Favorite South Pasadena Shots (3)...by the Details

It's the little things!

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Concrete Ideas

This is my second favorite concrete doodle in South Pasadena.  My first?

Taijitu Revisited

Duality fascinates me. I love the way two seemingly incongruous things can exist together in a kind of light/dark, up/down symbiosis. Just think about how boring life would be if we only had the angel on one shoulder demanding that we mind our manners and eat our vegetables. Without that little devil on the other side encouraging us to speak out and choose the hot fudge (and maybe add a shot of cognac,) we'd never see the world in all its complexity: good and bad, full and empty, safe and dangerous.

South Pasadena is a great study in the yin/yang idea of opposites fitting together within a greater whole. On the one hand, we have all the small town baseball and apple pie goodness of a Norman Rockwell painting, but we're tucked into the exquisite chaos of greater Los Angeles -- and that keeps us from becoming treacly or naive.

Low and high, male and female, backwards and forwards ... interacting opposites that manifest the whole. Somewhere in the grey area, we find balance. Aristotle described it as the Golden Mean, "the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency." After I eat my broccoli, I'll lift my brandy snifter to that idea. How could we have balance without something else on the other side of the scale?



Originally posted in October, 2009

Caption This Photo (#93)

Hmmm...

NSFW (if you're a robot!)

No, that's not quite right.

Anyone?

The Langham Huntington Pasadena

Sure, the Langham Huntington Pasadena is technically next door to South Pas, but it's close enough to feel like part of the neighborhood. Plus, exploring the grandeur of this early 20th Century hotel feels a little bit like going back in time to when South Pasadena's own Raymond Hotel was in its heyday. When you walk along the grounds of this gorgeous place, you can imagine what it was like back when Henry Huntington was his generation's big mover and shaker...

Then, you can come back to the 21st Century and take a digital photo of the cute baby ducks.

Numbers

It's the first of the month, and that means Theme Day for participating City Daily Photo bloggers. This month's theme is Numbers.

If you walk around the grounds of South Pasadena High School, you'll see these tiles embedded all over the place. For years I tried to figure out what they meant. Was the architect an obsessive compulsive who really needed to count? Were the numbers a reminder of South Pasadena students' reputation for great math skills? Did the entire sidewalk design come out of a big Tile By Numbers box? Was it a horrific reminder of the relentless, unending passage of time?!

Eventually, Mister Earl told me the numbers represented graduating classes of the high school, and that every year was (or would be) represented.

I like my obsessive compulsive story better. (All together now: one, two, three, four... ahhh. I feel better already.)

City Daily Photo is in the process of changing servers, so this month's collection of worldwide Theme Day posts can be found here. (Many thanks go to Julie of Sydney Eye for setting up the alternate blog for Theme Day posts.)

Chimney

"Mommy, all I know is that if I were Santa I'd hope this family was on the naughty list. Just look at that chimney. It's impossible!"

(Today is the first day of the month and that means it's Theme Day for participating City Daily photo bloggers. Today's theme is Chimneys. For a look at some of Santa's other worldwide choices, see the contributions of my fellow bloggers. Click here to view thumbnails for all participants.)

time enough

"The butterfly counts not months, but moments, and has time enough."

--Rabindranath Tagore

Avant Carred

You all know how much I love photographing old cars, but new cars can be pretty fun to snap at, too. Especially if you zoom in on some of the shiny details.

I'm such a lazy modern artist. I just cram pieces of someone else's beautiful, well-planned design into my own haphazard little square.

Hey, whatever works. Right?

Fairy Tale Building

There's just something about the old Baranger Studios building that captures my imagination. It's one thing to look at a building and envision a history right out of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. It's quite another thing to find out the building really does have a whimsical past.

For me, the magic lingers here, even though the building now plays host to accountants and eye doctors. Not that there is anything un-magical about accountants and eye doctors. Hey, a good CPA at tax time can work real wonders, and it's pretty incredible to finally get the right glasses prescription...

But that's not quite the magic I think of when I look at this dramatic, mysterious place. I think Baranger Studios is filled with ghosts that dance to the twangy pings of mechanical music boxes. (Just keep your ears open the next time you walk past it at night if you don't believe me.)

Or maybe it's just an old building in need of a power wash. Are you in that tragic camp of people? Our world seems determined to rationalize the whimsy right out of all of us. From elementary school teachers to newscasters to self-righteous commenters on Patch, there are buzzkillers everywhere, even in our enchanted little town.

Let that B up there on Baranger Studios remind all of us to believe. In magic. In make-believe. in finding the pixilated in an increasingly HD world.

For details on Baranger Studios and its wondrous past, see my posts here and here.

Widescreen Craftsman

What do you do with the challenge of photographing Craftsman houses? Sneak up on them in bright afternoon light, zero in on a piece of the architecture and go for a widescreen view!

(Well, that's my latest strategy. How am I doing?)

The Most Fabulous Lawn in the Entire World

I don't know who lives here, but every spring when this shocking lawn starts blooming I imagine the owner must be someone like RuPaul or Angelyne or, heck, maybe even Strawberry Shortcake.

One thing is certain: they're in the pink. Literally!

I love it.

all dirt and rocks

"If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern."

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Camphor Tree: macro

Ah, beautiful camphor trees. The shade is amazing, the leaves smell like Vicks Vapo Rub, the berries are parrot food and the bark is worthy of a photo. (So here's one.)

just open up and turn toward the light

"Flowers don't worry about how the're going to bloom. They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful."

--Jim Carrey

Caption This Photo (#89)

Anyone?

Shadows (#7)

A human being is only breath and shadow.

--Sophocles

(Thanks for hanging around with my shadows for the past week, everyone!)

Shadows (#4)

Seems like this is an appropriate soundtrack...

Join me this week for fun with shadows!

Shadows (#3)

How typical: going all straight and narrow while the shadow side longs for a different path...

This week I'm having fun with light. Join me as I point my camera into shadows.

Eggsactly This:

And may your chocolate bunnies be solid, never hollow.