Category Archives: Photography

Night Hike

Something I love about the Los Angeles area is that despite all its insane sprawl, it still offers the possibility of escape from the urban mess; to seek moments of refuge and relative solitude in the wilderness of the mountain chains surrounding the basin.

These pictures were taken on a night hike last weekend. (Click to enlarge).

Venus is hanging low in the east as the Sun is setting over the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Reinhard Kargl

Seen from Parker Mesa Overlook in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Moon has risen over West Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Bay. Photo: Reinhard Kargl

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The Mystery Truck

I have no idea why this old pick-up truck was parked on a Westside school campus at night. It was completely covered with rust and looked a little eerie in greenish light — as if it had appeared right out of the past.

Mystery Truck

Mystery Truck. Photo: Reinhard Kargl, 2010. (Added vignette and adjusted tint, exposure and sharpness digitally). Click to enlarge.

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Crossing The Bridge to Nowhere

Trekking up and down the East Fork of the San Gabriel River last weekend, through intense heat and about 20 wildwater crossings, we found the mysterious Bridge to Nowhere.

Bridge to Nowhere. Sheep Mountain Wilderness, California. 34°16′59″N 117°44′48″W. Click to enlarge. Photo: Reinhard Kargl, 2010

Why is there a bridge in the middle of the wilderness?

I was wondering too.

Built in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1936, the 120 ft (27 m) high bridge was supposed to be part of a road connecting the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County with Wrightwood in San Bernardino County. But the road was never completed.

After being overcome by a flood in March of 1938, the road construction project was abandoned.

The bridge remains, leading nowhere. It is accessible only on foot.

Continue reading

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L.A. Noir at Musso & Frank

Here is a shot I captured during a cocktail hour at Musso & Frank, one of Hollywood’s legendary old joints. In its heyday it was a popular hangout for the Hollywood scene, including movie stars, film directors, producers and writers such as F. Scott FitzgeraldWilliam Faulkner and Raymond ChandlerErnest Hemingway sipped cocktails here, and Orson Welles used to hold court.

Legend has it that Charlie ChaplinRudolph Valentino, and Douglas Fairbanks raced each other down Hollywood Boulevard on horseback, the loser having to pick up the dinner tab at Musso & Frank.

This shot takes me to L.A. Noir. Perhaps this is Philip Marlowe‘s hat …

"Marlowe's Hat" • Photo: Reinhard Kargl

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The Road Not Taken

Dedicated to KT.
Photo: Reinhard Kargl

This is a picture I took at the Huntington Library last week. At first I was not sure if I liked it. But when I was told that the image evoked impressions from one of my favorite poems, I was sold on it.

Here is the poem by Robert Frost, first published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Inverval. (More information can be found here.)

•••

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

•••

 

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