Observations by Night - Los Angeles

Los Angeles on a blurry, cloudy evening

Burbank, California

Downtown Los Angeles

Downtown, Los Angeles just after the rain

Closer

 Looking West

Hollywood, California

All these photos were taken from the Griffith Observatory

At the Observatory

The camera obscura (Latin; "camera" is a "vaulted chamber/room" + "obscura" means "dark"= "darkened chamber/room") is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a highly accurate representation.

Using mirrors, as in the 18th century overhead version (illustrated in the History section below), it is possible to project a right-side-up image. Another more portable type is a box with an angled mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image being upright as viewed from the back.

As a pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but the projected image becomes dimmer. With too small a pinhole the sharpness again becomes worse due to diffraction. Some practical camera obscuras use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.

Griffith Observatory is in Los Angeles, California, United States. Sitting on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in L.A.'s Griffith Park, it commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin, includingdowntown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. The observatory is a popular tourist attraction with an extensive array of space- and science-related displays.

 The first exhibit visitors encountered in 1935 was the Foucault pendulum, which was designed to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. The Foucault pendulum ( /fuːˈkoʊ/ foo-KOH), or Foucault's pendulum, named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate therotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the first simple proof of the rotation in an easy-to-see experiment. 

The experimental apparatus consists of a tall pendulum free to swing in any vertical plane. The actual plane of swing appears to rotate relative to the Earth; in fact the plane is fixed in space while the Earth rotates under the pendulum once a sidereal day. The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks later Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28 kg brass-coated lead bob with a 67 meter long wire from the dome of the Panthéon, Paris. The plane of the pendulum's swing rotated clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours. The original bob used in 1851 at the Panthéon was moved in 1855 to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris

Hollywood and Vine

In the last blog I mentioned how Jeff and I had attempted to take enough photos for a full 'Hollywood' gallery. Well silly us we have forgotten the huge tourist factor. We figured a Sunday morning, before 11am- I mean shouldn't all these people be sleeping it off or in Church or something? Anyway, as mentioned we will go back at 6am on a Sunday soon and finish.





We did however get a few decent shots, so I thought I would post a few now to keep you on edge! In one of these images you see a building that actually stands on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. The Capitol Records building is actually on Vine set back a bit, but certainly viewable from the 'corner'. As you will read in the history I have included below, this corner is the most famous in Hollywood, but is no longer even in the heart of the Tourist area. That would be more like Hollywood and Highland- which if you watch the Oscars, you have seen at least on TV.





A History of Hollywood and Vine



Hollywood and Vine, the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, became famous in the 1920s for its concentration of radio and movie-related businesses. The Hollywood Walk of Fame is centered on the intersection.
The largest collection of photos of Hollywood Blvd. & Vine St. is on the Bruce Torrence Hollywood Historical Collection.
Today, not many production facilities are located in the immediate area. One of the few remaining is the Capitol Records Tower to the north of the intersection.The area was a lemon grove until 1903, when Daeida Beveridge allowed one corner of the dirt intersection on her property to be used for the building of the Hollywood Memorial Church for the local German Methodist population.
The historical marker plaque placed at the site by The Broadway-Hollywood Department Store and the Board of Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles reads:
Hollywood was given name by pioneers Mr. and Mrs. Horace H. Wilcox. They subdivided their ranch in 1887 and called two dirt cross-roads Prospect Avenue and Weyse Avenue. Prospect Avenue, the main artery, was renamed Hollywood Boulevard and Weyse Avenue became Vine Street. This was the origin of "Hollywood and Vine."
The streets were renamed in 1910, when the town of Hollywood was annexed by the City of Los Angeles.
Beginning in the 1920s, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the area began to see an influx of money and influence as movie and music businesses began to move in, turning the local farms and orchards into movie backlots. Hollywood and Vine was the second busiest intersection in the area, after Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue.

In the 1930s radio programs such as KFWB and the CBS Lux Radio Theater spoke of "broadcasting live from Hollywood and Vine," and newspaper columnists Hedda Hopper and Jimmie Fidler regularly touted the intersection's mystique.
In 1958, the intersection became the central point of the newly-installed Hollywood Walk of Fame. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the astronauts of the first lunar landing mission Apollo 11, were awarded television stars for coverage of the mission, and given the places of honor at the exact corners of Hollywood and Vine.
By the 1960s, however, many studios and broadcasters had moved onto more upscale areas, and the area fell into disrepair and disrepute, with many abandoned stores and offices, and the streets themselves, claimed by squatters and panhandlers. It took several decades for redevelopment to take hold, and visitors looking for Hollywood dreams were often taken aback by the area's contrast with shinier tourist meccas.
The Hollywood/Vine subway station opened in 1999, and led to more sustained and serious redevelopment in the area. On May 29, 2003, Hollywood and Vine was named "Bob Hope Square" to commemorate Hope's 100th birthday.
In urban folklore, many of the local buildings are considered to be part of "Haunted Hollywood", home to the ghosts of celebrities (and less stellar residents) of Hollywood's legendary past. The intersection has been mentioned or alluded to in dozens of songs, films, video games, music videos and other popular media, often as a symbol of Hollywood's lure as a destination for dreamers, or for its decadence and disappointments.

An Attempt at Hollywood

3 Happy Friends!


We journeyed down to Hollywood on Sunday morning hoping to get some good photos of some of the more quintessential Hollywood places. We did manage a few, but will have to make a second trip there- this time arriving at dawn in order to avoid the huge masses of tourists that tend to flock to certain places in large groups making it impossible to get a good photo-at least the kind I am looking for. Who the hell wants to see photos with crowds of tourists anyway? You can see that in your own vacation pictures!

I realize that tourists want to see these famous places- like Grauman's Chinese Theatre, but all the crap going on, on the sidewalk outside- like celebrity impersonators, and various 'acts' are really only there to try and collect tourist dollars- and are really so campy. But I guess it can be amusing if you never see things like that where you are from.

In June we are taking a road trip to the San Francisco area. We will also be spending at least a day in Colma- the city of cemeteries! The Ossuary gallery is sure to grow from that trip.