Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
The latest drone video by Mingomatic includes what looks to be a group workout class on the outdoor observation deck at about 70 stories above the street.
Archive: Photography
The latest drone video by Mingomatic includes what looks to be a group workout class on the outdoor observation deck at about 70 stories above the street.
LA Observed contributor Iris Schneider is one of the six photographers whose images are included in a show opening tonight at the Arena 1 Gallery at Santa Monica Airport.
Michael Justice, who shot for the Wall Street Journal, Daily Breeze and LA Herald Examiner, was on assignment for the port in San Pedro.
Natalia, 18, got into Berkeley. Cropped to fit. Nico Young/NYT Magazine. Nico Young, an 11th grader last year at Santa Monica High School, is suddenly the envy of big-time and...
With the Rio Olympics fully involved in track and field this week, LA sports historian and journalist David Davis revisits one of the most emotional moments — and photographs — of the 1984 Los Angeles games.
A second veteran member of the New York Times bureau in Los Angeles is taking a buyout offer to leave the paper.
He joined the Saigon bureau of Associated Press in 1965, and has been a fixture in the LA bureau.
Cunningham created the genre of street fashion photography and was featured in a 2010 documentary.
The organizers blame lack of a mature market for art fairs in Los Angeles.
An exhibit of World War II camp photos at the Skirball includes images by Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake.
Robert Martinez's cameras stationed in the mountains above Glendora captured two more feeding lions — in color this time.
A month before shooting her famous migrant mother, Lange documented the "Mexican quarter" before it was razed for downtown's Union Station.
A show of Eric Garcetti's social media photos opens downtown on Saturday and runs through Oct. 31.
During one stretch on Saturday, it rained steadily for two hours and lightning flashed across downtown. So why not some pics.
Everything came together for the Dodgers photographer to nab a shot of the Chicago fan clutching his baby while interfering with the play at Wrigley Field.
The mountain lions in the San Gabriels are untagged, uncollared and unnamed. But they are just as beautiful as the ones the National Park Service monitors in the Santa Monica Mountains.
David Davis revisits when Brandi Chastain won the World Cup at the Rose Bowl and tore off her shirt.
Monday was the 43rd anniversary of the most iconic photograph of the Vietnam War. For the occasion, Nick posted on AP's Instagram account.
The renowned photojournalist of topics as varied as Seattle runaways, Bombay prostitutes, high school proms, twins and film sets died on Monday in New York.
The Huntington Library announced it has acquired a full set of Ansel Adams portfolios that the California photographer shot and printed himself between 1948 and 1976 and called "an excellent cross section of my work."
Sunday afternoon in Mid-City. Photo: LA Observed...
Désirée van Hoek says people ask why "a relatively wealthy, white girl from Amsterdam" spends her summers in LA taking photos of the poor and homeless.
The magazine will turn to freelance and I guess contract photographers. Here are the final six SI photogs.
Tyler Green, the arts critic and reporter who writes Modern Art Notes, has signed a deal to write a biography about Watkins for UC Press.
My Central Library conversation with Gary Leonard last month has been put online by Photo Friends, the supporting organization for the Los Angeles Public Library photo collection.
The Los Angeles City Historical Society has put a growing database online of selected official photographs from the Los Angeles City Archives. More than 600 images now, and the project's Anna Sklar tells me more are coming.
Every familiar building, landmark, roofline and mural is photographed by Ian Wood. The challenge has been thrown down for quad-flying urban videographers.
Garcetti has been using his personal account to post pics from inside the rope lines and events such as his walk to work on Wilshire Boulevard a few weeks ago. The NYT takes notice.
Photographers are noting the abrupt closure today of Calumet's Hollywood store, along with the shutdown of all other American stores in the Chicago-based photo supply chain. An LA photog explains why it matters.
This undated photograph of movie stars Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart appears on the California state controller’s list of unclaimed property. Credit to Larry Harnisch for noticing.
This is pretty awesome. Ernie Marquez, a member of the land-grant family that owned Santa Monica Canyon, grew up in the canyon himself and later in life became an LA historian and collector of historical photographs.
Eric Rose posted to Facebook this view of Dodger Stadium tonight from LAPD Air 3.
Bob Chamberlin of the Los Angeles Times and Brad Graverson of the Daily Breeze use iPhones to document today's rededication of the Korean Friendship Bell in San Pedro.
Pamela J. Peters is a photographer from the Navajo reservation who discovered Kent Mackenzie's film "The Exiles" while she was at UCLA. Her work updates the presence of young Native Americans in LA. She talks to Lisa Napoli at KCRW and has a show downtown this weekend.
Dominis, a Los Angeles native, learned photography at Fremont High and went on to shoot several of the most iconic photos from the era when Life was America's most popular picture magazine.
Steve Winter's night photos of a deer, a bobcat, a coyote and a human out in the brush — as well as P-22 in front of the Hollywood sign — accompany the December story, now online.
Los Angeles photographer Sungjin Ahn has captured some marvelous images of Joshua trees against the desert and the sky and put them into a lovely Vimeo time lapse.
This painting of a freeway made in 1966 by the artist Vija Celmins is "a prime example of a California-based artist making work that engages the state’s famous highway system," writes arts journalist Tyler Green. He shows 25 examples.
Photographer Julius Chiu doesn't work at the Los Angeles Times, but he managed to get in and take a series of photos at the paper's lone remaining printing plant, on Olympic Boulevard south of downtown.
The Life photographer took the most remembered image of Robert Kennedy in a pool of blood on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel pantry on June 5, 1968.
Historian Michael Beschloss posted this image to Twitter and said it was Venice in 1947. It looks to actually be in Santa Monica. Inside: UCLA under construction around 1928.
Event at 2 p.m. at Central Library goes into the Adams photos of 1940 Los Angeles and environs that were donated to the library.
Posted to Twitter by historian Michael Beschloss, without explanation. Click to see it big.
The documentary photographer Bruce Davidson is known mostly for his images of New York — and not the softer sides of the city. Recently he has been dropping into Los Angeles for weeks at a time to shoot mostly in the hills and canyons. Palm trees, yuccas and the ivy growing on the undersides of freeway bridges factor in his LA pictures.
Three photos from the Los Angeles Public Library collection show the emotion of the morning that Robert F. Kennedy died, a day after winning the California primary election and probably the Democratic nomination for president.
Lloyd Ziff is a former magazine design director who is working on a book of 40 years of his photographs of Los Angeles and New York. "I was a child in Beverly Hills in the 1950s, and L.A. was being built right before my dazzled eyes."
Shot at noon Saturday outside the door to the mayoral suite in Los Angeles City Hall. Click for more.
Photographer Lane Barden has announced that the Getty Research Institute acquired his series of 130 images called the Linear City Porfolio. The three segments consist of low-altitude oblique aerial photographs of three major visual features of the LA landscape: the Los Angeles River, the Alameda Corridor railroad trench and Wilshire Boulevard.
Helen Brush Jenkins shot photos for the original Los Angeles Daily News, the long-defunct newspaper whose memory the LA journalist Rip Rense has carefully kept alive. He advises that Jenkins died today in Chicago. More inside.
While the Sun-Times cuts all its shooters, the NPR station has three staffers who mainly take pictures. There is also a new visual blog they like to call "public radio for the eyes."
The newest orbiting Landsat satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central Coast on Feb. 11. It flew back over home base in March and took this photo. The resolution is so good you can zoom in on the Santa Barbara coast, kelp beds and the Pismo Dunes.
The Kayne Griffin Corcoran gallery on South La Brea opened with an inaugural exhibition of work by artist James Turrell, including e Skyspace room where visitors sit in reclining chairs and observe subtle light and color changes from a dome in the ceiling.
Gary took photos throughout the runoff campaign for mayor between Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel. Here is a selection of our favorites.
Anne Knudsen, one of the Herald photogs to come out of the Cal State Long Beach photojournalism program, quipped at the reunion we covered in March about being in chemotherapy — she was bald at the time. Now comes word that Knudsen died on Sunday, leaving a teenaged daughter.
Emily Green, the water journalist and gardening writer who blogs at Chance of Rain, took some pictures this week at the defunct “Rock-a-Hoola Waterpark“ at Newberry Springs in the eastern Mojave. The derelict park, which used groundwater from the Mojave Aquifer, has also operated as Lake Dolores and the Discovery Waterpark.
Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, as Rob and Laura Petrie, in front of a studio audience during filming of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in 1963. Jerry Paris can be seen directing the episode.
LA photographer Johnny Tergo has rigged up his Chevy Silverado's passenger window with a camera and strobe lights, and he catches some interesting sidewalk scenes. Hat tip to Wired.com
Bryan Frank, the photographer for the CBS 2/KCAL 9 duopoly, has been posting some really nice behind-the-scenes images — as well as some food, coffee and street life shots that make me wish I was back in Rome.
Former Los Angeles Herald Examiner photographers Paul Chinn, Anne Knudsen, Javier Mendoza, Mike Mullen, Jim Ober, and Jim Ruebsamen will chat March 9 at Central Library with Dean Musgrove, now photo editor of the Daily News.
Photographer Gary Leonard took pictures this weekend of anyone who wanted to stand in front of angel wings painted by Colette Miller on the security shutters of the Regent Theatre downtown. John Rabe of KPCC went to observe — and pose — and reports back. Inside: Eric Garcetti gets wings.
Canadian astronaut on the International Space Station makes his second appearance of the week on LA Observed. Wait until you see his shot of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate inside.
Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut in Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station, has been tweeting eye-catching photos of points all across the planet.
Last night I asked if a color candid photograph of the Beatles chatting with fans outdoors could have been from the private party held in August 1964 in the Beverly Hills backyard of Alan Livingston, then the president of Capitol Records. By this morning, LA Observed readers had provided the answer.
From the Beatles first tour of the United States in 1964, most of the published photographs have been in black and white. Now color slides found in the collection of a late inventor include shots from a private party the Beatles attended here in 1964.
A celebrity photographer said to be working "exclusively on Justin Bieber" had finished taking pictures of a CHP stop involving Bieber's car when he was struck Tuesday evening while crossing Sepulveda Boulevard near Getty Center Drive. The driver stopped to help and no arrest is foreseen. More inside.
Which all proves that popularity on Instagram does not reflect the actual world, or Internet culture. And that San Francisco baseball fans post more than Los Angeles baseball fans — and more than all the football and soccer fans in the world.
Who is that woman exchanging grins with President John Kennedy in 1962 on Santa Monica Beach? The LA Times photo blog tells us.
This past September, David Davis contributed at our Native Intelligence blog a lovely piece on the legacy of Theo Ehret, his friend who was the house photographer at the Olympic Auditorium. A show of Ehret's boxing and wrestling photos is now on display downtown.
George Mann was a vaudeville performer who made color photographs of downtown's Bunker Hill neighborhood before all the Victorians and rooming houses were torn down. There is a show of his 1960s Kodachrome photos — in 3-D, with glasses provided — tonight at Central Library.
Spotted on Councilman Eric Garcetti's TwitPic page, from last month but worth a reprise.
Message to freelancers: sue the Los Angeles Times at your own risk. An arbitrator has awarded the paper $266,000 to cover the costs of defending itself against a suit by the longtime Hollywood photographer.
Reagh took 40,000 photographs of Los Angeles and Southern California from the 1930s until 1991, chronicling a time of huge change in the cityscape and the people of LA. A major new book that showcases a selection of Reagh's work promises to be a must-have for the Angeleno buff you know — even at $225 per copy. Here is a gallery of Reagh's photos through the decades.
Have you seen this car? Veteran LA journalist Steve Devol was out early Sunday morning to shoot some dawn photos around Walt Disney Hall. So were a film crew and a guard who tried to stop Devol from taking pictures. Didn't work.
This looks south down Avenue of the Stars from Santa Monica Boulevard, toward Pico Boulevard. The Century Plaza Hotel stood mostly by itself then.
Before Santa Monica's 3rd Street shopping district hit the skids and was re-imagined as a pedestrian mall, it was the busy center of town. This photo was posted Sunday at the Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page.
"Vintage mugshots have an eerie beauty to them that’s lost in current mugshot photography," says the website Mugshot Doppelganger. "What would celebrity mugshots, the ones we’ve become accustomed to seeing on TMZ, look like if instead they were taken in the 1920’s?" Asked and answered.
Many in Los Angeles just became acquainted with the architectural photographs of Pedro E. Guerrero this April when he appeared at an exhibition of his work at Wodbury University's gallery...
This labyrinth of 250,000 remaindered, new and used books is installed at The Clore Ballroom in the Royal Festival Hall in London. Check out the Bookshelf Porn page.
The website LAUNFD posts a gallery of images showing the old neighborhood of homes that was cleared out, starting in the mid-1960s, between LAX and Vista Del Mar, the street in Playa del Rey that runs above Dockweiler State Beach.
Artist Colin Rich, who made a pretty stunning timelapse piece on Los Angeles at night last year, returns to the subject of illuminated LA. The music this time is "Echoes of Mine" by M83. Watch inside.
The Carlyle Group announced Wednesday it will take a controlling stake in the photo archive.
Michael Dawson, the collector and proprietor of the late Dawson's Books on Larchmont, announces the first book of photographs by William Reagh. "William Reagh: A Long Walk Downtown. Photographs of Los Angeles & Southern California, 1936-1991," shows his perspective on urban renewal and change in Los Angeles, with images of Angels Flight, Bunker Hill, Pershing Square, Broadway, Grand Avenue, Hill Street, Wrigley Field and Chavez Ravine.
Los Angeles photojournalism stalwarts Nick Ut of AP, Al Seib of the Los Angeles Times and Jonathan Alcorn (who might be working for anybody on this one) at this morning's City Council discussion on medical marijuna.
Candace Parker of the Sparks and Carlos Bocanegra, the former UCLA player who is a defender on the U.S. national soccer team, are among the local figures featured prominently in ESPN The Magazine's annual issue devoted to the (nude) bodies of top athletes. Art Streiber's strategic positioning (and lighting) of the U.S. women's volleyball team has to be worth some kind of prize.
BuzzFeed says this photo of Wednesday's thunderstorm over New York was taken out the window of an airliner at 10,000 feet by former NFL linebacker Dhani Jones.
The Stanley Cup is making the rounds of LA Kings homes in Canada and on the East Coast this week, but a wonderful new gallery of photos from last week's visit to Slovenia and the home village of Anze Kopitar has been posted on the Los Angeles Times website. Must see: Kopitar with the Cup at the grave of his grandmother.
Reto Caduff is a Swiss-born photographer who lives part-time in Los Angeles and who, apparently, really likes beautiful women with facial freckles. His new book of images, called just Freckles, is a limited edition of 500 numbered copies which features "portraits of young women with various amounts of freckles – from a slight cluster on the cheek to faces covered with the beauty marks." His book is out Monday.
Life Books has released a new book with photographs from the magazine's archives and other sources: "The Rolling Stones: 50 Years of Rock ’n’ Roll." Were you at Anaheim Stadium in '78? Altamont Speedway?
Otto Jensen, reportedly a longtime photographer for Hollywood studios, was 101 years old when he was struck and killed Tuesday night by a car driven by a 91-year-old woman, Burbank police said.
Artist J. Michael Walker sends word that his friend Calvin Hicks died on Sunday, from complications of cancer. Hicks' photography was most recently seen in the Pacific Standard Time exhibition, "Identity & Affirmation: Post-War African-American Photography," at Cal State Northridge.Also: Otto Jensen, Burbank photographer was 101
Diana Chang, who blogs at HRGBRG, posts: "In order from south to north, here's every Venice Boardwalk storefront that faces the Pacific Ocean. Photographs taken on May 17, 2012. With soundtrack."
They got to play at home Thursday night for the first time since forcing their way into the second round of the NHL playoffs — and they didn't disappoint the standing-room crowd of screaming fans at Staples Center. You know who also had a great night? Photographer Harry How of Getty Images.
I woke up this morning to an LA history story of a sort by Nick Roman of KPCC. He reported on the Los Angeles debut 50 years ago this week of the young heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay. Two years later, as Muhammad Ali, he joined the leader of the Nation of Islam on stage at the Olympic Auditorium.
The New York Times Travel section on Sunday offered a tour, with online slide show, of locations in the Los Angeles area that the late Julius Shulman photographed. "Shulman captured Los Angeles and its surroundings in the middle of the 20th century as the city was shedding its small-town roots and becoming an international capital."
The New York Times wants your help identifying people in photos by the late Garry Winogrand from the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 1960.
I doubt that the Angels paid to have their web ads show up in the LA Times' online gallery of photos from yesterday's mass shooting of college students in Oakland.
Marc Wanamaker's collection of more than 70,000 photographs covering the history of movies and studios has found a home at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
A reader emails to point out a few errors in the web slide show that goes with a photo essay by Lise Sarfati on women in Hollywood, in Sunday's New...
Check out Veronique de Turenne's photographs from inside the gate at the Hollywood sign.
In addition to the relaxed Amelia Earhart photo I posted again earlier this week, the Automobile Club of Southern California Archives has some more nice photos of her in Burbank. Gotta love this one.
The Ansel Adams Museum Sets were selected out of his archives and printed by Adams near the end of his life, then sold on condition that the buyers would eventually donate their set to a museum.
I'm in the midst of a fun project extracting photographs from the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of 3,000 pictures from the morgues of the old Valley Times and Hollywood Citizen-News newspapers.
For photographs of Angelenos that make more of an emotional connection with the viewer, I nominate Adams' 1943 images from the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the Owens Valley.
My chat tonight with Lisa Napoli is on the background of the Ansel Adams photographs of the Los Angeles area, shot in 1940, that go on display this weekend.
The blogger at Babes of NPR on Tumblr doesn't require that the photo subjects actually work for NPR. Any association with public radio will do.
The images of 1940 Los Angeles that photographer Ansel Adams shot for Fortune magazine, then put away and forgot for awhile, are getting their first public display other than on websites.
Iris Schneider was with projectionist Tom Ruff for tonight's showing of Kubrick's "Paths of Glory."
I kept seeing Twitter and Facebook posts go by marveling at the sunset over Los Angeles on Tuesday. I thought, well OK, sorry I missed it. Luckily, photographer Jonathan...
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has posted pics of the sinking cruise ship and passengers from before, during and after....
A Venice landscape designer has a Facebook album of almost two dozen dog noses poking out as she walks by.
Hard to see today, but Downtown was encircled on at least two sides by big hills that blocked access. As L.A.'s outlying areas grew, the traffic poobahs punched through the hills with tunnels.
Eve Arnold was one of the first female photojournalists to join the Magnum Photos agency, in 1951. She did a book of her photos of Marilyn Monroe.
Take My Picture Gary Leonard.
Photo: B-2 bombers circle over the northeast San Fernando Valley this morning before the Rose Parade flyover. Photo: Roger Vargo/Explore Historic California
Gov. Jerry Brown's wife, Anne Gust, just tweeted this picture of hubby doing a pushup.
With the last American troops crossing out of Iraq into Kuwait tonight, the L.A. Times photo blog Framework has posted an impressive gallery of images from the war.
Time's Person of the Year cover was designed by Shepard Fairey from a Ted Soqui photograph of an Occupy LA protester in Downtown.
Kevin McCollister, the photographer whose book and blog are both called "East of West L.A.," was out Sunday and Monday nights for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
This amazing photograph of the old Plaza downtown, and showing La Placita and Fort Moore Hill in the background, is one of the 19th century treasures by photographer Carleton Watkins.
"Man, was it *cold* up there on the bluffs!," says Venice photographer Anthony Citrano.
Actually, it's the pictorial spread the former actress did for Playboy. Here's one somewhat safe for work example.
Stella Ajose, a photography student from Russia, has been shooting a series of pictures of immigrant fruit vendors on the streets around L.A.
Main Street, Santa Monica by Judy Graeme.
Protesters occupy railroad tracks in a German forest to block a train carrying nuclear waste.
Jim Romenesko contacted Jasna Hodzic after her photo of campus police Lt. John Pike using pepper spray on passive students hit the web.
Newsman-turned-artist Bill Lagattuta's latest project appears to be photographs behind the scenes of Channel 2 anchor Kent Shocknek at work.
Ed Fuentes imagines the UC Davis pepper spray cop being given community service on the new bike lane on Spring Street in Downtown Los Angeles.
Randy L. Rasmussen of the Portland Oregonian newspaper took this photo Thursday of a woman being hit in the face with pepper spray during an Occupy protest in downtown Portland.
Here's what a key Downtown corner looked like, showing some old cafes and a legendary saloon.
A no parking sign of dubious origin, plus evidence of progress on the Eli Broad art museum on Bunker Hill.
Halloween house.
Concrete in the 1933 bridge connecting Downtown with the Eastside is rotting from the inside and the structure is slated for replacement.
Each October, Gary Leonard heads out to Santa Monica Beach for artist Tyrus Wong's birthday.
LA Observed contributing photographer Iris Schneider has been down on the lawn at City Hall shooting portraits of some of the participants in the Occupy Los Angeles encampment and protest.
OK OK, too easy. Next time I'll make it a bit more challenging.
USC professor and Asymptotia blogger Cllifford V. Johnson rode from Heliotrope and Melrose, the western end of Sunday's CicLAvia route, to the eastern end at Hollenbeck Park.
Clippers fans get a treat in the Body Issue of ESPN the Magazine: Blake Griffin nude, along with more than a dozen other sculpted athletes, including snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler at the Chateau Marmont.
Check out the car hanging over the edge of a parking structure on Wilshire Boulevard near Veteran Avenue in Westwood.
Gotham City goons tried to stop Jeff Schultz from getting a shot of this weekend location shoot for "The Dark Knight Rises."
Reader Bob Patterson spotted this vintage Helms Bakery truck at the festivities surrounding the Concours d'Elegance in Pebble Beach. If you don't smell bread or donuts upon seeing the...
SoCal Focus has pulled together an amusing array of photos and postcards showing just how pervasive oil derricks were on the region's landscape for many years.
L.A. Times photographer Barbara Davidson comments at the paper's photo blog on the stunning image she shot of a refugee and her child. It ran last week on the front...
The Getty's acquisition includes photographs of nudes, celebrity portraits, and images made for high-fashion ad campaigns.
By Ryan Killackey, who writes: "I worked on this project on and off for over a year and a half. It is composed of over 10,000 photos shot in California by my wife and I."
Last March, you might remember, journalist Chip Jacobs posted never-seen photos that his brother Paul remembers taking on June 4, 1968, hours before presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally...
Did the L.A. Times' Barbara Davidson lock up another Pulitzer with yesterday's front-page photo of a Somali mother and child in a Kenyan refugee camp?
Photographer Colin Rich worked for months on this time lapse study of Los Angeles at night.
The New York Times features a photo project on Lakewood by Tom M. Johnson.
Amanda Corrigan, her husband Matt and their friend Barry Neely set up early Sunday morning on the closed southbound side of the 405 freeway in Sherman Oaks.
Eddie North-Hager spotted this sign under a display of Dodgers bobbleheads at King of New York Pizza in Koreatown.
Scott Jones, an Australian, and Alex Thomas, a Canadian, had been at the Stanley Cup finals seventh game and were caught in the post-loss rioting in downtown Vancouver.
Banksy will sponsor free admission at The Geffen Contemporary every Monday for the duration of the Art in the Streets exhibition. Thierry Guetta, the other star of "Exit From the Gift Shop," takes a big loss in court.
David Hume Kennerly won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 (at age 25) for his combat photography of the Vietnam War and was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night in June, 1968 that Robert F. Kennedy was shot.
The LAFD Historical Society has posted some good aerial photos of the Convention Center being expanded circa 1991 — before Staples Center or L.A. Live came to the Downtown neighborhood.
Photojournalist Jonathan Alcorn and a news crew shooting a story on paparazzi for Bloomberg News were stopped near Sunset Plaza this afternoon (presumably by sheriff's deputies), ordered to the ground and treated as felony suspects.
Hetherington's photos from Afghanistan for Vanity Fair and others formed the basis for the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, which he directed which his long-time journalistic collaborator Sebastian Junger.
The Times' staff gets the public service medal for uncovering the corruption scandal in the city of Bell, and photographer Barbara Davidson wins for her images of the victims of gang violence in Los Angeles.
L.A. Day/L.A. Night features 30 aerial images of the city by photographer and pilot Michael Light. The book's introduction by Los Angeles Times critic David L. Ulin observes that "daylight...
The best documentary I've seen this year, on the octogenarian New York Times street photographer who rides his bike around Manhattan, has escaped the Nuart ghetto.
Scientific American has dug out of its files a 1901 story and photographs about interesting rock features on the Southern California coast, including the arch rock north of Santa Monica.
A Los Angeles Fire Department urban search and rescue team went out today to clean graffiti off the rock beside the 134 freeway that gives Eagle Rock its name. See the photo.
Jonathan Alcorn went to Venice Beach for the first warm day of spring in Los Angeles.
The discussion continues on that Robert F. Kennedy campaign photo from 1968 Los Angeles.
Those two aides around Robert F. Kennedy's car remain unidentified, but there's a factual question now: when was the photo actually taken?
Life.com posts unpublished photos of Elizabeth Taylor, the magazine's favorite movie star.
Never-published photo shows Sen. Robert F. Kennedy greeting well-wishers outside the Biltmore on election day in June 1968, hours before he was shot across town at the Ambassador Hotel.
Images from a new book, "The Ruins of Detroit,“ by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.
A volunteer at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has made a fantastic discovery: perhaps the only color photographs of the devastation in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire.
Upon the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King beating by LAPD officers in 1991, media analyst Dan Gilmoor looks at how photojournalism has changed since the video by George Holliday went viral.
Life magazine has posted a nice online gallery of photos from Oscars past, including this one with Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn backstage at the 1956 ceremony at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.
And now from a real photographer: Jonathan Alcorn, out early Sunday at Marina del Rey.
Up on the roof on Sunday afternoon, after the storm.
Orange County photographer Matthew Givot renders parts of the city beautifully in his time lapse videos.
Really, snow in January? That's so unfair. To our New York friends, here's an early valentine from the Coast.
Charles Brittin was a beat-era photographer whose best-known work captured Los Angeles and the avant-garde artists of the decades when the Ferus Gallery was big. His photos from the streets...
Regular followers of Here in Malibu know about Veronique de Turenne's "sweet 1949 Plymouth."
Guy McCarthy of Watershed News grabbed a shot of the Sunday cloud cover over the basin from Baldy Village, below the summit of Mount Baldy.
Photographer Gary Leonard will be a guest of Patt Morrison's during the 1 p.m. hour coming up on KPCC (89.3 FM) to talk about the demise of Kodachrome film.
The last rolls of Kodachrome color film will be developed today at Dwayne's Photo, a small family business in Parsons, Kansas.
The Sacramento Bee website posts — very big — 38 photos of the past week's rain and flooding from newspapers around state, plus AP and Getty Images.
Overnight growth at the River Center on San Fernando Road in Cypress Park, by John Rabe.
Here's two more: Olvera Street in the rain, by photographer Kevin McCollister, and this evening on the Glendale Freeway, by photographer Jonathan Alcorn.
Is this when we make a joke about pots of special interest gold at the end of the rainbow?
The view is from the window at Langer's deli. I'm guessing lunchtime.
Gary Leonard caught up to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa kicking it up with the Rockettes in Pershing Square.
Photojournalist Jonathan Alcorn said the sunset was so awesomely red over L.A. on Saturday that he had to pull off the freeway and start shooting.
Every time I post a photograph from Venice Beach's oil era, such as the Charles Brittin shot from 1957, readers email in disbelief. So here above is further evidence, uncovered...
Live-fire training for the LAFD at LAX early on Tuesday morning.
Escrow closed last week on the late photographer's Raphael S. Soriano-designed home on Woodrow Wilson Drive — Los Angeles historic-cultural monument #325.
The latest release to hit my in box is for a sheet of seasonal ice on the grounds of the W Hotel in Westwood. But how about the Tower of London?
Gov. Schwarzenegger's tweeter just posted a pic of the governor congratulating the world champion San Francisco Giants.
This week's photo by Gary Leonard, as writer Rip Rense rightly suggests via email, might benefit from some background on Tyrus Wong.
Every so often, somebody rediscovers the Ansel Adams photos of the Los Angeles area on the Los Angeles Public Library website and gets excited. This time it's NPR's photo blog.
President Obama returns Oct. 22 for a Democratic rally at USC. Here's what it looked like when FDR motorcaded through Downtown in 1935.
Eric Spiegelman noticed that a lot of dentists east of La Brea advertise with a happy, smiling tooth. So he made a slide show.
Photographer Jonathan Alcorn got to the Venice pier for this shot of tonight's gorgeous sunset.
The film is hosted by actor Adrian Grenier, who it's said became interested when he noticed Autsin Visschedyk, then 14, taking pictures in a pack of Hollywood paparazzi.
Davis, who did the famous Demon Sheep spot for Carly Fiorina and ads for John McCain this year and the Barack Obama-Paris Hilton spot in 2008, "is perhaps the most sought-after ad man in politics," the Washington Post says in a feature with photos by Jonathan Alcorn.
Rock musician Jesse Ed Davis's 64-year-old ex-girlfriend has Polaroid photos of Paul McCartney and the other Beatles, plus Eric Clapton and others, hanging around at John Lennon's Santa Monica beach house.
Abbot Kinney Boulevard's sidewalks were packed for tonight's monthly First Friday extravaganza — with pictures — plus an exhibit for L.A. Times photographer Carolyn Cole.
In Part 6 of The Lisker Chronicles at LA Observed, Bruce Lisker is hit with the state's move to send him back to prison, just as he celebrates his one-year anniversary of freedom.
I'm happy to announce that LA Observed is the new home of Gary Leonard's long-running series of Los Angeles street photos, still under the banner of Take My Picture Gary Leonard.
City Council President Eric Garcetti posted this childhood photo to his Facebook wall: "Nice mustache, Dad!"
His house in Santa Monica Canyon sold to a producer of "Doctor Who," but isn't the 1957 photo of Venice Beach interesting?
Superior Court Judge Hilleri G. Merrit upheld her order barring the L.A. Times from publishing a courtroom photo of a murder defendant whose picture has already been in the media.
enice photographer E. F. Kitchen has a new book out, Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages, exploring the activities of the Society for Creative Anachronism, whose members recreate the arts and battles of the Middle Ages.
Wired magazine culled some photos of Los Angeles smog from the L.A. Times archive at UCLA. Monday was the 67th anniversary of the infamous really, really black day when people looked around said dang, we have an air pollution problem here.
Channel 2 news photographer and blogger Bryan Frank just completed a marathon picture-taking trek through the area — "my little artisitic endeavor" — that he called 24LA.
Photojournalist and blogger Ted Soqui was riding with the L.A. Wheelmen on Mulholland Drive when they came across Jay Leno, loading his 1963 Porsche onto a truck.
When was the last time a fashion spread in the L.A. Times got this much attention? Kobe as ET.
Picture editor Honore Brown, posting at The New Yorker's Photo Booth blog, writes that photographs such as those by Jim Marshall (who died last month) "don't get made anymore." Brown...
Manhattan fashionistas and media people got their first look at Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary on the octogenarian who has been shooting street fashion for the New York Times for decades. But don't expect to see it in Los Angeles any time soon, the producer tells LA Observed.
Marshall had the inside access and the eye to shoot some of the most iconic images of rock and roll musicians
White crosses were laid out over the former site of Toyota's floral ad for the Prius beside the Pasadena Freeway near Downtown. A sign reads, "You Reap What You Sow."
Photo on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, from a photo feature on actor Jeff Bridges in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
Twitter has erupted with rainbow images from across Los Angeles.
The entire collection of pictures amassed over more than half a century by the Magnum photo cooperative — Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson and friends — was driven by truck from New York City in December.
Chic Leak blog came back from last night's launch of a line of acrylic body paints with nice photos of naked bodies and a classic PR quote.
The cameras crew grew in number today at TiGeorges' Chicken, the Haitian restaurant on Glendale Boulevard where Jenny Burman visited yesterday for Chicken Corner.
I'm told that L.A. Times photographer Carolyn Cole was packing in her Brooklyn apartment within fifteen minutes of the first quake bulletin. How she got to Port-Au-Prince.
The L.A. Times has photographers Carolyn Cole and Rick Loomis on the ground in Haiti.
It's nice to see the blogger-photographer getting some mainstream media acclaim for his new collection of L.A. images,
The Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy celebrated 25 years, the holidays and four photographers on Monday night in the Mayor Tom Bradley Room atop City Hall. Half the...
The so-called Lindbergh beacon was shining atop Los Angeles City Hall when Kevin McCollister captured the view during Saturday's storm. Click to biggify....
Larry Sultan, who died Sunday of cancer at his home up in Greenbrae, grew up in the San Fernando Valley and in 2004 came out with a large-format book called...
This week's snowfall covered some of the ash from the Station Fire that has given the San Gabriel Mountains a sickly appearance. Snow is also better than rain when it...
Greg Long of San Clemente won "the Eddie," the big surf contest on the north shore of Hawaii. Here's the Register story from Waimea Bay. Also, the Register's Mike Goulding...
Judy Graeme observed while the Los Angeles Ballet polished this year's Nutcracker in a nondescript studio on Exposition Boulevard in West L.A.See and hear the holiday mainstay come together and...
This morning's view of the San Gabriels and Cucamonga Peak from Riverside, by Guy McCarthy of Watershed News. More Sunday snow pictures in his Flickr stream. Coordinates fixed...
An elevated portion of the Gold Line today runs past the Capitol Milling Company plant in Downtown. From 1889 to 1896, the Cape Horn Viaduct also carried passengers past the...
Noah Sheldon is a New York photographer with a show currently at the Cherry and Martin gallery on south La Cienega. While here this month, he made some nice photographs...
This is how nice a day we had for Thanksgiving: Veronique de Turenne could see Downtown Los Angeles from the cove that Here in Malibu calls home. Multiple, larger views...
Author and Jewish Journal book editor Jonathan Kirsch blogs that his "very first experiment in the deconstruction and interpretation of sexual imagery" took place when, as a child, he found...
Readers of LA Observed have seen Kevin McCollister's photographs of Los Angeles, first on his blog Jimson Weed Gazette, and more recently on its successor, East of West LA. His...
Iris Schneider has posted her photos from MOCA's 30th anniversary party, including John Baldessari and David Hockney, Eva Mendes and Gwen Stefani, and Lady Gaga performing on a pink piano....
My KCRW commentary today talked about two photographers of L.A. who approach their subject from different directions, Bruce Davidson and Martin Schall. It aired, as every Friday, at 4:44 p.m....
LA Observed contributor Iris Schneider has a gorgeous audio slide show of Gustavo Dudamel images on the New York Times website. The accompanying story by Daniel J. Wakin discusses Dudamel...
Longtime readers know Martin Schall as the German creator of you-are-here.com, the great website of Los Angeles photographs. Although I've been posting since 2004 about the 42-year-old who runs the...
The 76-year-old New York photographer is "among the leaders of a loose-knit new wave of photographers — including Lee Friedlander, Danny Lyon, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus — who emerged...
Veronique de Turenne was up and outside early this morning and caught this view across the West Valley from the top of the Santa Monica Mountains. She's got another view...
The iconic fashion and portrait photographer — most notably for Vogue — died this morning at his home in Manhattan. His death was announced by Peter MacGill, his friend and...
Colleagues, family and admirers of Julius Shulman gathered at Getty Center this afternoon to remember and applaud "truly one of the great photographers of the 20th century," in the words...
Just about every news photographer I know has a favorite spot to go grab the obligatory snowy peaks behind downtown Los Angeles shot that news desks want every year or...
Jay Babcock at Nature Trumps: An L.A. River Blog posts this scene from November, looking upstream from the footbridge toward Los Feliz Boulevard and the burned Griffith Park hills. Click...
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
