Last year in B & W

I'm not sure where the "World-Wide B&W Challenge" started, but it's definitely going around the world like wildfire. Maybe it was started for those who have never held an analog film camera in their hands or those that thought that a digital camera couldn't make amazing B&W images, but it's here's and it's viral, as they say.


For some of us, the response is trivially easy - all we have to do is throw up some scanned negs from way back when; in my case, however, I chose to convert recent images from digital color to B&W. Some are native Lightroom, some used NIK Silver.

In any event, here's my contribution to the challenge, not necessarily in order.

After-word: some of these images should have been shared earlier, but this is a just a blog, and this year I didn't have an assistant to handle all the media we're supposed to be posting, so some stuff got laid aside, and that makes this post a meagre catch-up. For that I apologize. Still, each one of these images is important to me.

Cheers, and may you all have a productive and prosperous new year.

My Favorite Shots for 2014

I am firmly convinced that Los Angeles has always been one of the most interesting cities in the world, and it's even more so now with all the activity in the newly revitalized Downtown, also known as the Historic Core. Basically abandoned from about 1980 to just a couple of years ago, the population has boomed from an estimated 10,000 five years ago to over 45,000 today. There are new businesses, new construction, once-abandoned skyscrapers converted into live/work spaces, the Bringing Back Broadway initiative.and many new faces.

In no particular order, here are a few of my favorite images from this last year.

                                    

Angels Flight

The historic and ancient Angels Flight funicular on Bunker Hill closed down a year ago due to some "technical" issues, which have since been repaired, and it is promised that it will reopen soon. I sure hope so. it had been in mothballs for decades, but a group of concerned citizens formed a committee, and the little train (one of the shortest funicular lines in the world) was back in business, until it broke.

But when it reopened a couple of years ago, I jumped on board. I gave the guy in the little ticket building at the top a handful of quarters and spent about two hours just riding up and down. Both the ticket guy and I lost count of my rides. I took a ton of pictures of people riding the cars, but most of them were crap (so it goes).

Still, I had a good time in the Disneyland of my mind. Thanks, funicular people.

Exhibition

In association with the Los Angeles Downtown Art Walk News, I will be showing selected prints at the historic landmark Earnest A. Batchelder Chocolate Shop at 220 W. 6th Street in downtown LA, Sept 11, 2014.