4th of July fireworks, Marina Del Rey

4th of July fireworks, Marina Del Rey

Just a quick post of a couple shots from the 4th of July. For this year’s 4th Erinn and I, along with my visiting mom and kid sister, hiked a mile or so down Speedway Avenue to join thousands of revelers in taking in the annual fireworks spectacular held in Marina Del Rey. Having shot fireworks numerous times during my newspaper days, I wasn’t that interested in shooting them again, but couldn’t help myself from taking a few once they started booming. I’m a sucker for bright and shiny things I guess. Speaking of bright and shiny things, I tried to at least put a different twist on the photos after noticing the glare of four balding heads staggered perfectly in front of me, tilted upward as their respective owners took in the spectacle. Possibly mean, but kind of funny I thought. From there I noticed that fireworks were as pretty out of focus as they are in focus, so I took a few that way as well. When the show was over we hiked back home, ready to call it a night after a long, active day that included a bike ride to Manhattan Beach and plenty of good food and beer.

I had the opportunity last week, through an assignment for the Chronicle of Higher Education, to spend a little time with Paul Debevec at Light Stage 5 at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) Graphics Lab in Marina Del Rey. Debevec is being honored with an Academy Award for his work in creating the animated faces in Avatar. His research has lead to some pretty significant advances in the realism of digital animation and has been utilized in such films as the Spiderman movies, Hancock, and Benjamin Button. The light stage he’s standing in is comprised of 156 LED lights that enable them to study the way light hits a face from every possible angle and then create a digital representation of it that looks as close as any animation has ever looked to real. It’s also a really fun place to make a portrait. The face in the third photo is “Digital Emily,” an early animation made using the same stage. And the puzzle is made from a photo of Light Stage 6, which is held at another location and is now being used to create full body animations. His research makes me feel like I know absolutely nothing about light, but is really interesting. You can view some samples of his work at www.debevec.org

I’ve been a bad blogger, but I’ve got an excuse! On the 12th of December I flew out to meet up with Erinn at her parents’ place in Emerald Isle, N.C. After a wonderful week there with her family we took off on a cross-country road trip with the purpose of moving Erinn’s belongings from her home in Peoria out to our place in L.A. I’ve been out here solo since September and am glad she’s finally able to join me! Our road trip took us from Emerald Isle through Asheville, where we visited my friend Cameron, up to Peoria, where we were able to catch up with my friend and former housemate Adam and a few of Erinn’s friends and also had the pleasure of packing Erinn’s entire powerless apartment into her car in -3 degree, post-ice-storm weather. From there we headed southwest through Tulsa and Albuquerque en route to a rendezvous with my mom and sister in Flagstaff, Ariz., where we spent Christmas week in an amazing mountain home, courtesy of Lauren’s Tucson landlord, surrounded by several feet of fresh powder snow. Finally, we made our way to our ultimate destination on the 29th in time to be here for what turned out to be a fairly quiet, but memorable New Year’s Eve complete with a fireworks show completely obscured by a dense fog that covered the coast the entire day. It was a great trip from start to finish, but I’m happy to be back home and ready to get back to work. And hopefully I’ll be better about putting up new work now that things are back to normal.

Tree decorating in N.C.

Emerald Isle starfish

An homage to “Planet Earth”

Tail lights

Buffalo Trace distillery; Frankfort, Kent.

Peoria at -3 degrees

No power hair dryer

Erinn’s first tumbleweed encounter; somewhere near Amarillo, Tex.

Tumbleweed pom pom

Canyon de Chelly, Ariz.

Flagstaff bedroom

Wood fires take awhile to heat an entire house

Picture window

Santa!

Snow, snow, snow

Snowman building

5:30 a.m. after a faulty fire alarm woke us all up

Sunshine

Yellow

Yoga

Classic

Sherlock 1

Sherlock 2

Cruising Flagstaff

The trap works!

Quiet time

Crystalline windshield

Grand Canyon!

From the lodge

Sedona, Ariz. chapel

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Lauren came over from Tucson for Thanksgiving. Lucky for the Pelican she brought her own bird. And it was delicious.

Something that caught my eye as I was walking home today. I was hoping they’d all fly away in unison, but the guy on the lower right wasn’t much of a team player.

Yesterday evening I went out for a walk along the beach and ended up shooting for an hour or two after being impressed by the colors of the sunset, a side effect from the smoke cloud hovering over the city as a result of the nearby wildfires. The haze over the Venice Pier made it feel like a surreal dream world. Something like the beach scenes in Dark City comes to mind, if that reference rings a bell. As I’ve just moved here I’m unprepared to go cover the fires directly, so I chose to sit this one out. But I may head up there in the coming days to check out the aftermath. One thing I’ll need to do this spring is build up a personal fire kit and possibly go through some training so I can get in there next season. Hopefully there won’t be anything as bad as these have been for quite awhile.