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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…]

Franchise Freedom at Burning Man 2018 | Video Worth Watching

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From the Studio Drift YouTube web page:

In their work Studio Drift often contemplates the concept of freedom. “Franchise Freedom” visualizes the connection between a group and the individual by mimicking a swarm of starlings. As dusk fell over Black Rock City, 600 luminous drones rose into a hypnotic display of technological choreography, accompanied by the poignant keys of Joep Beving. The drones were guided by a specially made algorithm that simultaneously allows both individual choice and movement as a group. The innovative technology made it possible to create a 3d image in the sky that could be viewed from multiple angles.

  [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…]

Azalea Park Murals Offer a Mini-Survey of Gloria ‘Glow’ Muriel’s Work, Part II

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Probably the most fascinating of Gloria Muriel’s murals in the alley is one she did with friends this year. Framing a large, classic “Glow” woman, a series of faces, beginning with two softly rendered women, evolve into hard-edged geometric faces that burst into triangular forms, all of which are bracketed by semi-circles floating over black space, a kind of evolutionary progression of humanity in time and space over chaos.

When I say this one appears to have a fully developed storyline, Muriel laughs.   [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…]

Azalea Park Murals offer a Mini-Survey of Gloria ‘Glow’ Muriel’s Work, Part I

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By George Howell

Artist Gloria “Glow” Muriel is touching up the large eyes of the “Mystery Lady,” whose wavy hair flows along the wall of El General Market in Azalea Park. Someone has “tagged” her, subtly adding brown paint to her eyes.

Muriel notes the graceful way the eyes were tagged and then squeezes a burst of spray paint.

“I’m improving their work,” she laughs. “I’m helping them.”

I first saw Muriel’s work in Tijuana’s Pasaje Rodriguez, the creative marketplace off Avenida Revolución known for its terrific assortment of murals. Muriel, born in Mexico City and raised in Mexicali, studied graphic design at the Universidad Ibero-Americano in Playas de Tijuana and came to San Diego in 2002 because of a medical crisis in her family. Although she continued to sketch during the illness, she put her art career on hold for several years, and then developed a unique style, a catalogue of female characters with exaggerated eyes and abstracted expressions who range from the childlike to the mature to the mystical.   [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 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…]

Pillar of Delay / The Beauty is in the Making | National Poetry Month

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By Sadé Graves

We dripped from the hands of the Creator
Wonderstruck by the possibilities
Beaded there together, a bright and motley crew
The rapture of our ignorance obscured the inevitable   [Read more…]

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