Day of the Dead at Hollywood Forever

This year was my first time seeing the Day of the Dead festivities at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, home to the rich & famous no longer living. The altars people made for it were often highly elaborate and the whole experience was full of captivating & unique sights. I just wish it went on longer into the night, it began wrapping up around 11:30. Will have to come back again next year and get their earlier.

Día de los Muertos: Flickr Set (50 images)









A tribute to Mel Blanc, voice of almost every original Looney Tunes character and hundreds of other voices.





Light projected onto a wall became a venue for shadow dancing to the music at the stage nearby.

The Halloween Ride

Halloween weekend descended upon Los Angeles and lots of merriment and costumes on bicycles ensued Downtown Friday evening. I dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood and I dressed my bike as the wolf. It was my first time in public dressed as woman, and it was a little unsettling how well the costume worked. Even some people I ride with every week had to take two or three takes before realizing it was me. Hope none of them had impure thoughts...

Red Riding Hood Takes Pictures (Halloween Ride Photos)

Cubcamp was here. Spot 3. Or was that Spot 4?

Anatomical Photos

I took some anatomical photo's back when I was in school with my roommate's 20D, also recently dug up in my excavation of my photo archives. I put them into a set, and any future pictures I take of anatomical references, I'll add them to it.

Flickr Set: Anatomy Study





I always loved the planar head, and I was lucky enough to get my life drawing instructor to let me take it home temporarily to shoot some photos of it. I was inspired to do this in part because I had looked for images of a planar head online with almost no luck, and I didn't see any company that sold them. I guess they had gone out of style at some point, and the ones Otis had were commissioned, and made from a custom sculpt by a professional sculpture artist. I took photo's all the way around, and at some point I'm going to make a quicktime 360 turn table of it.

Another instructor who taught several 3D classes, had a hand painted replica of a fetal skeleton, which he brought into class and gave an open invitation that people could take photos of it. An offer I couldn't refuse. My apologizes if this freaks out anyone.

Yahoo Center Park

I had taken some pictures during a lunch break a while back at the Yahoo Center Park across the way from Sony, but I had sort of forget about them. This was back when I first got my new camera, and I think then it wasn't the Yahoo Center, it was something else. I've been digging through some of the archives and posting up forgotten pictures lately, these being some of them.

Images of Mexico

I finished processing the rest of my pics from the Rosarito Ensenada Bicycle Fun Ride trip. I had left my camera with the truck, and the group I was with needed to get back to Los Angeles with some relative haste. So most of these photos are taken from inside the truck while in motion. To prevent motion blur a lot of shots were take at 1/5000 to 1/8000th of a second, and the bright Mexican sun allowed for okay exposures and decent depth of field despite the fast shutter.

Flickr Set: Rosarito to Ensenada Trip (135 Images)




Here is lustful close up of my bike's carbon weave glistening in the sun light as we loaded the truck.



The epic Ensenada flag towering over the landscape. This photo does not do justice to it's massiveness.





Yes, that is indeed a Happy Pharmacy where you can get Happy Meal "Viagra". Just down the street from the strip club in the previous photo.



Tons of little homes like this were scattered across Baja, heavily marketed to American's looking to retire close to the ocean on the cheap.



Most of the roads we traveled on were toll roads, and being the one in the vehicle with cash in the wallet, I was doing a lot of forking over monies.



Another common site on the trip were large unfinished beach front condo structures. Some of these have barely seen progress since the last time I saw them six months ago on the Spring season ride.



A rather large Jesus on the way between Rosarito & Tijuana.



All the real estate advertising I saw was completely in English with no Spanish translation, and photographed with happy white people.





The walls in Tijuana were full of interesting sights and textures.





During the final stretch as we approached the border, speed trickled to slower than a baby's crawl. It is during this time that the street merchants capitolize on a captive audiance. Most of these things are useless knick knacks and knock offs, your last chance to take a piece of Mexico home with you.

Big crucified Jesus figures seem to always make an appearance, and the popular item of the day was big tortoise lawn ornaments. Last time Scarface blankets were the hot recurring item. We did buy a big of churros for a dollar that was enough for 3 people, and they tasted better then any churros I've had stateside.



At last our time of inspection had come.



American parking lot. The end.

Epic.

This weekend was some bicycle riding of epic proportions. It's too much to adequately convey in a distilled synopsis, but I will say that seeing all of Los Angeles, and the Valley, from the top of the Hollywood Sign, was quite a sight to behold. That was one part of what was almost 19 hours of straight off and on riding, and being awake for more then 24 hours

While on the topic of epic journeys, I signed up last weekend for the 7 day, 545 mile, AIDS Lifecycle ride, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It will take place in June 08, but I will need to start training and fundraising now. Each participant needs to raise $2500 that will go toward the fight against AIDS, both in helping those already affected, and prevention. If you would like to support my endeavor, you can make donations through my AIDS Lifecycle Homepage. Really any amount would be greatly appreciated. The cumulative effect of many small contributions can really add up and make a difference.

CUBCAMPXXVIIII . HIGH SPEED PURSUIT

This my second week organizing the ride for our cycling group CUBCAMP!! Time to exercise that need for SPEEEEEEED!!!

Midnight Ridazz Posting

The Second Coming of Rosarito Ensenada

I finished my second Rosarito Ensenada 50 mile bicycle ride this Saturday. It's hard to believe it's been half a year already since the last one in Spring. The ride was much easier this time, finishing more then an hour faster, with no stopping and I wasn't pushing it as hard as I could have if I had really wanted too. It is a fun ride after all, not a race. Those views going up the mountain are amazing, and the abandoned cars wrecked at the bottoms of the cliffs are a creepy and sobering reminder of the dangers of mountain roads. I'll post more when I finish processing my photos from the trip. Big thanks to Katon and crew who I car pooled with on the ride.


loading the truck after the ride