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Atomic Cafe mural, in Little Tokyo



I asked my friend Michael Noble, and he was kind enough to send this picture of a commemorative mural at the ground level of the newly opened Little Tokyo MetroLA subway station. It’s celebrating the Atomic Cafe, after-hours hangout of song and story. The top two-thirds is based on a photo I made in 1988. If it looks familiar, that’s because I’ve previously posted the original. The mural is big — compare to the elevator doors for scale.

I am humbled and excited to join the landscape of Los Angeles this way.

Paella in Edison

This is Knut Christiansen. He owns Paellaworks, who provided the fine paella at Slough Food.

Black and white over the slough, from our picnic table. The slough is tidal, and this was clearly high tide.

Edison’s most famous son. The mural is based on a photo of Edward R. Murrow when he played basketball for the local high school.

Tweets, a local cafe. A fine place for breakfast.

Updates

I’ve changed themes yet again. This probably matters to no one but me. But I can now do text posts for the first time in a while, and captions/extra information becomes much more visible.

Peter Turnley

Peter Turnley gave a presentation, sponsored by Leica, at Kenmore Camera. I got there early, and was lucky enough to bump into Peter in the shop beforehand, and get about ten minutes of one-on-one conversation. I thanked him for his generosity in showing me a previously unpublished picture of Boris Yeltsin via Facebook a year or two ago. Perhaps one of these days I’ll make the time and have the money available for one of his workshops.

One of the things I’ll take away from his presentation was his analogy of photography to sports, and how you have to work out every day. You have to be the person who wants the ball in the clutch. You have to be familiar enough with your equipment that when the opportunity strikes, it’s almost irrelevant — you’re not fiddling, you’re shooting.

Another point was how human beings have developed a finely attuned sense of looking at someone, and knowing whether they’re uncomfortable or not — and we interpret discomfort as threatening (at least potentially). So always be warm, be happy, be comfortable in your skin. And the thing was, throughout the evening, he was all of those things, making it very easy to visualize him that way in the field.

A fine night.

Ms. Gottesman

A high school classmate of mine, as she hosted a gathering of our class. I was sitting in the shade; she in the bright sun. I lent her my hat, so she could be more comfortable. (NB: My high school class had only 15 people. Not all of us were there, but the point is, it doesn’t take much space for us to get together.)