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Warm-Weather Christmas | A Photographic Look

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Like many San Diegans, I came from elsewhere. Both other places I had lived are in colder climes, so when I first came here (on a short winter vacation that became permanent) I was fascinated with the way Christmas is celebrated in warm latitudes. Like flocking of Christmas trees to simulate snow. What? I never even heard of that until I got to SoCal.

But what I really like is not ways that cold-weather traditions are mutated, but rather the original ways that a holiday associated with winter and being indoors is celebrated in warm weather.   [Read more…]

Some of My Faves | A Photographic Look

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor / flexible fotography

I look at architecture as design. When I look at an entire structure, I see the pure lines, angles, and curves of it as well as the overall building that it is. I examine smaller sections of a structure for pure design. The Art of architecture is that I may see shapes in the buildings that aren’t really there in the buildings. Often, the interplay of light, another pure design element, creates design that isn’t really there. I guess it’s what used to be called art abstracts. It’s simply seeing the designs that aren’t there in the buildings.   [Read more…]

Yes! Some Good San Diego Architecture! | A Photographic Look

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This month’s A Photographic Look is dedicated to architect Robert Venturi who died last month at the age of 93. While a vocal proponent for what became known as Post-Modern architecture, he (along with his partner Denise Scott Brown) made good buildings in other styles, too. I just hope he doesn’t try redesigning the pearly gates.

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While I have a definite partiality for Art Deco, I enjoy and appreciate all types or categories of architecture. For me, a structure just has to make design sense no matter what form or style the design might take. (Not being out of place in its location also helps a bunch.)

What I mean is that whatever form the design had in the architect’s mind, must have a reason, a functional basis in reality—not just be something different for its own sake, or something added-on just for the adding of it. I am not fond of Post-Modern architecture for this reason. Go look at The Aventine in La Jolla for an example. The tiny windows I understand (it’s more the perspective of the large wall area), but why are those little adornments there? That doesn’t mean a building can’t have some feature that is intended just for decoration. Just that it should be done well, not simply added-on as if from a catalog.   [Read more…]

Street Scenes of San Diego | A Photographic Look

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As I mentioned last time, and in the great words of lyricist Sammy Kahn: “It very nice to go trav’lin’ … but it’s oh so nice to come home.” That’s especially true when you live in one of the most magnificent and temperate places on the planet.

It’s natural that whenever anyone travels to other places folks who live there always want to know where the traveler is from. When I’m the traveler and I tell them I live in southern California – and in San Diego, no less – the response is often something along the lines of, “It’s so beautiful there; why do you bother to leave?” My answer, by the way, is always: “Just to see how things are different elsewhere.”

Sometimes, I’ll grab my camera and spend some time walking around San Diego as if it were a city I was visiting. I try looking at familiar things and scenes like they were new to me.   [Read more…]

Some Street Scenes of Europe | A Photographic Look

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The month of August means vacation all across Europe. Most of the EU nations have legal provisions allowing workers up to four weeks of vaycay yearly, and many workers traditionally take it during August.

Of course, that’s ironic for Americans who don’t know better and go on their summer vacations to Europe in August. I was one of them on my first trip there. Before I learned about “shoulder seasons”.

While many of these images weren’t made during August, here’s a glimpse of what you might find walking the streets of any of these places on any day if you were to do a whirlwind European tour this month. I’ve arranged them roughly north to south; west to east.   [Read more…]

Summertime | A Photographic Look

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In 1958, before I knew about the classic, wonderful bluesy “Summertime” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, “Summertime, Summertime” was the title of a bouncy one-hit wonder that I liked a lot back in the day. I’ve been using that word, instead of just ordinary Summer, ever since. And I often sing the song (usually just to myself.)

But, making a slideshow of summer pictures when you live in San Diego ain’t so simple.  So many images that say “summer” in other places just say “ho-hum” in “Sun Diego.” Sunshine? Got it. Water? Well, yeah. Lazy summer days? All year ‘round.   [Read more…]

The Del Mar Fair: A Photographic Look

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor / Flexible Fotography

It’s officially called the San Diego County Fair. Folks around here, however, mostly just call it The Fair.  At least during the month of June.

For three years in the 1990s I was the on-site photographer-of-record for The Fair. It was one of the most arduous photo jobs I ever had: 21 days straight (back then The Fair ran continuously without closing) of being there, on-site and on-call, all day, and sometimes part of the night, to photograph anything and everything that went on at The Fair.

But it was also lots of fun. For one thing, I had access to places that are off-limits to the public, and at times when the fairgrounds was still closed to the public. So, while I fulfilled all the duties I had to as Fair Photographer (that’s photographer for The Fair, not just a fair photographer) I also was able to make quite a few images for myself that I knew weren’t particularly useful to the client. Since we are right in the midst of The Fair, here are some of those photos you will see nowhere else.   [Read more…]

A Photographic Look at Mosques and Synagogues During Ramadan and Shavuot

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Ramadan is an entire month of abstinence and prayer celebrating the initial revelation to Muhammad of what would become the Quran. One of the Five Pillars of the Muslim faith, all Muslims are required to perform these religious duties unless elderly, ill, or “unclean”. Ramadan in San Diego began May 17 and ends on June 15.

This year, the Muslim holy month coincides with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which began May 19 and ended May 21. Seven weeks after the Jews achieved freedom from their slavery in Egypt, celebrated as Pasach (Passover), God gave the Torah (Old Testament) to the Israelites assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai. That is celebrated as Shavuot, which is roughly analogous to Christian Pentecost. Also, Shavuot celebrates an even older tradition, the Feast of Weeks harvest festival, so there’s a double meaning to the holiday for Jews.

Both holidays commemorate the delivery of their religion’s holy book to them. While Shavuot is tied to Pasach, and always happens at about this time of year, Ramadan moves around the year according to the Islamic lunar calendar, so this pairing happens once in about 25 years. This pairing makes a good-as-any reason to look at the architecture of the respective houses of worship.   [Read more…]

Beth | National Poetry Month

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She said goodbye and I was left with memories.

Running across a field at her placid back.
. A yell. She turns.
Running across a field at her fleeing back.

A phone call and a small voice says,
come, with half a question mark on the end.
The meeting-place is an old one — a dream
midway between two realities.
. I’m on my way.   [Read more…]

A Photographer Looks at Pollution

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In honor of Earth Day and the fair coming this weekend, here are illustrations of just some reasons that Earth Day needs to be every day. Humans consume earth’s resources and, in turn, poison her even as our plastic poisons us. Industrial uses crowd residential districts. Climate change fuels year-round “fire season.” Beneath it all is the trash and litter we all leave behind us. Stay conscious, San Diego.   [Read more…]

Lunar Eclipse: Celestial Sky Show Set for San Diego

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor

For those of you around SoCal, and especially here in San Diego, who got excited last summer about the “Great American Eclipse” of the sun, your next eclipse is coming up this very month.

What? Another eclipse? Didn’t hear anything about it? Relax, it’s not your fault. Media doesn’t make nearly the same noise for an upcoming lunar eclipse (they are much more common) as for a major event like the one last summer. A Total Lunar Eclipse (TLE) isn’t nearly as spectacular as a Total Solar Eclipse. They are totally unlike each other. But TLEs, as they are known, have a special beauty of their own.
  [Read more…]

Readers Write: International Women’s Day Gets the Trump Treatment

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor

Since SDFP was striking on Wednesday when this happened, I thought I’d take the opportunity to express my outrage in your stead.

He didn’t. He said WHAT? Oh, the man is utterly stupefying and infuriating. A true sociopath, he will say anything in the moment regardless of how his prior actions absolutely give lie to the words. And even when he seems to be trying to say something positive, he simply can’t.   [Read more…]

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