

The fire in Sierra Madre, officially known as the Santa Anita Wildland Fire, is now 100% contained. But you can't contain the smoke.

We don't smell it anymore, and when we're in it we don't see it. But when you drive in to Pasadena you see it hanging over the San Gabriel Valley, backed up against the mountains, waiting for wind or rain to clear it out. I don't think we're going to have much wind soon, and surely we won't have rain. But time will take it away. Meanwhile, it softens the views on the Sunset Fire Road.

Footprints

It's getting warm here. There's less water down by Devil's Gate Dam every day. We savor our walks there this time of year. We won't go much in summer because there's little shade and the sun is too punishing. We'll have to find another place to go.

In this photo I detect the prints of duck, dog, and...some large creature. I'd make a lousy tracker.

Theme Day: Numbers

The City Daily Photo blog family has a theme day the first of each month. May's theme is numbers.

The man in the background of this photo stands at the top of the freeway offramp at Lake Avenue. He's holding a handmade sign that says "Homeless Vet. Hungry. Please help." If I had a sign it might say, "Our dependency on fossil fuels is choking our economy." But that's not very original. I stole it from this article.

Click here to view thumbnails for all 181 blogs participating in this month's theme day. Go on, click on one you've never visited before! Have an adventure! I'm going to click on a bunch of them, and after that I'm going to go buy a bike.