MetaFilter posts tagged with California and photography

Welcome to the Rest of California

.kobayashi. — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:57:17 -0800

Lisa Hamilton's Real Rural project uses photographs and interviews to document the lives of people living on California's farms and in its small towns. Hamilton's work on the Real Rural project has been praised by NPR.org & The Columbia Journalism Review. And today, Alexis Madrigal (of The Atlantic) contrasts the project with Dodge's arresting Super Bowl halftime ad, "Farmer."

LA Noir.

anazgnos — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 01:48:17 -0800

Since 2009, a thread on the Skyscraper Page forums has been dedicated to trawling for old photos and stories of Los Angeles, mostly from the LA Public Library and USC Archives. Thousands of posts have accumulated into a fascinating portrait of the city. The thread is too vast for any one person to fully digest, and is best experienced as an ongoing narrative flow as stories are exchanged and mysteries are unravelled. but here are a very few scattered points of interest. The beautiful Dorothy Adamson’s dog gets bombed. Ciro’s and Villa Nova beget The Comedy Store and The Rainbow Room. The elevated bicycle pathway to Pasadena. The LA Times building is bombed and rebuilt. (supplement) AAA of California provides helpful air directions. Largo begets the Roxy. An orgy is interrupted. (supplement: orgy site ceases to be eyesore) Victorian houses, then and now. Hill & 6th, then & now. Bunker Hill, then and now. (plus the LA Pigeon Farm) The incredible Old Dutch Chocolate Shoppe, which languished (but survived) as a cafeteria, flea market & cellphone store, but is now due for restoration. LA's funicular railway Angel's Flight, since restored, decaying in storage. LA's other, long-forgotten funicular, Court Flight, decaying long before Angel's Flight had even been removed. Old Venice. LA's Chinatown was famously demolished to make way for Union Station, but was actually only one of four Chinatowns in LA. The removal of the hill on Hill Street. Massive earthworks for Dodger stadium. Streetcar livery survey A catalog of original Ralph's grocery store structures. Alpine Tavern on Mt. Lowe, connected to LA by the Mt. Lowe Railway. I wish I could do more, this just scratches the surface.

Dream Pictures: hand-tinted glass travelogue slides by Branson DeCou

taz — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 03:32:43 -0800

Moscow of 1931 is a collection of hand-tinted lantern slides by Branson DeCou, an American photographer and travelogue lecturer who traveled the world for 30 years before his death in 1941. You can view more of the DeCou corpus online at the Branson Decou Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz where they've been attempting to sort, preserve, identify and digitize 10,000 DeCou slides received in 1971, a gift referred to the university chancellor by photographer Ansel Adams. Available online so far are images of Italy, Germany, and California (though the carousel app on this page also includes photographs from other locations, and loads different images when you refresh the page; click on individual images to view). Like many university/library/museum digital collections, these can be a bit fiddly to navigate and view, so if you'd like to simply and easily scroll some pages of pretty images, this Russian language site has 13 pages of DeCou images from various locations.

70IN70

SpringAquifer — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:16:58 -0800

Last month, California decided to shutter 70 of its 278 state parks. "70in70 is an attempt to create memories before history outpaces us: 70 state parks are slated for closure this year, and we intend to visit each one within the next 70 days."

Carleton E. Watkins

starman — Sun, 29 May 2011 15:24:12 -0800

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) was an early western photographer, notable for his views of San Francisco and Yosemite. Watkins made his images with a custom built "Mammoth" 18x22" glass plate camera. Watkins also shot thousands of stereoviews. Watkins' photos were used to help illustrate the writings of John Muir, arguing for the preservation of Yosemite, eventually resulting in its status as a National Park. In his 60s, Watkins began to go blind. His financials waned and was forced to live in a boxcar with his family. He died in an insane asylum in 1916 — tens years after the Great San Francisco Earthquake destroyed all his negatives. You can find his images online at the Library of Congress (with high quality downloads). Cathedral Rocks, with lakes and trees. El Capitan. El Capitan mirror view. Chronology of his life.

The City of Angels

gman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:38:18 -0800

Photographer Matt Logue's empty L. A. shows the effect of the city being completely people-less.

House Beautiful

vronsky — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:33:24 -0800

Maynard L. Parker was an architectural photographer whose work appeared for much of the 20th century in House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Sunset Magazine and many covers for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, which was then called Home. He photographed many well-known architectural homes, including the work of Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright. Over 58,000 of those photographs are now available through the Huntington Library. Here are some examples.

A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

mattdidthat — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:04:12 -0800

Time-lapse video of the Southern California wildfires. Another image of the fires, as seen from space. Google Map.

Julius Shulman, photographer of iconic California architecture

HuronBob — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:26:01 -0800

NPR article and slide show of the works of Julius Shulman. If you've seen anything by Shulman, you've seen this one. Gas station buffs probably favor this. And, if this one wasn't in Playboy, it should have been! And, bunches more though a google image search. And, at 98, he's still capturing images!

Pirkle Jones, 1914-2009

scody — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:00:51 -0800

Photographer Pirkle Jones, best known for his images of California's migrant workers and changing landscape (including a collaboration with Dorothea Lange) and his iconic Black Panther pictures, has died at 95.

Vector Portraits (1989-1997)

dhammond — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:22:13 -0800

Los Angeles-based photographer Andrew Bush mounts a camera on the side of his car to capture freeway drivers in the southwestern United States. [via]

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

miss lynnster — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 21:51:53 -0800

Changing Times: Los An gel es in Pho togr aphs, 1920-1990

California Burning

psmealey — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:39:46 -0800

Pictures of California Wildfires. Some fire resources: Fire maps, Official Information and an up to the moment news blog. In related news, Twitter proves to be useful, while anger rages as evidence of arson mounts. More Photos here and here.

matteo — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 08:38:36 -0800

"Everything is foggy. Everything is not clear. He was alive when we got to the other side. And now I have brought him back dead. Whatever hopes we had, that's where they ended."
The Summer of the Death of Hilario Guzman (BugMeNot)

Prophets and Profits on the Burning Shore

digaman — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:14:46 -0800

From organically-farming Zen centers to celebrity-cultivating Scientology centres^TM, California is a seedbed of the most earnest (and most frivolous or worse) branches of spiritual inquiry. What's in the water in the Golden State that has made it The Visionary State? In an interview with editor Geoff Manaugh of the excellent BLDGBLOG, author Erik Davis -- whose published passions have ranged from an analysis of Philip K. Dick's "divine invasions" to erudite musings on Led Zeppelin's fourth album to an ode to the joys of being a teenage bongeur -- talks about the formerly chic devil-worshipper Anton LaVey, Beat Zen, Aldous Huxley, the Watts Towers, and beyond, with great photos by Michael Rauner, who collaborated with Davis on the new book.

Here Come The Sharks

breezeway — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:57:04 -0800

Huntington Beach, California (Surf City, USA) is home to surfing's walk of fame and the International Surfing Museum. See the Duke with the Duke, other legends, pioneering photographers, and kings of the surf both local and international alongside other icons in the collection and exhibits .

Candidate Camera

pzarquon — Mon, 22 Sep 2003 23:15:49 -0800

Not quite moblogging. Though basically a publicity ploy by the cowbox folks, Candidate Camera is still worth a browse. A digital camera has been offered to every single one of the candidates in the California recall election — from Adam to Zellhoefer — and they're sending in shots from the campaign trail. Clearly some are having fun with the project, from the unknown to the infamous. And while others are going for the mom and apple pie constituency, at least a couple are aiming at the Maxim mindset. Having David Hume Kennerly at the helm adds some credibility, and while his featured photo picks are always good, you can always — in true blogger style — just jump to the latest entries.

Avocado Memories

debralee — Tue, 17 Jun 2003 10:15:41 -0800

Avocado Memories. It's more than a photo collection and group of essays about his parents' failures with interior decoration; it's a nostalgic website brought about by Wes Clark's impulse to let his children know what it was like growing up during a more innocent age.

pointless but surprisingly beautiful photos

marvin — Fri, 08 Nov 2002 10:40:41 -0800

pointless but surprisingly beautiful photos taken using a kite on the northern California coast