White Sky

While on the Colorado Street Bridge for the July 19th festival I took this photo of the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals Building, another Pasadena icon everyone loves to photograph. The building originally opened in 1903 as the Vista Del Arroyo Hotel, thus beginning its fascinating history.

I'm not sure if the rooftops in the foreground are of condos or a private home. We called it "Casa de Escher." Click on the shot below to enlarge it and get a better idea of why.

None of this explains the color of the sky.
While on vacation I might not be able to respond to comments as quickly as I'd like to, so please bear with me, or bear without me, or just bear.

Theme Day: Metal

On the first of every month, the City Daily Photo Blog community has a theme day. Today's theme is "metal."

July 19th I showed you a destruction site where a building is being torn down. The thing that most impressed me about the work was that as they tore the building apart they were sorting the materials.

Yup. Recycling. Heavy machinery delicately plucked huge pieces of iron and placed them in the "huge pieces of iron" pile, as opposed to the "curly pieces of metal" pile. Shovels piled corrugated metal upon corrugated metal instead of throwing it all into muddled heaps of rubble.

I don't know if they were doing this due to any regulations, but I do know Pasadena City Council voted in 2006 to require that (among other things) all new construction meet LEED standards. Pasadena wants to be a Green City, and it's not just talk.

Many other blogs in the City Daily Photo Blog community are participating in today's theme day. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants.

Outward Route

The Colorado Street Bridge has been photographed by everyone with a camera who ever came within view of it. I'm no different. I've photographed it from all angles, searching for my definitive shot. Ben's, for example, is his banner, and it's a beauty. I haven't gotten my definitive shot yet.

Tomorrow is Theme day on the City Daily Photo blogs. After that, while I'm on vacation for a few days, I'll be sharing a few shots I took while on the bridge during the annual Pasadena Heritage Colorado Street Bridge celebration July 19th. I'll tell you a little about the bridge and respond to comments when I can. Zen Monday will occur as scheduled. (Could Zen Monday not occur?)

In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend!
I'll be at my high school reunion.
Eau. My. Gawd.

Water Use

It was still hot at around 6:00 Sunday evening when John and I arrived at Paseo Colorado to catch dinner and a movie. These kids were loving the heat.

There are two fountains at the Paseo. I don't shop there often, but it seems every time I'm there I find children enjoying this one. That's a fine use of resources.

The Real Thing

The Huntington. If you live around here you've probably been there—dragged through the galleries on a school trip as a kid or minding your manners in the tea room as an adult. If you're like me you go as often as you can to enjoy the gardens, galleries and exhibits. When blogger Katie of Katiefornia visited last week, our first stop was the Huntington. She and I both love to take photos, so I can promise you more to come.

We have Henry E. Huntington, Arabella Huntington and I suppose even Collis Huntington to thank for it all, as well as those who've come after them to manage the institution. It's only as far as San Marino, the community bordering Pasadena to the south. Yet the Huntington feels to me like a taste of Europe, Asia, the wide world. It's not the real thing, only a reproduction, but a day there feeds my wanderlust, if only briefly.

The Japanese Garden, pictured above, was used in a scene in Memoirs of a Geisha. You have to be as big as a movie studio to use the Huntington for your event. As perfect as it would be they don't hold weddings or private parties there. They'd be doing it all the time, wouldn't they? No, no, no. The Huntington is for the people.

Except the library. If you want to get an up-close look at a First Folio of Shakespeare or perhaps Benjamin Franklin's autograph autobiography, you must be a "qualified scholar." But there's always a library exhibit, so the unqualified scholars among us can occasionally view these treasures through glass. I've seen Galileo's handwriting only inches from my face. Not a reproduction. No, no, no. The real thing.

Zen Monday: Salon Seating

The rear part of Beyond Hair on Green Street.


Zen Monday is the day I ask you to tell me what the photo's about, rather than me telling you. Very basically, a Zen student learns from meditation or experience as opposed to a class or lecture. (For a brief definition of Zen, see the second paragraph of Wikipedia's article.)

One Hobbit Marathon

Followers of this blog know I'm behind in my reading of the 200 page manual that came with my camera. (It came on disk but I printed it out because otherwise I would never read it.) Night photography is a project I'm embarking on slowly. One reason for that is with the little digital cameras you need a tripod at night and it's awkward to carry to restaurants and theatres. Another reason is I don't get out much.

Last night our good friends Ed and Linda took us to the delicious Sushi Roku at One Colorado. After dinner we stepped out onto the plaza to discover upturned faces of all ages gazing at the wall above Crate & Barrel. They were enraptured with the beginnings of an all-night marathon of Peter Jackson's the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The showing began at 8:30 with plans to go all night followed by a "sunrise Hobbit breakfast," all free. My first thought when I heard that was they could offer breakfast free because most of the crowd wouldn't make it all night. But people had brought pillows and sleeping bags, and those are three excellent movies.

Night photography with these little digital cameras means the shutter stays open for a long time. I'll learn how to control that myself but right now I'm learning the automatic settings. I like the ghosty feet in the foreground of this shot. But if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can tell the people watching the film stayed pretty still.