G.O. by moonlight--well, by some light

Walking around the exterior of the Griffith Observatory...

Love a rocket

After all the shots of earth's satellite I've taken, I feel as though I need to include this moon (which was a bit easier to shoot) inside the Griffith Observatory.

And here's the earth; I never get a chance to shoot it from this angle in real life.

Fun with exposure / 42 degrees

The Foucault Pendulum in the central rotunda of Griffith Observatory. This 240-pound ball swings on a cable over a this circular pit with a lighted ring around the perimeter.

Here's two virtually identical shots of the ball. Both use the same aperture setting (F/3.5, for the photographically inclined).

Here's what it looks like with a 1/15 second exposure:


Here's what it looks like with a 1/125 second exposure:


Hey look: That lighted ring is divided into 42 sections (numbered 0 - 41). All because we let the lens be exposed to the light for 1/110th of a second less (shorter than the blink of an eye).

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"Photo" means light, doesn't it? Imagine that: Photography depends entirely on light.

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Speaking of the 42 sections: They're not only designated on the lighted ring:

But also around the upper lip of the wall around the pit (directly opposite the corresponding number on the ring below):

Blaze

Setting sun below the clouds. In the shot on the left, there's Hollywood in the foreground.

Do the astro

Astronomers Monument, on the grounds of Griffith Observatory, at sunset and after dark.

Following the city

Downtown Los Angeles... and a big cloud! (Run for your lives, Angelinos!)

Send in the clouds

Clouds as viewed from around the hills (around the observatory).

Mount

Rebel with a bust

It's fairly common knowledge that part of Rebel Without a Cause was filmed at Griffith Observatory. And it's not exactly a secret that there's a bust of James Dean on the grounds of the observatory commemorating that connection.

With these two shots of said bust, notice how in the relative size of the background (the Hollywood sign and transmission tower) to the size of the bust shrinks from the shot at the right to the shot below.

Behold the glory the zoom.

Meridian

At the Griffith Observatory, in the "Gottlieb Transit Corridor"; had it been a sunny day this would have been focusing the sun's rays, but it was still interesting after the rain:

Popping up

More unidentified buds growing on a tree of some sort.

Spikey

On some other trees in the courtyard of the building there's no leaves but these spikey pods.




(If you have any idea what these trees are named, please leave a comment. I'm not as much of a tree expert as I would like.)

UPDATE: These are American Sweetgum.

Down the line

A palm bush about 50 feet from my front door in the building's courtyard.

After the rain

A series of shots focusing on using manual focus to capture these raindrops on the tree leaves outside my patio. (Absolutely no auto-focus with any of these.)
(The aperture and exposure were also manual, but hey, big deal, right?)

Tunnel, facing east (mostly)

From the west end of the 2nd Street tunnel (the other end of the tunnel here).

The entrance at this end has a pattern of increasingly curved sections, forming a sort of staircase design on either side, leading into the tunnel.

Facing back toward the entrance where the curved sections are barely curved.

Hole-y

Unaltered shots of a pothole on Flower St. in downtown L.A.: